Communion of Saints:
St. Robert Bellarmine on the Mystical Body of Christ
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Shortly after his defection from Rome, Johann Döllinger bitterly
reproached the First Vatican Council with “doing nothing but defining the private
opinions of a single man—Cardinal Robert Bellarmine.” The accusation is false
but suggestive, because it leads us to investigate the teaching of St. Robert
on the organization of the Catholic Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. Most
of the Council’s business had to deal with the origin and nature of the one
true Church. Moreover, Bellarmine’s ecclesiology was the main source from which
the Fathers of the Council drew their decrees and definitions. Consequently,
with the current interest even among non-Catholics in the Church of Christ as
the Mystical Body, we should not overlook what St. Robert Bellarmine has to
say about a subject in which the Church herself considers him the outstanding
authority.
Pope Pius XII, in his Encyclical
Mystici Corporis, confirms this authority when he quotes St. Robert
to support his explanation of why the social Body of the Church should be honored
with the name of Christ. “As Bellarmine notes with acumen and accuracy,” the
Pope says, “this naming of the Body of Christ is not to be explained solely
by the fact that Christ must be called the Head of His Mystical Body, but also
by the fact that He so sustains the Church, and so in a sense lives in the Church,
that it is, as it were, another Christ.” 1 So much for an apologetic of Bellarmine’s
qualifications. What follows is a synthesis of his doctrine on the Mystical
Body taken from his sermons and controversies, which, it is hoped, will help
to amplify several points of detail which the Mystici Corporis
only suggests but otherwise does not develop or dwell upon.
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 form 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.” 4
Membership in The Mystical Body
In general, however, when Bellarmine speaks of the Mystical Body, he has in
mind only the first of its three branches, the Church Militant—or, in other
words, the visible organization of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, in treating
the delicate question of occult infidels, he refutes the doctrine of Calvin
who held that, if a baptized person has lost the virtue of faith, in spite of
his external profession of belief and conformity with Christian practice he
is no longer a member of the organic Body of Christ. “It is certainly true,”
he admits, “that a sincere faith and not its mere external profession is required
if we are to be internally united to the Body of Christ, which is the Church
…. But even the man who makes only an outward profession along with the
rest of the faithful is a true member, albeit a dry and dead member, of the
Body of the Church.” 5 It follows, therefore, that the Mystical Body of Christ
is the Roman Catholic Church, whose members are all those who have been baptized
and who at least externally practice and profess the true faith. Commentators
on the Mystici Corporis make special note of the fact that, after
centuries of controversy on the subject, the Pope has authoritatively approved
Bellarmine’s doctrine on the minimum essentials for membership in the Mystical
Body—which reads like a paraphrase from the third book of St. Robert’s De
Conciliis. In the words of Pope Pius XII, “only those are really to
be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the
true faith and have not unhappily withdrawn from Body-unity, or for grave faults
been excluded by legitimate authority. For in one Spirit were we all baptized
into one Body.” 6
Sinners as Members of The Mystical Body
John Wyclif, and after him the Protestants in general, allowed that all the
justified in the state of grace, and only they, are members of the Mystical
Body. Even Catholic theologians like de Soto and Cano, when they came to
explain how sinners are members of the Body of Christ, gave them analogous
membership and nothing more. They admitted that baptized persons in the
state of sin may be called “the faithful” and “Christians,” but only in
the sense that they are somehow externally attached to the Body of the Church.
“Not only the organs and limbs,” they argued, “but also bodily secretions,
the teeth, the hair, and such like, all belong to the body.” Bellarmine
refused to accept this view. “If what they say is true, the consequences
are impossible. A wicked Pope then is not the Head of the Church, and other
bishops, if they are in sin, are also not heads of their respective churches.
For the head is not a bodily secretion or the hair, but a member of the
body—indeed, its most important member.”
“To solve the difficulty, therefore,
we have to distinguish two senses in which a member of the body may be understood.
It may be taken in the strict sense to designate the member in itself, in its
essence and substance as a member. Or it may mean a member of the body in its
capacity as a medium of activity through which the body operates. Thus, for
example, the eye of a man and the eye of a horse are specifically different
as substances or entities because they are radicated specially different souls.
But as kinetic instruments they are specifically the same because both have
the same end and object of their operation—both being directed to the sensible
perception of color.
“An evil bishop, a bad priest, a
layman in grievous sin are dead members of the Body of Christ, and therefore
not true members, if we understand ‘member’ in the strict sense of an integral
part of a living body. However, these same ‘dead members’ are very vital members
if we consider them as instruments of activity within the Church. So that the
Pope and bishops are real heads, the teachers and preachers are real eyes and
tongues of the Body of Christ, even when they have fallen from the grace of
God. For while it is true that a Christian becomes a living member of this Body
through charity, yet in the Providence of God the instruments of operation in
the Church are constituted by the power of orders and jurisdiction, which can
be obtained and exercised even by a man who is personally an enemy of God.
