Quaeritur: 'Invisible' Membership in the Church?

Quaeritur: 'Invisible' Membership in the Church?

Quaeritur: Reading more of Fenton's writings, I am becoming slightly confused... In several places he emphatically shows that the Church is a visible society, and that there is not an invisible Church, and thus that membership in the Church means something visible, and not invisible. 

And yet, he also states that the Catholic dogma is not that one must be a member in order to be saved, only that one must be in some way within the Church; and that it is possible to be within the Church without actually being a member, if one has an implicit desire (hence baptism by desire or by blood). 

My question is this: how can we say that even implicit desire makes one within the Church if the Church is a visible society? If you can be in the Church by some way other than visible membership, doesn't it follow that one can be in the Church invisibly?

I'm having a hard time seeing how Fenton doesn't contradict himself.

For example, these two articles: here and here. 

Respondeo: The Church, in addition to being the Mystical Body of Christ, which is primarily a supernatural, invisible reality, is also and secondarily a visible society, with a visible structure and hierarchy, visible worship, etc. And hence those of us who participate fully in this visible society are said to be its visible members.

Now someone who is in the state of grace and through no fault of his own is outside of its visible structure can be said to 'belong' to the Church invisibly, without being a visible member through its worship, government, etc. Being a member is much more than belonging. The latter implies somehow mystically participating in the Mystical Body of Christ (being branches of the vine), whereas the former implies also participating in the visible structure of the Church.

For example, a child who is baptized in a Protestant church is invisibly in the state of sanctifying grace and hence belongs to the Mystical Body, but does not visibly profess the Catholic faith, does not visibly attend Catholic worship, and is not part of the hierarchical and legal structure of the Church (e.g., is not bound by canon law).

I remember the pictures in the Baltimore Catechism (St. Joseph's edition): a boat with people in it (visible members) and some people out in the water hanging on to ropes attached to the boat, who are surviving thanks to the fact that they are still hanging on to the boat.   Analogously you could say that some are members of the Mystical Body, whereas others merely 'belong' to the Mystical Body (participate in its saving nature) without being members.  A picture that is really worth a thousand words.

For more on this, I recommend Fr. Romanus' three-part article on Church membership, which goes more technically into the relevant distinctions as presented by the majority of the Church's classical theologians.

Continence and Incontinence, A Handy-Dandy Table

Continence and Incontinence, A Handy-Dandy Table

The other day in my philosophical psychology course I was teaching my students the differences and mutual relations between (a) sense appetite, (b) the practical intellect, and (c) the will or rational appetite.  I brought up Aquinas' understanding of Aristotle's concept of continence (enkrateia) and incontinence (akrasia) from his Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book 7, which I think illustrates well these differences and relations.  When the question came up of what exactly is the difference between the virtuous man, the continent man, the incontinent man, and the vicious man, I felt suddenly illuminated and saw myself come up with this nice, clean chart which illustrates the differences.  The ensuing discussion was quite interesting.

The three columns state whether each of the four characters (virtuous, continent, incontinent, and vicious) is inclined towards good (G) or evil (E) by the sense appetite (SA), the intellect or practical reason ('R' is for rational, and 'C' is for cognitive), and the will ('R' is for rational, and 'A' is for appetitive).  So the chart says that the virtuous man is inclined towards good both by his sense appetite and by his (practical) reason, and that he actually chooses good with his will.  The continent man is like the virtuous man, except his sense appetite does not incline him towards the good that he knows and chooses, so there is a certain tension within him: he acts against his sense appetite.  The incontinent man, like the continent man, is inclined towards evil by his sense appetite and yet is capable of knowing the good that he ought to do through practical reason, but unlike the continent man, he chooses evil.  Finally, the vicious man is inclined towards evil, rationalizes his evildoing through practical reason, and chooses evil--in at least one respect he is like the virtuous man, namely, in that there is a certain harmony among his powers, albeit a perverse one.

