Roman Church = Church Of God

[mortify]

[color="#0000FF"][i][b][size="3"]"If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ - which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and [color="#FF0000"]Roman Church[/color] - we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Christ"[/size][/b][/i][/color]

[b]Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, section 13. 1943[/b]


The Holy Father defined the true Church as Roman to refute the "branch theory" proposed by Anglicans.

[i][b]Branch Theory:[/b]
The position held by some Anglo-Catholics that the one true Church of Christ is made up of three separate churches, the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox. It assumes that episcopal and priestly orders, validly transmitted, are found only in these three churches. While admitting that these bodies differ widely in many ways, the branch theory holds that they are united in essentials. They are out growths, it is said, from a single ecclesiastical trunk, the original Church founded by Christ.[/i]


[i][b][size="3"]"If the Church is a body, it must be an [color="#FF0000"]unbroken unity[/color], according to those words of Paul: "Though many we are one body in Christ." [...] [color="#FF0000"]Hence they err[/color] in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely "pneumatological" as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are untied by an invisible bond.[/size][/b][/i]

The Mystical Body of Christ resides in *one* *visible* Body. It is not shared among numerous ecclesial [i]bodies[/i] with vastly divergent and mutually contradicting theologies. Thus, salvation can only be gauranteed in the one true Church:


[i][b][size="3"]"As you know, Venerable Brethren, from the very beginning of Our Pontificate, We have committed to the protection and guidance of heaven those who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church, solemnly declaring that after the example of the Good Shepherd We desire nothing more ardently than that they may have life and have it more abundantly.[194] Imploring the prayers of the whole Church We wish to repeat this solemn declaration in this Encyclical Letter in which We have proclaimed the praises of the "great and glorious Body of Christ"[195] and from a heart overflowing with love We ask each and every one of them to correspond to the interior movements of grace, and to seek to withdraw from that state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation.[196] [color="#FF0000"]For even though by an unconscious desire and longing they have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they [u]still[/u] remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church."[/color][/size][/b][/i]


And now the ecumenism which has conversion as its end:


[i][b][size="3"]"[color="#FF0000"]Therefore may they enter [u]into[/u] Catholic unity and, joined with Us in the one, organic Body of Jesus Christ[/color], may they together with us run on to the one Head in the Society of glorious love.[197] Persevering in prayer to the Spirit of love and truth, We wait for them with open and outstretched arms to come not to a stranger's house, but to their own, their father's home."[/size][/b][/i]

Notice that unity is found *in* the one true Church, and is not something that is being developed *between* ecclesial communities and the Church.


All that the Pope has said is consistent with what Catholics have always believed, that there is one true visible Church, he merely identified this Church as the One resting on the faith and person of St Peter.

[KeenanParkerII]

I think we're going to be very good friends.

[organwerke]

A beautiful document, as all by Pope Pius XII.