Thank you, Pope Pius XII: "Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely 'pneumatological' as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by an invisible bond."
Those of you with a more mathematical, precise bent may benefit from a longer exposition here on the "Catholics are divided, too" objection.
For my part, I had a few comments. First, the mere fact of disagreement between people tells us nothing about the nature of the disagreement, or the potential basis for reunion, because we don't have a baseline to measure it against. But in Catholicism, there is a baseline, so that whether the error is heresy or schism, those terms have objective meaning.
This is the basic flaw in an old, "The Council cannot be authoritative, because it did not include x group" argument. It would allow dissenters to define orthodoxy, and not the other way around. The fundamental heart of being a son of the Catholic Church is to give unqualified assent to that which has been revealed, worshipping Christ in visible unity with the bishops and the successor of Peter. That's real, even if I were the only one to do it. The truth of a doctrine is not defined by majority opinion. The ardence with which some dissent (and a non-negligible amount of sympathy any one may garner in it) is not pertinent to the question of truth.
In fact, that's the whole point: There is a discernible body of truth that itself gives meaning to the term "heresy," and a visible Body of Christ that gives meaning to the word, "schism." Because of this, paradigmatically, the Catholic paradigm would be preferable to the Protestant, even if it were not true. (But it is, so it works out.)
As I've written dozens of times, the fatal blow to perpiscuity and Sola Scriptura isn't some emotional judgment on the sometimes fractious nature of theological discussions under the paradigm; in fact, the opposite is the case. Because charity requires me to assume good faith, I must explain the fact of our disagreement in terms other than, "I am right, and you must be wrong," given that 1) we are using the same hermeneutical process, and 2) We (presumably) both have access to the Father by the same Spirit, and, consequently, 3) God cannot lie. And so, that leads one to examine the relationship between God, myself, and the supposed mediating influence of the ecclesial community. It cannot be real, if Pius XII's quote is an accurate reflection of Protestant ecclesiology (it is) and/or the basis for dissent inside Catholicism, because the extent of external authority over the doctrine and life of an individual is nil when he alone is the arbiter of the justice, and the terms of its exercise.
Those of you with a more mathematical, precise bent may benefit from a longer exposition here on the "Catholics are divided, too" objection.
For my part, I had a few comments. First, the mere fact of disagreement between people tells us nothing about the nature of the disagreement, or the potential basis for reunion, because we don't have a baseline to measure it against. But in Catholicism, there is a baseline, so that whether the error is heresy or schism, those terms have objective meaning.
This is the basic flaw in an old, "The Council cannot be authoritative, because it did not include x group" argument. It would allow dissenters to define orthodoxy, and not the other way around. The fundamental heart of being a son of the Catholic Church is to give unqualified assent to that which has been revealed, worshipping Christ in visible unity with the bishops and the successor of Peter. That's real, even if I were the only one to do it. The truth of a doctrine is not defined by majority opinion. The ardence with which some dissent (and a non-negligible amount of sympathy any one may garner in it) is not pertinent to the question of truth.
In fact, that's the whole point: There is a discernible body of truth that itself gives meaning to the term "heresy," and a visible Body of Christ that gives meaning to the word, "schism." Because of this, paradigmatically, the Catholic paradigm would be preferable to the Protestant, even if it were not true. (But it is, so it works out.)
As I've written dozens of times, the fatal blow to perpiscuity and Sola Scriptura isn't some emotional judgment on the sometimes fractious nature of theological discussions under the paradigm; in fact, the opposite is the case. Because charity requires me to assume good faith, I must explain the fact of our disagreement in terms other than, "I am right, and you must be wrong," given that 1) we are using the same hermeneutical process, and 2) We (presumably) both have access to the Father by the same Spirit, and, consequently, 3) God cannot lie. And so, that leads one to examine the relationship between God, myself, and the supposed mediating influence of the ecclesial community. It cannot be real, if Pius XII's quote is an accurate reflection of Protestant ecclesiology (it is) and/or the basis for dissent inside Catholicism, because the extent of external authority over the doctrine and life of an individual is nil when he alone is the arbiter of the justice, and the terms of its exercise.
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