Mystici Corporis Christi 22: Pius XII on who’s a member of the Catholic Church.

few people—responding to my post about Bish­op Strick­land and whether Nan­cy Pelosi gets to call her­self a Catholic—have tried to split hairs between say­ing that Nan­cy Pelosi is “not a Catholic” and that she is “not a mem­ber of the Catholic faith.” But Alt! they cry. Strick­land is not deny­ing the indeli­ble mark of Pelosi’s bap­tism. He’s just say­ing that her man­i­fest grave sin means she’s no longer a mem­ber! One can lose their mem­ber­ship, you know, juridi­cial­ly speak­ing and all, with­out los­ing the mark of bap­tism. Peo­ple apos­ta­size, they go into schism, they pack their bags and head for the East­ern Ortho­dox Church like Rod Dreher.

Okay, well, this split­ting of hairs only gets one so far (if any­where) in excus­ing His Excel­len­cy. Nan­cy Pelosi is not under dis­ci­pline of any kind, from any eccle­si­as­ti­cal author­i­ty, that would make her “not a mem­ber.” She attends Mass. She receives Com­mu­nion. She has not joined the Pres­by­te­ri­ans, or even the staff of EWTN.

The most one can say is that she is a dis­si­dent, and no one any­where has removed her from mem­ber­ship in the Catholic Church, nor has she removed her­self. Strick­land is wrong and he knows bet­ter. (I assume he knows bet­ter, because I’m not going to bur­den him with an accu­sa­tion of igno­rance if I can mere­ly accuse him of dis­hon­esty. Occam’s Razor, you know.)

•••

In any case, I con­cede, I prob­a­bly went too far in the ear­li­er post when I said that mem­ber­ship in the Catholic Church is per­ma­nent based upon bap­tism alone. I did­n’t real­ly have any help from my inter­locu­tors in suss­ing this out, how­ev­er, for all they did was point me an irrel­e­vant text in Lumen Gen­tium 14:

This Sacred Coun­cil wish­es to turn its atten­tion first­ly to the Catholic faith­ful. …

The bonds which bind men to the Church in a vis­i­ble way are pro­fes­sion of faith, the sacra­ments, and eccle­si­as­ti­cal gov­ern­ment and com­mu­nion.

Canon 205 echoes this lan­guage:

Those bap­tized are ful­ly in the com­mu­nion of the Catholic Church on this earth who are joined with Christ in its vis­i­ble struc­ture by the bonds of the pro­fes­sion of faith, the sacra­ments, and eccle­si­as­ti­cal gov­er­nance.

Now, these texts are irrel­e­vant to the ques­tion because they are descrip­tive mere­ly of what it means to be “the Catholic faith­ful” and “ful­ly in com­mu­nion,” rather than of who can be count­ed a “mem­ber” under the juridi­cial author­i­ty of the Church. You can be unfaithful—you can be a dissident—and still be under the church’s juridi­cial author­i­ty (i.e., a mem­ber). You can—even canon lawyer Edward N. Peters agrees with this—be excom­mu­ni­cat­ed and still a mem­ber. Accord­ing to Peters, who cites a sheaf of canons:

[E]xcommunicated Catholics are still bound to attend Mass on Sun­days and holy days of oblig­a­tion (1983 CIC 1247), some­thing non-Catholics are not required to do; excom­mu­ni­cat­ed Catholics are still bound to observe the Church’s laws on mar­riage (1983 CIC 1059) some­thing non-Catholics are not required to do; and excom­mu­ni­cat­ed Catholics are still bound to con­tribute to the mate­r­i­al needs of the Church (1983 CIC 222, 1262), some­thing non-Catholics are not required to do.

(Peters even says that pro-choice politi­cians, just by virtue of being pro-choice, are nei­ther excom­mu­ni­cat­ed nor out of mem­ber­ship with the Church. So this is not at all good news for those who are try­ing to nuance Strick­land’s tweet into the eter­nal truth of Jesus Christ.

(I know there are a lot of peo­ple who, in a fit of pos­ses­sive rage, are itch­ing to kick Democ­rats out of the Church over abor­tion and sev­er them from the vine, but it does­n’t work like that.)

Lumen Gen­tium 14 and CIC 205 have sim­ply no bear­ing on the ques­tion being asked here—can a bap­tized Catholic lose his or her mem­ber­ship?

•••

And shaz­a­am! entire­ly with­out any help from any of my inter­locu­tors, but with the assis­tance of Google alone, I was direct­ed to Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encycli­cal Mys­ti­ci Cor­poris Christi (“On the Mys­ti­cal Body of Christ”). MCC 22, it turns out, does have bear­ing on the ques­tion:

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. “For in one spir­it” says the Apos­tle, “were we all bap­tized into one Body, whether Jews or Gen­tiles, whether bond or free.“As there­fore in the true Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty there is only one Body, one Spir­it, one Lord, and one Bap­tism, so there can be only one faith. And there­fore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be con­sid­ered — so the Lord com­mands — as a hea­then and a pub­li­can. It fol­lows that those who are divid­ed in faith or gov­ern­ment can­not be liv­ing in the uni­ty of such a Body, nor can they be liv­ing the life of its one Divine Spir­it.

One would have to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion in which a bap­tized Catholic—to use Dr. Peters’ word—“defects.” Giv­en a defec­tion, a bap­tized Catholic would “cease juridi­cal­ly being a Catholic.” He or she would still be “Catholic” by bap­tism, but would not be “a mem­ber.”

Of course, Nan­cy Pelosi has not defect­ed, either; she just thinks that abor­tion should be legal; so what­ev­er one can say about the per­ma­nence of “mem­ber­ship,” Bish­op Strick­land is wrong. He’s inex­clus­ably wrong.

How­ev­er. It’s impor­tant for me to be pre­cise. And giv­en this extra­or­di­nar­i­ly mean­ing­ful pars­ing of Bish­op Strick­land’s words, I’m hap­py to report he may not have been mak­ing an error about bap­tism at all. He was only mak­ing an error about Nan­cy Pelosi. Thus I am hap­py to recant my sug­ges­tion that Bish­op Strick­land is guilty of mate­r­i­al heresy and say that he’s guilty instead of mere error.

Mea max­i­ma cul­pa.

•••

It’s like argu­ing about what is the col­or of Bish­op Strick­land’s shit.

[Updat­ed to Add: All the above hav­ing been said, Julian Car­di­nal Her­ranz of the Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for Leg­isla­tive Texts makes clear—bar­ring a canon­i­cal­ly for­mal act of defection—that: “the sacra­men­tal bond of belong­ing to the Body of Christ that is the Church, con­ferred by the bap­tismal char­ac­ter, is an onto­log­i­cal and per­ma­nent bond which is not lost by rea­son of any act or fact of defec­tion.”]

[Update 2: Canon lawyer Pete Vere adds (this is some­one else’s para­phrase of Vere’s words): “[Grounds for defec­tion from mem­ber­ship in the Catholic Church have] to be some­thing both seri­ous and obvi­ous like attempt­ing re-bap­tism [I under­stand this to mean a bap­tized Catholic attempt­ing to be re-bap­tized in anoth­er Chris­t­ian com­mu­nion, such as a Bap­tist church that rejects infant bap­tism] or ordi­na­tion in anoth­er church [i.e., a Catholic priest gets “reor­dained” as an Angli­can], or going through the trou­ble to demand removal of one’s bap­tismal record. Appar­ent­ly it is pret­ty dif­fi­cult. It’s not just a mat­ter of some­one ceas­ing to prac­tice or not agree­ing with every­thing the Church teach­es.”]