“Hence the great difference between
a physical body, in which a dead member cannot serve as a vital instrument,
and the supernatural Mystical Body, where this is not only possible but actually
happens. To explain the paradox we should recall that in natural bodies their
work depends entirely on the health and soundness of the organs by which they
act. But the Mystical Body of Christ can operate independently of the virtue
and vitality of its members, because the soul of this Body, which is the Holy
Spirit, can function equally through good instruments as through bad, through
instruments that are alive as through those which are dead.” 7
The Functions and Parts of The Mystical Body
For seven years, starting in 1568, Bellarmine taught theology at Louvain, where
he met and successfully routed Michael de Bay, father of Baianism and author
of the pernicious theory that man can live the life of friendship with God even
before Baptism and without the remission of sins. During this time he also preached
every week at the Cathedral to a mixed congregation of Catholics and non-Catholics,
some of whom came all the way from Elizabethan England just to hear him speak.
About a hundred of these discourses have come down to us, among them a panegyric
on Our Lady, given on the Feast of her Nativity, in which the Saint recalled
that this was the anniversary of another sermon preached not far away by Martin
Luther, when he blasphemously attacked the sanctity of the Mother of God, telling
his audience that: “She has no more intercessory power with God than you or
I, because she is no more holy than we.”
Bellarmine launched into what perhaps
the most bitter attack on any opponent that can be found in all his extant writings.
Best of all, though, is the occasion which this defense of Mary’s sanctity gave
him to reveal her transcendent position in the Mystical Body of her Divine Son.
“The Church,” he explains, “is a
most beautifully organized and stately Body of which Christ, the God-man, is
the Head. ‘For the Lord hath made Him Head over all the Church,’ as the Apostle
says. What is the Head? It is the principle and governing force of the Body.
Christ is, therefore, the Head because, as He tells us, ‘I am the principle
who speak with you.’ In what way is the head superior to the other members of
the body? In this that, while the rest of the body is possessed of only one
bodily sense and that the most ignoble, the head is gifted with all the senses,
including the sense of touch. Christ is, therefore, the Head in whom are the
eyes of His providence, by which He watches over us; the ears of His mercy,
by which He listens to our prayers; the nostrils of His justice, by which after
death He will separate the good from the wicked and who have lived among us;
and the palate of experience, by which He tries the virtue and fidelity of the
least and the greatest of us.
‘What is the special function of
the head? To give sense and movement to the other members. So, Christ is the
Head because He freely gives life and movement, that is faith and charity, and
all the virtues, to the faithful members who compose His Body. And although
at times and to a limited degree He permits, or rather commits, to mere man
the function of certain senses (like the sense of sight to teachers, of speech
to preachers, of sight and smell and hearing to pastors), yet He always reserves
to Himself the faculty of giving life and motion, which is the special prerogative
of the head of every body.” 8
The Holy Spirit in The Mystical Body
Anticipating by three centuries the doctrine of the Mystici Corporis
in which Pope Pius XII attributes to the Holy Spirit the invisible principle
of life in the Mystical Body, Bellarmine declares: “The Heart, which is in the
center of the Body, and which, although itself unseen, mysteriously nourishes
the parts that are seen, is the Holy Ghost. For He is not clothed with human
flesh and thus made visible, like the Head, who is Christ our Lord. They rant,
therefore, who madly assert that Melchisedech or one of the prophets is the
Holy Spirit. No, the Spirit of Christ is not visible to human eyes, and yet
it is He who governs and feeds and keeps alive the Body of Christ, which is
the Catholic Church.” 9
Bellarmine lived in the period of
horrible transition from orthodoxy to heresy, when Calvin was teaching the people
that there is no priesthood and no hierarchy, when Luther was calling the Pope
“Antichrist” and bishops and priests “destroyers of human souls.” But if the
Church which Christ established is His Body, this Body must have shoulders,
and these shoulders, according to Bellarmine, are the Apostles, and the Roman
Pontiffs, bishops and priests who have succeeded them. “We are accustomed to
placing burdens on our shoulders,” he writes, “and so also Christ has done,
by placing the burden of the Church’s government on the shoulders of the Apostles
and their priestly successors. It follows, therefore, as the Fathers of the
Church keep reminding us, that the episcopal office is not so much a dignity
as a heavy responsibility. Hence also, the Supreme Pastor of souls, on whom
rests the heaviest burden of all, appropriately calls himself the servant of
the servants of God.” 10
There are two sorts of enemies with
whom the Church has had to contend in the course of her history: pagans and
infidels from without, and heretics from within her ranks. Against both of these
Christ has endowed His Mystical Body with adequate means of defense. Bellarmine
conceives the martyrs and teachers of the Catholic Church as the arms of the
Mystical Body. “What are the martyrs,” he asks, “but the arms of the Body of
Christ—men and women who fight with the sword of God’s word and conquer the
enemies of His name by the shedding of their blood? And not only the martyrs
but the teachers of Christ’s doctrine are the arms of His Body. Both are equally
necessary to combat the forces of evil that are aligned against the Church.
