For the past two episodes of Reconquest, and concluding with a third, I am discussing the “Letter to the Archbishop of Boston” — known also as Suprema haec sacra and also “the Marchetti-Selvaggiani Letter.” This well known letter concerns our founder, Father Leonard Feeney, and the doctrinal controversy surrounding him and Saint Benedict Center.
The letter was completed by the Holy Office (today’s DDF) meeting in plenary session on July 27, 1949, and approved by Pope Pius XII the following day. It was “given” — i.e., signed, dated, and sent to Archbishop Cushing — on August 8, 1949. Only select passages in English were published soon after, on Sept. 3, 1949, in The Pilot, the Boston Archdiocesan newspaper. Just over three years after the letter was sent, the Holy Office directed Archbishop Cushing to publish the letter in its entirety, which he did on September 4, 1952, in The Pilot. The next month, October 1952, the letter was published (in Latin and English) in Vol. 122 [CXXII], No. 4, of The American Ecclesiastical Review, then under the editorship of the esteemed Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, a notable American theologian and professor at the Catholic University of America, who was previously a friend of Father Feeney’s. Because the letter was never published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (the official catalogues of acts of the Holy See), it is that edition of The American Ecclesiastical Review that is cited as the reference in Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum.1
I would argue, according to the taxonomy of magisterial interventions presently in use, that this Letter belongs to the fourth category, namely, “ordinary prudential teaching on disciplinary matters.” If someone were to assert, which I doubt, that it belongs to the third category, “ordinary teaching on faith and morals” — since it is so often cited in other magisterial interventions (including Lumen Gentium) — the argument still holds that we are not dealing with an infallible document, not one that is eo ipso infallible, though it clearly reiterates certain teachings that are infallible.
Because of this, I believe the document is subject to a respectful and constructive critique. I propose to do just that here, limiting myself only to the fourteen paragraphs (4-17) that are doctrinal in nature. We begin with paragraph four:
4. We are bound by divine and Catholic faith to believe all those things which are contained in the word of God, whether it be Scripture or Tradition, and are proposed by the Church to be believed as divinely revealed, not only through solemn judgment but also through the ordinary and universal teaching office (<Denzinger>, n. 1792).
This principle is derived from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith from Vatican I: Dei Filius. Everyone has to believe this. I would argue that the novelties in this letter are neither defined through the Church’s “solemn judgment,” nor are they taught by virtue of the “ordinary and universal” magisterium. What I stated as “already infallible,” is so by virtue of those criteria. In the context, it is clear that the author is saying that extra ecclesiam nulla salus must be believed by divine and Catholic faith, a proposition with which we wholeheartedly agree.
Concerning the next four paragraphs, I have nothing to note other than my agreement:
5. Now, among those things which the Church has always preached and will never cease to preach is contained also that infallible statement by which we are taught that there is no salvation outside the Church.
6. However, this dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For, it was not to private judgments that Our Savior gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church.
7. Now, in the first place, the Church teaches that in this matter there is question of a most strict command of Jesus Christ. For He explicitly enjoined on His apostles to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever He Himself had commanded (Matt. 28: 19-20).
8. Now, among the commandments of Christ, that one holds not the least place by which we are commanded to be incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, and to remain united to Christ and to His Vicar, through whom He Himself in a visible manner governs the Church on earth.
All true, good, and beautiful so far! The following paragraph (9) states a truism:
9. Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.
It is a truism, but an incomplete statement of the truths contained in the infallible pronouncements. This paragraph has been used to say that only those who know the Catholic Church to be the true Church are in danger of damnation if they remain outside the Church, as if the “default position” is saved and each one has to formally reject the Church while being convinced of the truth of her claims in order to jeopardize his salvation. I realize the document does not explicitly make that claim, but the idea is certainly read into the Letter by many in my decades-long experience discussing this issue with people.
Paragraph 10 is excellent:
10. Not only did the Savior command that all nations should enter the Church, but He also decreed the Church to be a means of salvation without which no one can enter the kingdom of eternal glory.
On to paragraph 11:
11. In His infinite mercy God has willed that the effects, necessary for one to be saved, of those helps to salvation which are directed toward man’s final end, not by intrinsic necessity, but only by divine institution, can also be obtained in certain circumstances when those helps are used only in desire and longing. This we see clearly stated in the Sacred Council of Trent, both in reference to the sacrament of regeneration and in reference to the sacrament of penance (<Denzinger>, nn. 797, 807).
It is true that, in Denz. 796 (sic.) the Council of Trent says that, since the promulgation of the Gospel, justification cannot be effected without the laver of regeneration [Baptism] or the desire of it. It is also true that Trent (Denz. 807) teaches that the desire for the sacrament of Penance (the so-called “perfect act of contrition”) can remit mortal sin.
