Fumbling Doctrine

I enjoyed reading Father Jim McDermotts erudite and insightful piece on church doctrine in Of Many Things (9/10), despite his animosity toward one of pro sports most sacred institutions, the Green Bay Packers.

Father Jims admission that doctrinal issues are slippery and elusive things recalls the numerous fumbles of which Rex Grossman, the Chicago Bears quarterback, has been guilty in the preseason games he and the Bears managed to muddle through. Heres hoping we can all get a firmer grasp of the issue, whether it is interpreting church doctrine or hanging onto a football.

By the way, Im looking forward to Father Jims take on the New Orleans Saints and the dark night of the soul.

Stan Stoga

Clarifying the Council

In The Church of Christ and the Churches (8/27), Richard Gaillardetz correctly summarizes the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as teaching that the church of Christ continues to exist fully in the Catholic Church, and only incompletely in other churches and ecclesial communities. But he seems not to agree that there is only one subsistence of the church of Christthe Catholic Church. His article gives the impression that subsistit in was introduced to weaken the statement in a previous draft that the Catholic Church is the church of Christ.

But he omits a crucial intermediate draft, which stated simply that the church of Christ is present (adest) in the Catholic Church.

The doctrinal commission, rejecting adest, wanted to safeguard the doctrine that Christs church is completely present in the Catholic Church and nowhere else. Such was the well-known position of Sebastian Tromp, S.J., who proposed the term subsistit in. He and the members of the doctrinal Commission were well aware that the verb subsist in classical metaphysics meant full and substantial existence. The C.D.F. is therefore correct in its interpretation of the term.

Mr. Gaillardetz also assures his readers that the council was content to confine its reflections to the objective institutional integrity of the church. I do not know the basis for that interpretation. Far from being concerned only with means of sanctification, the council insisted that the church is a spiritual community vivified by the Holy Spirit, and that only the Catholic Church is in full communion with the body of Christ. To be out of communion, even partially, is no small matter.

(Cardinal) Avery Dulles, S.J.