Neither Schismatic nor Excommunicated (4)

Unity of Faith and Unity of Communion

What then is the function of the pope in the Church? The First Vatican Council teaches:

In order that the multitude of the faithful keep themselves in the unity of the Faith and of communion (in fidei et communionis unitate), Jesus placed blessed Peter as head of the Apostles.[46] Leo XIII, who deals ex professo with the unity of the Church, writes: "The divine Author of the Church, having decreed to give it the unity of faith, of government, of communion, chose Peter and his successors to establish in them the principle and the center of unity."[47]

Therefore, the function of Peter is to ensure "the unity of faith and of communion" amongst the multitude of the faithful as well as the "unity of government" amongst the multitude of pastors.

But in the Church, what are the relations between unity of faith and unity of communion?─unity of faith and unity of government?

He who has established the unique Church has also founded it One ...Now, so great and so absolute a harmony between men must have as a necessary corollary the agreement and the union of intellects; from which follows naturally the agreement of wills and the accord of actions. That is why, according to the divine plan, Jesus wanted the existence of the unity of faith in His Church: because faith is the first of all bonds which unites man to God and it is to this that we owe the name of faithful."[48]

And Pius XI follows it up with:

that is why, as charity has for foundation an upright and sincere faith, it is the unity of faith which must be the main connecting line uniting the disciples of Christ."[49]

Therefore unity of faith and unity of communion, unity of faith and unity of government are inseparable in the Church, the unity of faith being the necessary basis as much for the unity of communion as for the unity of government. It follows that no one in the Church has the right to require a unity of communion and/or government which disregards the unity of faith. And if today Catholics sufficiently well-informed feel themselves constantly divided between the unity of faith with the Church and a pretended "unity of communion" with the present-day hierarchy; if the bishops (whether they admit it or not, whether they bend to more or less great compromises, it is not relevant) are also divided between a unity of faith with the Church and a pretended “unity of government” with their higher superiors, it is precisely because there is required, of the faithful and the bishops respectively, a unity of communion and a unity of government based not on a unity of faith but on an adhesion to "personal" views more or less erroneous.

From the necessary relation which connects unity of faith with unity of communion, it follows that communion with the present hierarchy cannot, nor must not, be separate from communion with previous hierarchies. For today's hierarchy has, as those of former days, the function to transmit unaltered and to interpret faithfully the same deposit of Faith. He who, under Montini, accused the traditional Catholics of disobedience to the "pope of today" in the name of obedience to the "popes of yesteryears," was not in a position, good modernist that he was, to assess the gravity of this statement.

Communion with the pope is necessarily communion in the Truth, and, as such, it is communion with all the popes of yesteryears and of today, making allowance, of course, for the development of dogma, which proceeds with explanations and never by contradiction. When the necessity is imposed of having to choose between communion with the "popes of yesteryears" and the "pope of today," it is a sign that something is not going well within the Church. It is a sign that the "person" of the pope (or someone in his name) intervenes improperly in his "office." And just as a Catholic cannot, nor should not, be in communion with Pope Honorius I inasmuch as he favored the monothelite heresy,[50] similarly a Catholic should not, nor cannot, be in communion with Paul VI, inasmuch as he favored the modernism, the liberalism, the ecumenism condemned by his predecessors and invented a "dialogue," which is the negation of the dogma "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus [outside the Church there is no salvation]," by pretending improperly to direct the whole Church according to his personal views, distorted as well as distorting.

Footnotes

47 Dz.1969.

48 Leo XIII, encyclical Satis cognitum.

49 Pius XI, encyclical Mortalium animos.

50 The monothelite heresy pretended that there was only one will in Jesus Christ. It was condemned in 681 by the Third Ecumenical Council of Constantinople.