Annie

Are you the same Annie that was on the podcast on this site? A lot of the things you said on it personally ministered to my wife. She initially was opposed to converting to catholicism but a lot of what you said helped her.

PS–I apologize to the moderators for speaking off topic but I was hoping that I was contacting the Annie!

Welcome home!

Welcome to the Church brother!

Best,
Mark

I am so happy I could help an old friend dip into the Tiber! You will love the swim.

God Bless,

David M.

welcome home.

dt

Long time lurker, first time poster. I want to thank David Meyer and Holly Whittemore (who don’t know each other) for pointing me here. This site was instrumental in my conversion to the Catholic church. I was part of the OPC, and then I became sympathetic to Federal Vision and then NT Wright. The ecclesiological ground was sufficient to bring me to Rome. I didn’t come to the one true faith because I believed everything the church had to say about Mary, sacraments, the Pope, Purgatory, etc. It wasn’t like I took a list of Catholic doctrines and lined them up against Protestant doctrines and took a tally. That would be no different than church shopping.

I first believed because I first had to trust that this is the church Christ founded. In time, as I mature, I trust that the church will help me understand the things than ran contrary to my Protestant sensibilities. So, when attempting to reason with a Protestant, especially one sympathetic to the importance of a “strong ecclesiology”, it helps to ask them how they know they are not schismatic. I asked myself whether I was in the right “branch”? And then I asked what gave Calvin and Luther authority to separate or “reform” in the first place.

“Therefore, there really is one church—catholic, spread throughout the world yet united in one Lord, one faith, one baptism—even though its visible shape right now seems to speak against it.”

The question I asked him in reply is essentially the question of this post. I replied:

You say that the catholic Church is united (in certain respects) even though “its visible shape now seems to speak against it.” It seems to me that one could look at the present situation and see not a problem with the Church’s “visible shape,” (as though the problem is only a problem between branches within the Church) but rather *schisms from* the visible Church, as were the Donatists in the fourth century. So, what is it, exactly, in your opinion, that distinguishes a *branch within* the catholic Church, from a *schism from* the catholic Church? That is, how does one rightly determine whether a particular denomination is a *branch within* the Church, or a *schism from* the Church?

Michael then replied:

With our confessions, I’d say that this is determined by proclamation of the true gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to Christ’s institution. While no church exhibits these marks with complete purity, bodies that reject the gospel or anything essential to it and substitute their own dogmas, duties, and discipline for Christ’s institution have separated themselves from the visible Church.

It seems to me that Michael’s reply defines schism from the Church as synonymous with heresy, and in this way eliminates the very possibility of schism from the Church [in the traditional sense of 'schism from' as treated in the Church Fathers]. For the traditional sense of schism from the Church, see, for example, what the fourth century bishop St. Optatus says about schism in “St. Optatus on Schism and the Bishop of Rome.” Similarly, St. Jerome wrote:

Between heresy and schism there is this difference, that heresy perverts dogma, while schism, by rebellion against the bishop, separates from the Church. Nevertheless there is no schism which does not trump up a heresy to justify its departure from the Church. (In Ep. ad Tit., iii, 10)

In St. Augustine’s work titled “Of Faith and the Creed” which he delivered to the bishops assembled at the Council of Hippo-Regius in AD 393, which was the “general assembly of the North African Church,” he wrote the following:

Inasmuch, I repeat, as this is the case, we believe also in The Holy Church, [intending thereby] assuredly the Catholic . For both heretics and schismatics style their congregations churches. But heretics, in holding false opinions regarding God, do injury to the faith itself; while schismatics, on the other hand, in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity, although they may believe just what we believe. Wherefore neither do the heretics belong to the Church catholic, which loves God; nor do the schismatics form a part of the same, inasmuch as it loves the neighbor, and consequently readily forgives the neighbor’s sins, because it prays that forgiveness may be extended to itself by Him who has reconciled us to Himself, doing away with all past things, and calling us to a new life. And until we reach the perfection of this new life, we cannot be without sins. Nevertheless it is a matter of consequence of what sort those sins may be. (Of Faith and the Creed, 10)

