Reforming the Church, Conforming to Christ

The Papal agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (the “CCP”), allowing them to appoint bishops, scandalized me. I saw this as a shocking and dismaying departure from the separation of Church and State and an abdication of papal authority, yet the early Church from Constantine to Charlemagne envisioned the pope and the kings or emperors as co-regents of Christian society. “Christendom” explicitly expresses the reality of the Church identifying herself with the polis, the city-state. Emperors, kings, and the nobility in Christendom were deeply involved with the Church. Lay-led parishes chose the priest and collected the tithes. The nobles who supported the Church with their tithes did not hesitate to remove corrupt clergy. In ceding to the CCP the authority to choose bishops, Pope Francis was actually practicing the ressourcement impulse from Vatican II, which itself went “back to the fount” of the comingling of Church and State, with clergy and laity sharing responsibility as stewards for the Faith.

Surveying the historical situation of the Church’s relationships with “Caesar,” at times the Church and Caesar forged a mutually beneficial relationship; at other times, one controlled the other. The tide turned toward the Church’s favor when Emperor Constantine issued his Edict of Milan and granted freedom of worship to Christians; freedom for Christians from pagan worship; recognized the transcendence of the Heavenly Kingdom over secular kingdoms; and characterized the emperors as being subject to God rather than being gods themselves. The emperor convened and presided over the Council of Nicaea (325 AD). Constantine set the agenda, selected the invitees, and bankrolled the council. This contact between the sacred and the secular settled important areas of doctrine and decried heresy; this is a combination of the Divine and human elements in society for the betterment of the Church. This was a sea-change for the better.

Emperor Theodosius I convened the Council of Constantinople (381 AD); and Emperor Theodosius II called the Council of Ephesus (431 AD). Again, the lay leaders were the “obstinate champions of Catholic truth; they were pre-eminent in faith, zeal, courage, and constancy,” (Cardinal Newman On Consulting the Lay Faithful). In Lecture 6, Dr. McShea taught that the laity (emperors) called the first eight councils. These emperors were passionately interested in and resolved to “restore all things in Christ.” The Church wielded the sword of the Spirit; the emperors brandished the blade of imperial power.

Charlemagne protected Pope Leo III militarily and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope in the year 800. Christopher Dawson’s Religion and the Rise of Western Culture told us that kingship was then seen as an anointing of a military king and quasi-priest in the role of King David, representing Christ the King. Alcuin of York speaks of kings being anointed as guardians of the physical borders of Christendom and guardians of morality in the Church. The Cluniac reform in 903 was encouraged by the warrior-noble William, Duke of Aquitaine, who wanted monasteries to be under the authority of the pope, not the local bishops. At the Council of Sutri, 1046, Emperor Henry III “by force of arms” placed a German bishop as pope - Pope Clement II. Henry declared most of the priests of Rome as “unfit for office.” Here is a secular leader appointing not only bishops, but “the Bishop of Rome,” the pope.

The papacy began to be a driving force for reform by the 11th century as the popes began to convene the councils. Pope St. Gregory VII sought in his Gregorian Reform to stamp out lay investiture of clergy. He excommunicated the Emperor Henry IV, who had to beg publicly for forgiveness to be accepted back into the Church. The Church held spiritual power over the emperors, and the pope was the supreme leader over all people. Everyone owed political and spiritual allegiance to the pope. The Keys of the Kingdom had been handed from Christ to St. Peter, the first pope. Since the time of Constantine, the hands holding the keys were clasped between Church and State. Now the pope firmly grasped the keys again. In 1122, the Concordat of Worms asserted that the pope possessed the freedom to choose bishops and abbots, and the emperor ought not to interfere. At the Second Lateran Council in 1139, a clearer demarcation between clerical and lay involvement in the affairs of the Church was codified.

The end of the Avignon Papacy of 1309-1377 demonstrates the power of God working through a small Dominican tertiary over the French King and the pope. Abandoning embattled Rome, Pope Clement V moved the Papal Court to the city of Avignon, which enjoyed a “feudal relationship” with the papacy. St. Catherine of Siena played an integral role in bringing the pope back to Rome. She importuned Pope Gregory XI by letters in 1375 and 1376; to King Charles of France in 1376; to Pope Urban VI in 1378; and by visiting the pope and begging him directly to return to the Holy See in Rome. God chose His instrument well, as Catherine chose many routes to reach the heart, the mind, and the soul of the pope. Sometimes she scolded: “Up, then, father, and no more negligence!” At times, she appealed to his vocation: “Fulfill with true zeal and holy what you have begun with a holy resolve concerning your return.” She upbraided his waffling: “Do what you have to do manfully and in the fear of God.” She referred to the pope as “the sweet Christ on earth,” and by the affectionate name born of filial trust, Babbo, an Italian version of Abba (Selected letters of St. Catherine of Siena). Catherine’s multi-faceted approach to the popes encompassed her hope that “all roads lead to Rome.”