Paragraph 11 draws from those truths a principle that whatever is only of “divine institution” but not of “intrinsic necessity” can have its effect by desire and longing. But the examples cited here from the Council of Trent are only two, and they concern being justified by the intention to receive Baptism and being forgiven of grave sin without reception of the sacrament of Penance by a perfect act of contrition. How universal is this principle? What are its exact limits? How does it apply, say, to the Sacrament of Holy Orders? At what point does this principle completely bypass the Incarnational dispensation of the true religion — especially when we introduce the notion of “implicit desire”? The visibility of the Church and the tangibility of the means of grace will, at some point, be jeopardized.
12. The same in its own degree must be asserted of the Church, in as far as she is the general help to salvation. Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.
Where has the Church previously taught that Church unity itself is of “divine institution,” but not of “intrinsic necessity”? If the sin of schism, which is a sin against charity, is not objectively grave, then the theological virtue of charity would not seem of itself to be of intrinsic necessity. That is an absurd conclusion, for certainly nobody can be saved without the entitative habit of sanctifying grace and its concomitant operative habit of charity (as the letter goes on to state in paragraph 17).
The same patristic tradition that made the Ark of Noah a type of the Church held up the Church as “the Ark of Salvation,” and asserted that those outside her perish as did those outside Noah’s Ark. That typology makes its way into Unam Sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII (DH 870). Saints Cyprian, Jerome, Bede, Peter Canisius, and Robert Bellarmine all employ this typology explicitly in terms of salvation, as does Saint Thomas (ST III, Q. 73, a. 3), who attributes it to I Peter 3:20, 21. Reducing the Church from “the Ark of Salvation” to a “general help to salvation” appears to be a “demotion” that both lowers her dignity and weakens her actual necessity.
13. However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.
This introduces the so-called “votum implicitum ecclesiae,” the implicit desire of the Church. This the letter seeks to justify with a specific source in the next paragraph:
14. These things are clearly taught in that dogmatic letter which was issued by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, on June 29, 1943, <On the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ> (AAS, Vol. 35, an. 1943, p. 193 ff.). For in this letter the Sovereign Pontiff clearly distinguishes between those who are actually incorporated into the Church as members, and those who are united to the Church only by desire.
We respectfully object here on factual grounds. Mystici Corporis does not actually teach what is said in paragraph 14 about “implicit desire.” This thought gets further developed in paragraph 16 after the unproblematic paragraph 15.
15. Discussing the members of which the Mystical Body is composed here on earth, the same august Pontiff says: “Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.”
16. Toward the end of this same encyclical letter, when most affectionately inviting to unity those who do not belong to the body of the Catholic Church, he mentions those who “are related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unconscious yearning and desire,” and these he by no means excludes from eternal salvation, but on the other hand states that they are in a condition “in which they cannot be sure of their salvation” since “they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church” (AAS, 1. c., p. 243). With these wise words he reproves both those who exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally well in every religion (cf. Pope Pius IX, Allocution, <Singulari quadam>, in <Denzinger>, n. 1641 ff.; also Pope Pius IX in the encyclical letter, <Quanto conficiamur moerore>, in <Denzinger>, n. 1677).
In paragraph 103, Mystici Corporis says, “…quandoquidem, etiamsi inscio quodam desiderio ac voto ad mysticum Redemptoris Corpus ordinentur, …” (“For, even though they may be disposed toward [or ordained toward, or ordered to] the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unknowing desire and resolution,. . .).” Grammatically, Ven. Pope Pius XII’s passive subjunctive is here, in the English of the Letter to the Archbishop of Boston, altered to the indicative active, which seems to assign greater salvific efficacy to this “relation” to the Church. This grammar substantially alters the Encyclical’s statement that the non-Catholics to whom the Holy Father is making this moving appeal “may be ordered to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unknowing desire and resolution” to saying that they “are related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unconscious yearning and desire.”
It is important to note that the English translation of the Letter to the Archbishop of Boston that I am using here is the official translation. So the inadequate and misleading translation was what was first communicated to the Anglosophere — concerning a matter that took place in an English-speaking country.
