The Catholic Counter-Reformation
The Catholic Counter-Reformation
The Protestant Reformation, including its careful distinctions between Christ’s sacrifice and ours, was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545–64). Its Session XXII (1562) focused on the sacrifice of the mass.
Inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who once offered himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, the holy council teaches that this is truly propitiatory....For, appeased by this sacrifice, the Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence, and pardons even the gravest crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross, the manner alone of the offering being different.19
If anyone says that in the mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God,... let him be anathema. (Canon 1)
If anyone says that by those words Do this for a commemoration of me Christ did not institute the Apostles priests, or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer his own body and blood, let him be anathema. (Canon 2)
If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving; or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one, let him be anathema. (Canon 3)
The Canons of the Council of Trent remain in force as part of the Roman Catholic Church’s official teaching. Their substance has been confirmed within the last century, for example, in two papal encyclicals. Pius XI in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii (1935) described the mass as being in itself ‘a real sacrifice...which has a real efficacy’. Moreover, ‘the ineffable greatness of the human priest stands forth in all its splendour’, because he ‘has power over the very body of Jesus Christ’. He first ‘makes it present upon our altars’ and next ‘in the name of Christ himself he offers it a victim infinitely pleasing to the Divine Majesty’ (pp.8–9). In Mediator Dei (1947) Pius XII affirmed that the eucharistic sacrifice ‘represents’, ‘re-enacts’, ‘renews’ and ‘shows forth’ the sacrifice of the cross. At the same time he described it as being itself ‘truly and properly the offering of a sacrifice’ (para. 72), and said that ‘on our altars he (Christ) offers himself daily for our redemption’ (para. 77). He added that the mass ‘in no way derogates from the dignity of the sacrifice of the cross’, since it is ‘a reminder to us that there is no salvation but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (para. 83). But in spite of this claim, to call the Eucharist in the same paragraph ‘the daily immolation’ of Christ inevitably detracts from the historical finality and eternal sufficiency of the cross.
There are three particularly obnoxious elements in these statements of the Council of Trent and subsequent papal encyclicals, which need to be clarified. The implications are that the sacrifice of the mass, being a daily though unbloody immolation of Christ, (1) is distinct from his ‘bloody’ sacrifice on the cross, and supplementary to it, (2) is made by human priests and (3) is ‘truly propitiatory’. By contrast the Reformers insisted, as we must, that the sacrifice of Christ (1) took place once for all on the cross (so that it cannot be re-enacted or supplemented in any way), (2) was made by himself (so that human beings cannot make it or share in making it), and (3) was a perfect satisfaction for sin (so that any mention of additional propitiatory sacrifices is gravely derogatory to it).
Theologians of the Catholic tradition in more recent times, however, together with some scholars of other traditions, have proposed a variety of more moderate positions. While wishing to retain a concept of eucharistic sacrifice which links our sacrifice to Christ’s, they have at the same time denied that his unique sacrifice could in any way be repeated or supplemented, or that we can offer Christ, or that the Eucharist is propitiatory. Some make all three denials together.
Although slightly out of chronological sequence, it seems appropriate to begin with the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). On the one hand, the bishops quoted and endorsed the findings of the Council of Trent 400 years previously, for instance that Christ ‘is present in the sacrifice of the mass,...“the same one now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross” ’.20 Crude statements also appear, as when priests are told to instruct the faithful ‘to offer to God the Father the divine victim in the sacrifice of the mass’.21 On the other hand, there are two new emphases, first that the Eucharist is not a repetition but a perpetuation of the cross, and secondly that the eucharistic offering is made not by priests but by Christ and his whole people together. For example, Christ is said to have ‘instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice...in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until he should come again’.22 Then the role of priests is stated thus that, ‘acting in the person of Christ (they) join the offering of the faithful to the sacrifice of their Head. Until the coming of the Lord...they re-present and apply in the sacrifice of the mass the one sacrifice of the New Testament, namely the sacrifice of Christ offering himself once and for all to his Father as a spotless victim’.23
One senses in these statements, both in what they say and in what they leave unsaid, the struggle to get away from the crudities of Trent. Yet the two new emphases are still unacceptable, for the offering of the cross cannot be ‘perpetuated’, nor can our offering be ‘joined’ to Christ’s. The ‘Agreed Statement on the Eucharist’ produced by ARCIC (the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) seems to back away even further from Trent. The commissioners not only decline to call the Eucharist ‘propitiatory’, but insist strongly on the absolute finality of the cross: ‘Christ’s death on the cross...was the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. There can be no repetition of or addition to what was then accomplished once for all by Christ. Any attempt to express a nexus between the sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist must not obscure this fundamental fact of the Christian faith.’24