In praying for the return of the schismatics to Church unity under the pope, I thought, by way of contrast, to clarify my own mind on two issues that, as I see it, have no basis being controversial at all.
The sin of schism is a sin against charity, a rupture of the bond of charity, a grave offense against the Holy Ghost.
As I was reading a book on the Roman Latin Mass, published in 1911, I learned that the issue of the moment of consecration (transubstantiation as it is termed with the aid of perennial philosophy) was never contested until after the schism of the Greeks in the eleventh century. Before then, whatever the Rite, the liturgy was taken integrally, as a whole, as an offering of worship and thanksgiving to God, a propitiatory act of unbloody divine sacrifice, and a sacramental Communion. In a real sense, the Mass was an act that transcended time, because the Victim was the Eternal Son of God. At least from the Offertory to the Communion the liturgy was one act, not meant to be divided up.
The Greek schism having been healed at the Council of Florence in 1441, the reconciled bishops returned home, but they soon caved in under the pressure of the rebellious monks who, after 1054, seem to have habitually fostered schism in the eastern Church.
I wish only to address two issues, not from any scholarly angle, but simply from a theological perspective that is, I hope, easily understandable.
The Consecration Issue
The Orthodox Church maintains that the consecration of bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the liturgy does not take place until the invocation for the blessing of the Holy Spirit (the Epiclesis) which takes place after the Eucharistic “Words of Institution” are uttered (the Consecration, in our Roman Canon).
Of course this opinion is total foreign to the West. I find it not only theologically erroneous, but compromising of the sacrificial nature of the holy liturgy. It is just as erroneous as the Orthodox (and some Catholic Eastern Rite faithful) insistence that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone, not from the Father and the Son as One.
One does not have to be a doctor of theology to see the obvious problem in both of these errors.
If there is no substantial change of the elements of bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord at the priest’s utterance of the Savior’s words at the Last Supper during the liturgy, then the solemn utterance of the words “This is My Body” and “This is the Chalice of My Blood” must be a mere narration, not a consecrating Action. The priest would not be speaking in the Person of Christ at this most holy of moments. He would only be relating the text as a narrative, as if he were reading the Gospel. There would be no sacrifice at this moment, that is, not until the Epiclesis is prayed afterwards.
It is Jesus Christ Himself, Personally, who effects the transformation of the elements as He acts through His priest; just as it was Jesus Himself who did the same at the First Mass before His Passion. On the other hand, the Church appropriates the Incarnation to the work of the Holy Ghost whose overshadowing of the Blessed Virgin Mary brought about the Conception of the God-Man. The sacrifice of the Mass, however, is the work of the God-Man, as was the Redemption.
That is why, in the Latin Rite, at least after the eleventh century, the priest elevates the Host for adoration. This rubric of elevation was incorporated into the Mass as a refutation of a peculiar heresy that held that the change of the element of bread into the Body of Christ (transubstantiation) did not occur until after the consecration of the wine. In order to show that the wine is also changed into the Body of the Resurrected Christ, the Latin rubrics have the chalice also elevated for adoration of the faithful.
The Filioque Controversy
Regarding the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, and not the Father and the Son as One Principle, this error would be tantamount to holding that the Paraclete is also generated like the Son. (I prescind from the heresy of Eusebius of Nicomedia and other semi-Arians which subordinated the Son to the Father and the Holy Ghost to the Son and also that of the Modalism of Sabellius who denied the distinction of Persons in God.)
The Son proceeds from the Father by an act of the Divine Intellect, as a Person, hence He is the Word of God. The Son’s procession is therefore called a “Generation,” not that He comes forth as an outward production, for in God’s Inner Trinitarian Life all is One and Eternally within. The Son is Eternally Begotten, the Only-Begotten of the Father. The Word is Conceived in God as in Generation.
The Holy Spirit, however, proceeds from an Act of Divine Love, breathed within the Divine Will. Our human created will is made to move toward an object of desire. In God, the Will moves from the Lover to the Beloved, not as a movement of before and after (for there is nothing of any change whatsoever in God), but as One Eternal Act. If the Holy Ghost is Infinite and Eternal Love then He is the Love of the Father for the Son, as a Person, and the Love of the Son for the Father, Their mutual Love spirating the Third Divine Person as from One Principle. Therefore, the Act of Love, in God, requires Two (the Lover and the Beloved, so to speak), whereas Generation requires One, the First Principle of Generation, the Begetter. (See Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I, Q 27)
These considerations do not pretend to make the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity less of a Mystery. For the Mystery of the Trinity is beyond human reason. It is an object of Faith. When we speak of the Intellect and Will in God we do so for human purposes analogically, to teach a doctrine, for, in God, Intellect and Will are not two faculties. They are not faculties at all. For in God, knowing and Loving are His essence, indeed His very Being. God is Truth. God is Love. Love and Truth are One in God.
When the Council of Nicaea defined in its Creed that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, the fathers were not denying that the Spirit also proceeds from the Son, not distinctly from the Son, but as One with the Father. Hence Our Lord said: “But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me” (John 15:26, my italic). And again: “What things soever he [the Spirit] shall hear, he shall speak; …he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine.” (John 16:13-15)
The controversy of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son (the Filioque controversy) was not a controversy at all in the early Church. It did not become a major issue until the beginning of the ninth century when it was first denied by Greek monks in Jerusalem who objected to Latin Benedictines including it in their singing of the Nicene Creed. After the schism of Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the late ninth century, and Michael Caerularius in the eleventh, the Greeks considered the Filioque a heresy. Three ecumenical councils, Fourth Lateran (1215), Second Lyons (1274), and Florence (which last two named synods received the eastern schismatics back into the unity of the Church [1438-1445]), all declared the Filioque to be a dogma of Faith. In the early ninth century, the Latin Church in France recited the Nicene Creed with the addition of the Filioque (although Pope Leo III, who had no problem with its orthodoxy, insisted it be dropped from the Creed for unity sake in 810), but it was not until the early eleventh century that Rome officially accepted it in the Roman liturgy. It must be affirmed, however, that the doctrine of the Filioque, in one form or another, was commonly used by the fathers of the Church, who more often expressed it in terms of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father “through the Son.”
In conclusion let us make note of the Catholic Encyclopedia’s scriptural annotation: “As to the Sacred Scripture, the inspired writers call the Holy Ghost the Spirit of the Son (Galatians 4:6), the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9), the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:19), just as they call Him the Spirit of the Father (Matthew 10:20) and the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:11). Hence they attribute to the Holy Ghost the same relation to the Son as to the Father.”