At the Council of Constance (1414-1418), the laity voting as nation blocs helped to depose two anti-popes. One hundred years later, Christian humanists such as St. Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam considered ecumenical councils composed of clergy and the laity more authoritative than the pope. They urged reform from within the Church by returning ad fontes to the roots of Christianity, both Biblical books and classical Greek philosophy (Williams, True Reformers, page 44-45). When Henry VIII passed the Succession Act, declaring Anne Boleyn as the rightful Queen and himself as the Head of the Church of England, no monarch “had so radically broken with the very idea of universal papacy as to declare themselves pope in their own domains,” (Williams, True Reformers page 52). More’s refusal to sign the Oath of fidelity to the Act of Succession, even though he never denounced it in public or in private, enraged Henry. More was imprisoned and executed. More’s private conscience could not be forced into agreement with the megalomaniacal coercion of the king: “Conscience did not simply coincide with personal opinion. A rightly formed conscience needed to be founded on truth, to accord with Reason and Revelation,” (Williams, True Reformers page 55). More charged the king with sedition against the truth, and he “pointed to the whole of the Christian Tradition as his witness and he took his stand on the universal testimony of the Church,” (Williams, True Reformers page 56).  King Henry overstepped the boundary between Church and State, grasping at an authority beyond him, and thus began the decline of papal power in the secular realm. 

The Council of Trent (1545-1563) permitted comments from Catholic princes and delegates even on matters of dogma and canon law. One layman brought his extensive library to the Council for the Council Fathers to use as needed. The voting bishops were selected by the laity. Lay leaders were expected to help the bishops implement the reforms of Trent. The lay faithful with their sensus fidei fidelis helped the clergy to remain faithful to the sensus fidei fidelium, that is, the Church’s instinct for the Faith (Sensus Fidei 3). The clergy would have failed without the laity. Cardinal Newman, On Consulting the Lay Faithful page 77, he taught: “The body of bishops failed in the confession of Faith: they were puzzled, timid, deceived, or heretical.” The instinct of the prayerful, illiterate families who gleaned their theology from the stained glass windows, statuary, and personal piety erred less than the biblical scholarship of the episcopacy and assisted the hierarchy as they steered the Petrine barque.

The societal structure, the hierarchy of the Church, is not separate from the Mystical Body of Christ, “constituted and organized in the world as a society.” The Church needs the active participation of the clergy and the laity, now separate from the State. In paragraph 13, Lumen Gentium (“LG”) declares that “all men are called to belong to the new people of God. Though there are many nations, there is but one people of God, citizens of a (Heavenly) kingdom.” People at this time were no longer living under a monarchy and most of these governments recognized the freedom of worship;[1] thus, the power of the State did not sway the Church, and the Church did not rely upon the State to enforce her teaching. China is an exception to this trend: the creation of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in 1957 ceded management of the Catholics in China to the State, separating them from the universal Catholic Church.[2] While sojourning on Earth, the Church is necessary for salvation; “the deposit of Revelation extends far and must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded,” (LG 24) “to extend the Divine plan of salvation to all men of every epoch and in every land,” (LG 33). Not only the successors to the Apostles but also the members of the domestic church spread the Gospel by their words and deeds, their prayers and their piety.

In Ecclesiam Suam (“ES”) 41 we read: “In its pilgrimage through the world, the Church must really strive to manifest that ideal of perfection envisaged for it by the Divine Redeemer; not indeed to formulate new rules of spirituality, but to engage new energies in striving after the holiness which Christ has taught us.” In other words, Revelation and Tradition, Scripture and the Magisterium, reveal the Kingdom of God and help the Church Militant to attain Heaven. A Christian conscience ought to guide the Body of Christ in every temporal affair, and the Church herself ought to strive toward a “clearer and deeper awareness of itself and its mission and of the treasury of truth, of which it is heir and custodian,” (ES 9). Note that reform ought to be dedicated to holiness and to fealty to the Deposit of Faith; personal holiness has ecclesial dimensions (Evangelii Nuntiandi 60). My fidelity to a well-formed conscience, then, assists the Church. Just as no sin is purely personal but afflicts the entire Body of Christ, so individual devotion adds to the grace and health of the Bride of Christ.

