A Communion of Martyrs

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2000 by Sven-Erik Brodd

The other concept around which disagreements have arisen is the "subsists in" of paragraph 10. Since the Second Vatican Council this has been a necessary but unclear element in Roman Catholic ecclesiology.(17) How does the fullness of the Roman Catholic Church as such relate to the assertion that "many elements of great value (eximina), which in the Catholic Church is part of the fullness of the means of salvation and the gifts of grace which make up the church, are also found in the other Christian communities" (para. 13)? The encyclical notes that the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) "links its teaching on the Catholic Church to an acknowledgment of the saving elements found in other churches and ecclesial communities. It is not a matter of becoming aware of static elements passively present in those churches and communities ... Unity is a duty which springs from the very nature of Christian community" (para. 49). "It is not a matter of adding together all the riches scattered throughout the various Christian communities in order to arrive at a church which God has in mind for the future" (para. 14). If the encyclical is not in favour of an "additive" ecclesiology, despite its recurrent references to ecclesial elements "found in their fullness in the Catholic Church and, without this fullness, in the other communities", where, indeed, "certain features of the Christian mystery have at times been more effectively emphasized", the strivings towards unity are "directed precisely to making the partial communion existing between Christians grow towards full communion in truth and charity" (para. 14). What does it mean?

The church should not be seen as the sum of elements added together but as the community sent to proclaim "the mystery of communion which is essential to her, and to gather all people and all things into Christ, so as to be for all an inseparable sacrament of unity" (para. 5), of "those who through baptism become members of the body of Christ, a body in which the fullness of reconciliation and communion must be made present" (para. 6) "The faithful are one ... in communion with the Son and, in him, share in his communion with the Father ... For the Catholic Church, then, the communion of Christians is none other than the manifestation in them of the grace by which God makes them sharers in his own communion, which is his eternal life" (para 13). An additive ecclesiology could easily fall into forms of "reductionism" which would be contrary to the full communion established "through the acceptance of the whole truth into which the Holy Spirit guides Christ's disciples" (para. 36)

Martyrdom as an hermeneutical key to understanding full communion in the church of Christ, churches and ecclesial communities as such, and "the communion between our communities" calls for an interpretation of the present situation which is "truly and solidly grounded in the full communion of the saints -- those who, at the end of a life faithful to grace, are in communion with Christ in glory", because "these saints come from all the churches and ecclesial communities which gave them entrance into the communion of salvation" (para. 84).