While the Holy Father, Pius XII, does not indeed “exclude” such people from salvation, he does not include them in salvation either (not where they presently are), but invites them warmly into the bosom of Holy Mother Church. The source, by the way, for Ven. Pius XII’s moving appeal to non-Catholics in Mystici Corporis is Blessed Pope Pius IX’s magnificent Apostolic Letter, Iam Vos Omnes, which, on the eve of Vatican I, beautifully invited non-Catholic Christians to enter the Catholic Church.2
Paragraph 16 concludes, “With these wise words he [Pope Pius XII] reproves both those who exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally well in every religion.” On factual grounds, it does not seem to us that Ven. Pope Pius XII is “reproving” anyone for rejecting the salvific efficacy of being “united to the Church only by implicit desire” since this votum implicitum doctrine is not clearly taught in Mystici Corporis, much less is its opposite censured.
Far be it from us to deny that those who are in any way “ordered to” the Church are not on a path to salvation. God’s manifold grace moves the minds and hearts of such people to enter the Church, and we believe that it pertains to God’s merciful Providence to guide them there.
17. But it must not be thought that any kind of desire of entering the Church suffices that one may be saved. It is necessary that the desire by which one is related to the Church be animated by perfect charity. Nor can an implicit desire produce its effect, unless a person has supernatural faith: “For he who comes to God must believe that God exists and is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6). The Council of Trent declares (Session VI, chap. 8): “Faith is the beginning of man’s salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God and attain to the fellowship of His children” (Denzinger, n. 801).
This is good. The mention of “perfect charity” is evidently a reference to that supernatural motion of efficacious actual grace that we call a “perfect act of contrition.” I say this because, for contrition to be perfect — i.e., sufficient to translate one from the state of original sin (or mortal sin only) into the state of justification — it must be motivated by the supernatural love of God, or charity. Such a grace would fall under Saint Thomas’ distinction of “cooperating grace,” that grace whereby, “our mind both moves and is moved” and in which “the operation is not only attributed to God, but also to the soul.”
But supernatural charity is not possible without supernatural faith. Hence, paragraph 17 adds, “Nor can an implicit desire produce its effect, unless a person has supernatural faith.” This certainly shows that knowledge of the natural law alone is not sufficient for salvation.
The citation of Hebrews 11:6 invokes a much larger debate in theological circles. Some hold that only belief in God’s existence and His being a remunerator (rewarder) is sufficient for supernatural faith. But others, keeping to the older tradition, believe that explicit faith in Jesus Christ and the Trinity are also necessary. Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton made it clear that he thought the Letter to the Archbishop of Boston implied that explicit faith in the Trinity and in Christ were necessary for salvation because that is the doctrine of the Council of Trent, which this letter explicitly references without quoting it (cf. “Salvation and the Church: Feeney, Fenton and the Making of Lumen Gentium,” by Geertjan Zuijdwegt, pg. 159-160).
The Church does not teach that ignorance is a sacrament or an alternative to faith. While ignorance can mitigate guilt, it does not supply for supernatural faith (neither, of course, does it incorporate one into the Church). Here is Saint Thomas on the necessity of believing explicitly in Jesus Christ:
Is It Necessary to Believe Explicitly?
Difficulties: It seems that it is not, for 1. We should not posit any proposition from which an untenable conclusion follows. But, if we claim that explicit Faith is necessary for salvation, an untenable conclusion follows. For it is possible for someone to be brought up in the forest or among wolves, and such a one cannot have explicit knowledge of any matter of Faith. Thus, there will be a man who will inevitably be damned. But this is untenable. Hence, explicit belief in something does not seem necessary…
Answer to Difficulty No.1:
Granted that everyone is bound to believe something explicitly, no untenable conclusion follows if someone is brought up in the forest or among wild beasts. For it pertains to Divine Providence to furnish everyone with what is necessary for salvation, provided that on his part there is no hindrance. Thus, if someone so brought up followed the direction of natural reason in seeking good and avoiding evil, we must most certainly hold that God would either reveal to him through internal inspiration what had to be believed, or would send some preacher of the Faith to him as He sent Peter to Cornelius (Acts 10:20). (The Disputed Questions on Truth, translated by Fr. James V. McGlynn, S.J., II Q. 14, 2.2, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1952, pp.158, 262.)
Before concluding, let me mention Brother Thomas Mary’s article we recently posted on Catholicism.org: “‘No Salvation Outside the Church’ in Vatican Council II.” In it, our deceased Brother advanced the thesis that Lumen Gentium presented the Church with “an orthodox and official interpretation of this much abused ‘Letter.'” His argument will not convince everyone, but we present it for your consideration.
This Ad Rem has already gone long. Since I must end abruptly, I will do so with a promise that this is not the last of what I am going to say about the “Letter to the Archbishop of Boston.”
— Footnotes —
2. The edition of Mystici Corporis on the Vatican’s website cites this Apostolic Letter of Blessed Pope Pius IX (cf., paragraph 103 and footnote 196).