Pagans and the spirit of idolatry are met and defeated by the martyrs; heretics
and apostates by the teachers. If the most painful kind of death is martyrdom,
the most dangerous kind of life is to teach the truth. To both has Christ promised
the reward of victory, not only in heaven, but over their enemies even here
on earth.” 11
Protestant Assaults on The Practice of Celibacy
An unfamiliar side of the Protestant revolt was the disgraceful way in which
the self-appointed reformers of the Church’s morals allied themselves against
her doctrine and practice of celibacy. In a rhetorical passage of his “Babylonian
Captivity,” Luther pleaded with “the prisoners of the monastic life” to break
the chains which bound them to their monasteries and to serve Christ with the
untrammeled liberty of the children of God. If any of them still hesitated to
accept the responsibilities of marriage, he argued, let them remember that this
is only a ruse of the devil who would have them reverse the order of divine
providence and obey man rather than God.
Against this background it is easier
for us to sympathize with the strong feeling to which Bellarmine would give
expression whenever he wrote on the subject of virginity. “Virgins,” he believes,
“are the vitals of the Mystical Body, comparably close to God as the vitals
of a physical body are close to the human heart. If only the swillers, gluttons
and lechers among the heretics understood how pleasing is virginity in the eyes
of God, how ‘they follow the Lamb wherever He goes, singing a new song before
the throne which no one else can sing’ (Apoc., xiv. 3, 4)! If only they would
read the promise which the Lord had spoken through the prophet Isaias: ‘Let
not the eunuch say: “behold I am a dry tree.” For thus saith the Lord to the
eunuchs; ‘I will give to them in My house and within My walls a place and a
name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name which
shall never perish’ (Is, lvi. 3, 4). But the enemies of the Church will not
read and will not understand. If only they realized that, by forcing consecrated
virgins to marry, they are tearing at the very entrails of the Mystical Body
and robbing it of its dearest possession. If only they realized this, I say,
they would not so readily debauch the minds of the young with their devilish
doctrine about the unchristian character of celibacy.” 12
Mary’s Place in The Mystical Body
In a way, the most inspiring feature of Bellarmine’s theology of the Mystical
Body is the place which he assigns within it to the Blessed Mother of God: “The
Head of the Catholic Church is Jesus Christ, and Mary is the neck which joins
the Head to its Body.” Because she has merited so well of God by her perfect
conformity to His holy will, He has decreed that “all the gifts and all the
graces which proceed from Christ as the Head should pass through Mary to the
Body of the Church. Even the physical body has several members in its other
parts—hands, shoulders, arms and feet—but only one head and one neck. So also
the Church has many apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins, but only one
Head, the Son of God, and one bond between the Head and members, the Mother
of God. By virtue of her transcendent merits before God, the Blessed Virgin
stands closer than any other creature to the Head of the Mystical Body; it is
no exaggeration to say that she unites the Head to the Body, and that therefore
through her, before all others, flow the heavenly blessings from the Head, who
is Christ, to us who are His members.” 13
The doctrine of the Mystical Body
is anything but sterile theology. Among the practical consequences which St.
Robert derives from our incorporation in Christ is the motive which it gives
for the practice of fraternal charity. The Saints in heaven intercede for the
souls in purgatory, he says, because they are both members of the same Body.
The souls in purgatory intercede for each other because they are also members
of one Body; the Saints and poor souls intercede for us because we are one Body
with them, member of member; and we are moved to pray for each other on earth,
to ask for favors from the Saints in heaven, and to pray for the souls in purgatory
because “together with them we form one Church and one Body, united by the bond
of the same charity in the Kingdom of Christ.” 14
End notes
- Mystici Corporis,English Translation (American Press, 1943), p. 24.
- De Ecclesia Militante, lib. III, cap. 7.
- Ibid
- De Eucharistia, lib. VI, cap. 8.
- De Conciliis, lib. III, cap. 10.
- Mystici Corporis, p. 12.
- De Ecclesia Militante, lib. III, cap. 7.
- Concio xlii de Nativitate B.V.M.
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
Father John A. Hardon, S.J. is
Executive Editor of The Catholic Faith magazine.
Copyright © 2003 Inter Mirifica
|
