Not a Denomination

In 1964, Pope Paul VI issued the Second Vatican Council’s “Decree on Ecumenism,” called Unitatis Redintegratio, which translates from Latin as “The Restoration of Unity.” Right there, we see that the whole notion of denominationalism is wrong. And to their credit, the mostly Protestant thinkers involved in the “Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry” document from the World Council of Churches would agree. As most Christians—not just Roman Catholics—profess in the Nicene Creed, the Church is “one.” As Unitatis Redintegratio puts it plainly,

Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but differ in mind and go their different ways, as if Christ himself were divided. Such division openly contradicts he will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the gospel to every creature (1).

St. Paul makes the same point several times in his New Testament letters. Toward the beginning of his first letter to the Corinthians, he asks, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1:13). We may pause for a moment here to recall the prominent ecclesial bodies identified by the names of their founders, Lutherans and Calvinists chief among them. Unitatis Redintegratio explains,

Even in the beginnings of this one and only Church of God there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly condemned. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions made their appearance and quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic Church—for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame (3).

To put it bluntly: Not only is the Catholic Church not a denomination, but there is no such thing as denominations. Nowhere in the Catholic Church’s teaching documents will you ever find that word. You will, however, find the word communion, and baptized individuals and groups are connected in various degrees of communion. Another document from Vatican II—a monumental one—explains the hows and whys.

Released to the world on the same day as Unitatis Redintegratio, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, begins with a startlingly universal claim: “Christ is the Light of nations.” When the Church begins the discussion about what it is, therefore, the emphasis is on evangelism and universality. The focus is outward. Everyone on earth was made by God and belongs in communion with God. And so, the Church asserts, the light Christ brought into the world is “brightly visible on the countenance of the Church” (1), and through the Church, “his plan was to raise men to a participation in the divine life” (2). Moreover, through communion with God, individuals, cultures, and countries throughout time are called to communion with one another as “a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (4).

The twentieth-century theologian Henri de Lubac expresses it like this: “The unity of the mystical body of Christ, a supernatural unity, supposes a previous natural unity, the unity of the human race.”  Note once again, the mystical body is not something to which Christians hope to be joined one day; rather, it is the sign that Christ’s kingdom has already come near (Luke 17:20-21), and that the Holy Spirit has indeed descended to comfort us as Christ promised (John 15:26). Accordingly, the Church’s members, by their baptism, really participate in the fullness of life with Christ right now.

And here we come to one of the most important first-halves of a sentence ever written, again from Lumen Gentium: “The Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him . . .” (8). We shall look at the equally important second-half of the sentence in a moment—but first, a word about subsisting.

Subsistence

In common parlance, “subsist” term usually connotes the maintenance or survival of someone or something at a minimal level. A subsistence farmer is someone who grows just enough food to meet his own needs, rather than growing more to sell or trade. If one thing subsists inside another thing, then we can say it is absolutely guaranteed to live there in the full measure required, but there may be more elsewhere.

Christ’s body cannot be divided and live. But Christ’s body can be fully at home in one place and yet also extend its limbs far outside the boundaries of that place. Moreover, inasmuch as the body of Christ spreads out beyond the Catholic Church, its essential characteristics remain right where they have always been, unchanged. Again, subsist.

Now we must ask, if the Catholic Church is not a denomination and, in fact, there is no such thing from the Catholic perspective as denominations, then what are non-Roman Catholic Christians? Here we come to the second half of that all-important sentence from Lumen Gentium: “. . . many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of [the Church’s] visible structures.”

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