http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/jhardon_bellarmine_sept07.asp
The Mystical Body of Christ Is the Catholic Church
It is significant that Bellarmine went out of his
way to emphasize what seems so obvious to us—that the Mystical Body of Christ
is also the established Church of Christ. Until his time, there were relatively
few Christians not in communion with Rome who claimed that their organization
was the Body of Christ of which St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "You
are the Body of Christ, member for member" (I Cor., xii. 27). But with the
advent of Luther and Calvin the situation changed. On the one hand, they preached
an invisible Church founded on faith and predestination; on the other hand,
they called their Church the Body of Christ. This was a new idea and challenge
to traditional Catholic theology.
The Mystical Body of Christ, the predestinarians
argued, is not unlike His tangible physical Body. And since the whole physical
Body of Christ is in heaven and glorified with all its component parts, it
follows that the Mystical Body should also arrive at heavenly glory in all its
individual members. The statement looks harmless enough until we examine its
implications. If every member of the Mystical Body is going to be saved and the
Church of Christ is the Body, then the only members of the Church are those
whom God has eternally decreed should enter heaven. Everyone else is a putative
member only, deceived by God and deceiving himself that he is even a Christian,
much less a part of the Mystical Body.
"My first reaction to this doctrine,"
Bellarmine observes, "is that the opposition has pushed the analogy
between the mystical and physical Bodies of Christ far beyond the limits ever
intended for them by the Apostle. They are certainly alive in general outline,
but not in every detail. And besides, even the physical Body of Christ entered
heaven and was glorified only in its formal constituents, but not in all its
natural parts, many of which were lost and changed with the passage of time, as
we notice happens in our own bodies.
So, it is correct enough to say that the whole
Mystical Body will be saved in its constitutive elements, inasmuch as every
class in the Catholic Church—apostles, prophets, teachers, confessors and
virgins—will be represented among the saved. It is not true, however, that all
its material elements, that is, every numerical member of the Mystical Body,
will finally attain to salvation." [2]
Calvinists and The Mystical Body
Another argument, of the Calvinists particularly,
was that the only Church of which Christ may be said to be the Head is the one
which He will eventually save and "set before Him on the Day of
Judgment—glorious and without spot or wrinkle," as described by the
Apostle in his Epistle to the Ephesians. However, since only the predestined
will be saved and glorified, only they are properly to be considered members of
the Church of Christ.
St. Robert answers: "It all depends on how
you understand the expression, 'His Church.' If it is taken to mean that Christ
is Head only of that part of 'His Church' which He will save, then the
proposition is false. Christ is Head of the whole Mystical Body, in spite of
the tragic fact that certain people who are now its members, will be lost for
all eternity. But if 'His Church' is understood to include the whole body of
the faithful as distinguished from the societies of unbelievers, then the
proposition is true, while the conclusion deduced from it is false. For
although some members of this Church will not be saved, it is wrong to conclude
that therefore Christ does not save His Church, of which He is the Head."
[3]
However, Bellarmine does not limit his concept of
the Mystical Body to the visible Church on earth. The Mystical Body of Christ
is composed of three "Churches"—the Church Militant, the Church
Suffering and the Church Triumphant. He has as little sympathy with those who
denied membership in the Body of Christ to the souls in purgatory and the
Saints in heaven, as he had with anyone who restricted its membership to the
predestined and elect or extended it to those who were united only by a common,
internal faith in Christ.
Bellarmine Defends Honoring the Saints
In his defense of the Holy Eucharist against the
Calvinists, St. Robert had to answer some of their stock charges on the
traditional custom of offering the Holy Sacrifice in honor of the Saints. He
explains that the Protestant bias against this practice arises from two
fundamental errors in their theology: one a misunderstanding of Catholic
doctrine, where they claim that we offer the Mass as an act of adoration to the
Saints instead of to God; the other is an unwarranted limitation of membership
in the Mystical Body. "The practice of offering Holy Mass to honor the
Saints," he says, "is especially appropriate as a public expression
of our belief in the Communion of Saints. The Sacrifice of the physical Body of
Christ is an oblation of the corporate Mystical Body of Christ. Moreover, since
we do not hesitate to mention the names of living persons, such as the Pope and
bishop, in the ritual of the Mass, why should we fail to remember those of the
faithful departed who are in heaven or in purgatory, when all of them belong to
the same Body of the Lord? According to St. Augustine, there is no better way
of fulfilling the one great purpose for which the Eucharistic Sacrifice was
instituted, than that it might symbolize the universal sacrifice in which the
whole Mystical Body of Christ —the whole regenerated City of God—is offered by
the hands of the great High Priest to the glory of His Heavenly Father. Once we
recognize the Saints, no less than we, are organically united to the Mystical
Body, it becomes not only proper but necessary that their memory should be recalled
during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."
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