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The Effects of Schism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2024
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[The following pages were written in response to a request from a group of Anglican Papalists for some account of the ‘official Roman doctrine’ regarding the practical consequences of separation from visible unity with the Catholic Church. They are here offered in the hope of providing a complement to the writer’s article on ‘Membership of the Church’ (Blackfriars, September, 1941).
As membership of the Church is an analogical concept which admits of many manners and degrees, so correspondingly is privation of that membership. In this essay we abstract altogether from such diversities and degrees of privation, and confine ourselves to the consideration of the results of factual loss of external communion with the Catholica. The question is not, therefore, ‘Who is in schism?’, but ‘What is the practical outcome of being in schism?’]
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- Copyright © 1942 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
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1 It is important to remember in reading Catholic theology that the words ‘heretic’ and ‘schismatic’ are always to be understood of those who are consciously and wilfully such, or declared to be such by the Church's authority, unless the contrary is stated or implied. In the Summa Theologica, II-II, xxxix, 1, St. Thomas Aquinas explains why intention to be separated from the Church and to refuse her government and fellowship is of the very essence of schism properly so called. Without such knowledge and intention (which of course admit of degrees) the breach with the Church is not a fully human act; therefore is not fully internal ; therefore is not complete. Hence theologians are agreed that merely material heresy or schism do not completely disrupt the subject's adherence to the Church, though most of them will not allow the term ‘member of the Church’ to be applied to them owing to their factual and external separation. (See e.g., Billot, De Ecclesin Christi, vol. 1, 4th edition, pp. 288 sqq., and BLACKFRIASR Sept., 1941.) Similarly, for Canon Law, a schismatic is one who ‘refuses to live under the Roman Pontiff, or who declines to hold communion with the members of the Church subject to him’ (Codex of Canon Law, Canon 1325, $2). It is unquestionably unfortunate and misleading to have to use the term schismatic to include all the baptised who live and worship outside the visible fellowship of the Church, whether their separated condition is intended or not. Latterly the terms dissidents, acatholici and fratres separati have come increasingly into use. But the first two are too ambiguous for the purposes of this article; and the last, though admirable in its theological exactitude, is too cumbersome for repeated use in the plural, and altogether too bizarre in the singular !
2 Council of Trent, Session VII, Canon 4 (Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiridion Symbolorum, § 860).
3 See the Codex of Canon Law, Canon 1099, $2.
4 Reservation must, however, be made in the case of the Sacrament of Penance, for sacramental absolution, being a judicial act, requires not only valid orders, but valid jurisdiction for validity. Hence St. Thomas, as will presently be seen, says without qualification that heretics and schismatics cannot absolve. The question as to whether or not an Orthodox diocesan bishop (for instance) is deprived of the power of exercising and granting such jurisdiction by reason of his separation from the Holy See raises many complex issues that cannot here be discussed. However, the Church expressly grants the necessary jurisdiction to all priests for absolution in articulo mortis
5 Summa Theol., II-II, xxxix, 3. For patristic doctrine on the subject, see quotations in Darwell Stone and F. W. Puller, Who we Members of the Church? (Pusey House Occasional Papers, No. 9).
6 For fuller development of the doctrine in this paragraph, see the Summa Theol. III, lxiii, passim, lxiv, 4 sqq., lxvii, 3 sqq., Ixxxii, 7, 9.
7 Denz.-Bann., $714.
8 Summa Theol. III, Ixiv, 9 ad 2.
9 It is defined doctrine only that those who place (actively) an obstacle in the way of the effect of a sacrament frustrate its effectiveness (cf. Denz.-Bann., § 441 and 849). But it will be clear from what follows that such obstacles to the full fruition of the efficaciousness of a sacrament can exist without voluntary interference on the part of the recipient personally.
10 see Summa Theol. III, lxiii passim.
11 Denz.-Bann., § 696.
12 Cf. Billot, op. et loc cit.
13 Cf. Summa Theol. III, lxiii, 3, 6.
14 Surnma Theol. III, Ixxii, 5, cf. Laros, Confirmation in the Modern World.
15 Cf. Casti Connubii (Encyclical of Pius XI).
16 Cf. Summa Theol. III, lxv,, 1 ad 4.
17 Summa Theol. III, Ixxiii, 3.
18 Summa Theol. 111, lxvii, 2.
19 summa Theol. III, lxxxii, 9 ad 2.
20 Summa Theol. III, Ixxx, 7, 9.
21 Summa Theol. II-II, xxxix, 1.
22 Summa Theol. II-II, xxxix, 2 ad 3.
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