Fully Incorporated in the Catholic Church

Authority level: Authoritative doctrine
Theological status: Theological synthesis
GuideThe entry presents Catholic teaching together with theological explanation. The exact note of each proposition depends on the teaching act and sources cited.
Contents

Fully Incorporated in the Catholic Church describes baptized persons who possess the Spirit of Christ, accept the Church's entire visible ordering and means of salvation, and remain joined to Christ through profession of faith, sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance.

The three visible bonds

Canon 205 expresses the visible juridical side of the conciliar formula through the bonds of profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance. These are not three optional affiliations. Together they describe communion in apostolic doctrine, sacramental life, and the hierarchy governed by the successor of Peter and bishops in communion with him.[1]

Profession and sacramental life

Profession of faith means adherence to the Catholic faith, not merely use of Christian vocabulary. The sacramental bond includes Baptism as foundation and the Catholic sacramental economy toward which it tends. A person received from another Christian community is not rebaptized when prior Baptism is valid.[2]

Ecclesiastical governance

Communion with lawful pastors is constitutive rather than administrative decoration. A Catholic cannot replace communion with the Roman Pontiff and the bishops by selecting a self-appointed parallel hierarchy. Legitimate criticism of a prudential decision, however, is not automatically a rupture of governance or a canonical crime.[3]

The indispensable interior condition

Lumen gentium adds that bodily incorporation does not save a person who fails to persevere in charity and remains within the Church only in body rather than in heart. This statement concerns the necessity of grace and conversion; it does not create an invisible tribunal by which editors declare particular Catholics damned or no longer Catholic.

Full incorporation is therefore an objective ecclesial status with a moral vocation. It gives access to the fullness of the means of salvation, but does not make salvation automatic. Greater gifts bring greater responsibility, especially when a person knowingly rejects a grace received through the Church.

Reception and restoration

A validly baptized non-Catholic ordinarily enters full Catholic communion by an authorized reception that includes profession of faith and sacramental integration; a Catholic who ruptured communion may be reconciled according to the applicable doctrinal, sacramental, and canonical norms. Neither case should be described as another Baptism.[4]

References

  1. 1.Code of Canon Law, canons 204–207 — Binding Latin law on baptismal incorporation, the Christian faithful, full communion, catechumens, and states of life in the Church
  2. 2.Unitatis redintegratio — Vatican II's decree on ecumenism, including the hierarchy of truths and the disciplined pursuit of Christian unity
  3. 3.Lumen gentium — Vatican II's dogmatic constitution on ecclesial communion, the episcopal college, hierarchical communion, and canonical mission
  4. 4.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 748–975 — The authoritative catechetical synthesis of the mystery, marks, membership, structure, communion, and saving mission of the Church