This may be a somewhat simplistic view of Aquinas' doctrine, but I think it captures the basics pretty well.

Quaeritur: Petitionary Prayer and the Immutability of Divine Knowing and Willing

Quaeritur: Petitionary Prayer and the Immutability of Divine Knowing and Willing

Quaeritur: If God's knowledge and will are immutable, unchanging, then why pray for things, if God has already decided what He will do, and knows infallibly what will occur? In other words, if He has already eternally decided that x will happen and infallibly knows it will happen, what's the point of praying for y to happen if it won't happen, and what's the point of praying for x to happen--if it will happen anyway?  So what's the point of praying at all if our prayers are incapable of changing God's knowledge or will?

Respondeo: Correct.  God's intellect and will are immutable, and our prayers cannot change them.  Yet prayer is still valuable and may actually be the cause (a secondary cause, not the primary cause) of our receiving what we pray for.  God's infallible decree that something will happen may be conditional upon your praying for it.  In other words, God may infallibly decree that He will grant x to you if and only if you pray for x, and know that you will pray for x, and hence that you will get x (or that you won't pray for it and hence that you won't get it).

The reason why God would want us to pray, and especially why He would make our prayer a condition for granting what we pray for, is that prayer—as Aquinas tells us—is for our own benefit (not God's). Through it we become conscious that we need to receive benefits from Him; it is an act of religious worship (latria), whereby we become conscious of our dependence on and submission to Him. 

Consider the following texts of St. Thomas:

ST II-II.83.2: Whether it is becoming to pray?  I answer that among the ancients there was a threefold error concerning prayer. Some held that human affairs are not ruled by Divine providence; whence it would follow that it is useless to pray and to worship God at all: of these it is written (Malachi 3:14): "You have said: He laboreth in vain that serveth God." Another opinion held that all things, even in human affairs, happen of necessity, whether by reason of the unchangeableness of Divine providence, or through the compelling influence of the stars, or on account of the connection of causes: and this opinion also excluded the utility of prayer. There was a third opinion of those who held that human affairs are indeed ruled by Divine providence, and that they do not happen of necessity; yet they deemed the disposition of Divine providence to be changeable, and that it is changed by prayers and other things pertaining to the worship of God. All these opinions were disproved (in ST I.19.7-8, I.22.2-4; I.115.6; I.116). 

Wherefore it behooves us so to account for the utility of prayer as neither to impose necessity on human affairs subject to Divine providence, nor to imply changeableness on the part of the Divine disposition. In order to throw light on this question we must consider that Divine providence disposes not only what effects shall take place, but also from what causes and in what order these effects shall proceed. Now among other causes human acts are the causes of certain effects. Wherefore it must be that men do certain actions, not that thereby they may change the Divine disposition, but that by those actions they may achieve certain effects according to the order of the Divine disposition: and the same is to be said of natural causes. And so is it with regard to prayer. For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers; in other words "that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give," as Gregory says (Dial. i, 8)

To the first it must be said that we need to pray to God, not in order to make known to Him our needs or desires but that we ourselves may be reminded of the necessity of having recourse to God's help in these matters.

SCG I.119: That the immutability of divine providence does not suppress the value of prayer.  

[1] We should also keep in mind the fact that, just as the immutability of providence does not impose necessity on things that are foreseen, so also it does not suppress the value of prayer. For prayer is not established for the purpose of changing the eternal disposition of providence, since this is impossible, but so that a person may obtain from God the object which he desires. 

[2] Indeed, it is appropriate for God to consent to the holy desires of a rational creature, not in the sense that our desires may move the immutable God, but that He, in His goodness, takes steps to accomplish these desired effects in a fitting way. For, since all things naturally desire the good, as we proved above, and since it pertains to the supereminence of divine goodness to assign being, and well-being, to all in accord with a definite order, the result is that, in accord with His goodness, He fulfills the holy desires which are brought to completion by means of prayer.