Aggiornamento was taken as the guiding principle of Vatican II to stimulate the Church with fresh vigor to examine herself, take stock of the good and reform the corrupted parts of the Church. Pope Paul VI, however, sounded the caution to generate new energies for reform rather than to formulate new rules; and to submit to the obedience of Christ rather than submitting changes to the Church’s legislation (ES 41 and 51). Pope Paul VI’s steely resolve to establish relationships with modern society empowered his outreach to all nations, including those whose spiritual and moral values differed from those of the Catholic Church (ES 12, 14). He realistically asserted that “the Church cannot remain indifferent to or unaffected by the changes” in the world, frankly admitting that societal changes continually create problems for the Church (ES 42). While in dialogue with other nations, the Truth must never suffer watering down with vague compromises: “the effective apostle is completely faithful to Christ’s teachings,” (ES 88). Pope Paul VI saw himself as the steward of the royal treasury of truth, holiness, and the Apostolic Tradition, the essential nature of the Church which must never be reformed (ES 46). He perceived atheism as “the most serious problem of our time,” (ES 100). The Church, as the deposit of “truth, justice, freedom, progress, concord, civilization, and peace” (ES 95), provides the perfect antidote to the poisonous manifesto of godless governance.

Pope Paul VI posited that the popular opinion seemed to consist in the reformation of the Church “to the customs and temper of the modern secular world.” He asserted: “Obviously, there can be no question of reforming the essential nature of the Church or its basic and necessary structure,” (ES 48 and 46). Starting with the truth of Revelation, buttressed with Apostolic Tradition, and standing upon two centuries of Christian testimony, the Catholic Church ought to lead the world as a shining example of the spotless Bride of Christ. While history bears witness that Church and State have at times enjoyed a reciprocal partnership and have sometimes been unequally yoked, with one subverting the other, never before have the Keys to the Kingdom been handed over to as powerful and malicious enemy as the CCP. The Middle Kingdom has the Keys. They do not share power. This arrangement will not be one of co-regency, but of domination and submission. Yet “faith clings to the authentic teaching of the Apostles,” (Sensus Fidei 16). Jesus promised that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church, and I trust His word. This class tour of the history of Church reform, including its varied relationships with secular leaders, has opened my eyes to the warp and woof of the tapestry of papal power. The Church has survived popes who led the Church poorly before; she shall do so again.

 
Works Cited
Costiner, Joseph. "Monarchy in the Modern Era." Britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/topic/oprichnina (accessed July 16, 2021).

Dawson, Christopher. Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. London: Sheed & Ward, 1950.

International Theological Commission. Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church. Vatican City: Holy See, 2014.

Siena, St. Catherine of. "Saint Catherine of Siena and Her Times - Lesson A - The Life and Legacy of Saint Catherine of Siena." Selected Letters of Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) to Pope Gregory XI and Other Powerful Church and State Leaders During the Period of the Avignon Papacy. Edited by Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Augustine Institute Dr. Brownwen McShea.

Starr, Chloe. "Yale MacMillan Center." Yale.edu. December 12, 2016.

https://macmillan.yale.edu/news/commentary-religion-and-state-china (accessed July 16, 2021).

VI, Pope Paul. Ecclesiam Suam. Vatican City: Holy See, 1964.

—. Evangelii Nuntiandi. Vatican City: Holy See, 1975.

—. Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church). Vatican City: Holy See, 1964.

Williams, Jerome K. True Reformers: Saints of the Catholic Reformation. Greenwood Village, CO: Augustine Institute, 2017.

[1] www.christianhistoryinstitute.org accessed July 16, 2021:1802 for USA; 1800s for Latin America; 1901 for Australia; 1905 for Europe.

 www.britannica.com accessed July 16, 2021: nationalist monarchies in Greece, Austria, and Arab provinces lost power by mid-20 Century and changed to constitutional monarchies where the power of the sovereign was transferred to branches of elected houses.
[2] www.macmillan.yale.edu accessed July 16, 2021