To the best of my knowledge, St. Optatus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and all the Church Fathers who wrote about schism wrote about schism from as something conceptually distinct from heresy. Yes, any schism from the Church would invariably fall into some heresy, at least in order to justify its schism from the Church. But, nevertheless, schism from the Church referred to a particular Church’s (or smaller group’s) visible break in communion with the Catholic Church (even where that particular Church or group had not embraced any heresy), whereas ‘heresy’ referred to a departure from the Apostolic faith, even if communion had not yet been visibly broken.

So, it seems to me that Michael has departed from the Church Fathers in this respect, by defining schism from the Church as heresy, and thus eliminating (from his conceptual system) the possibility of schism from the Church [in the traditional sense of schism from]. And when schism from the Church is defined out of existence, one loses the possibility of recognizing whether one (or anyone else) is in schism from the Church; it becomes a meaningless question, a question that evokes a blank face, or an attempt to translate the question into the only definition of ‘schism’ one knows, namely, a question about heresy, which is then answered with an assurance that one is holding on to the biblical gospel and sacraments, and therefore that one is not in schism from the Church. When terms in the Tradition are redefined in a way that replaces (rather than develops) their essential meaning, then not only does this lead to ecumenical difficulties, but it also leads communities who adopt these redefinitions to a different way of seeing, in this case, a way of seeing in which schism from is not even conceptually visible. By redefining schism from the Church as heresy, the community that adopts this redefinition as essentially goes blind to schism from the Church.

What has happened, when an entire patristic concept is no longer even accessible or intelligible? This concept of schism from the Church dropped out of Protestant theology because the justification of the Protestant departure from the Catholic Church required an underlying radical change in ecclesiology, from a visible catholic Church to an essentially invisible catholic Church with local visible expressions. The reason the concept of schism from the Church is no longer available (and has to be redefined as heresy to cover the semantic hole its absence would leave) is that the conjunction of (a) the denial of the ministerial priesthood and Holy Orders and (b) the denial of an essentially unified divinely established visible principle of unity entails that the Church is not essentially visible, and therefore that visible unity is not essential to her. (See “Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church.”“) But schism from the Church is impossible unless the Church has visible unity. Hence the Protestant move from a visible Church ecclesiology to an invisible Church ecclesiology (even though the language of ‘visible Church’ is retained by Reformed persons like Michael) eliminated conceptually the very possibility of schism from the Church, and thus required redefining schism from as just a synonym for heresy.

For this reason, even if Michael wanted to hold to the possibility of schism from the Church by claiming that the visible Church is, say, NAPARC (or some other association of Reformed denominations), he couldn’t do so. That’s because if some denominations which held to the same doctrines affirmed by NAPARC denominations were not in communion with NAPARC denominations, nothing would make those denomination the ones in schism from the Church, rather than the other way around. Without a divinely established visible principle of unity that serves as the defining point of reference for the location of the Church, schism from the Church must be redefined as “not holding to [my interpretation of Scripture regarding what is] the gospel and [my interpretation of Scripture regarding what are] the sacraments.” For Catholics, by contrast, that divinely established principle of unity is St. Peter, as St. Ambrose said: “Where Peter is, there is the Church.” (For the role of St. Peter as the Church’s principle of unity see “The Chair of St. Peter.”)

Moreover, to justify redefining schism from as heresy, one must assume that all the early Church Fathers who addressed schism from the Church were mistaken, having departed from the Apostolic faith regarding the nature of schism from the Church. In that sense, to justify departing from the Church Fathers regarding the nature of schism from the Church, one must presuppose ecclesial deism. Otherwise, if in their teaching concerning schism from the Church, the Church Fathers were faithfully preserving and defending the Apostolic faith they had received, then it is those who are redefining ‘schism from’ as heresy who are departing from the Apostolic faith, and thus ironically (given their own their definition of ‘schism’) in that respect separating themselves from the visible Church.