Chapter Four — What Your Own Church Says (1 of 2)

What these traditions say about a church's faults is about ordinary faults. None of it is about abuse. If that is your church, go to Chapter Two.

Christians do not all see leaving a church the same way. Before you decide anything, you should know where your own tradition stands.

A Catholic who leaves the Catholic Church, a Baptist who moves to another Baptist church across town, and a Presbyterian who joins an Anglican parish are not doing the same thing. Their own churches would tell them so.

This chapter lets each tradition speak for itself, in its own documents or through its own teachers. It does not rank them. It does not say which is right. The book has convictions of its own, as you know by now, but this chapter is not the place for them. Each quotation comes with a word about what its writer was addressing, so it is not made to say more than it says.

The ancient warning. The oldest strong words on this subject come from Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in North Africa, around AD 251. His church was being torn by rival factions setting up rival bishops and rival altars.

In his treatise On the Unity of the Church he wrote: "He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother." He compared the church to the seamless robe of Christ, which the soldiers would not tear.

Cyprian was writing against people who founded rival churches. He was not writing about a believer who moves across town, and not about anyone fleeing harm. Still, it is the oldest strong word on the subject, and every reader should know it.

Catholic. The Catholic Church teaches that the one Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church (Catechism, paragraph 816), and that leaving it is a grave matter. Its Catechism defines schism as "the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him" (paragraph 2089).

It speaks with humility about how the great divisions came: "large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church—for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (paragraph 817).

Of Christians born into other communities it says that "one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities ... and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers" (paragraph 818). It holds that "many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church," and that Christ's Spirit uses other churches and communities, "whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church" (paragraph 819).

And quoting the Second Vatican Council, it teaches that "they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it" (paragraph 846).

The word that carries the weight in that sentence is knowing. The very next paragraph says: "This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church" (paragraph 847).

What this means for a Catholic reader: your Church does not see leaving it as moving from one church to another. It sees it as leaving the fullness of the Church, and it calls that grave. That gentle word about Christians born outside it is not spoken to a Catholic who leaves.

But changing parishes is an ordinary thing for a Catholic, and it is not leaving the Church; Part Three of this book is written for that. If you are thinking of leaving the Catholic Church itself, speak with a priest before you decide, and ask him to explain paragraphs 846 and 847 to you. If a priest harmed you, or protected the one who did, you do not owe him that conversation. Find another priest, and see Chapter Two.

Orthodox. The Orthodox Church understands itself as the one Church of Christ, which cannot be divided. A teaching series published by the Orthodox Church in America says it simply: "The Church is one because God is one, and because Christ and the Holy Spirit are one." People "may be in it or out of it, but they may not divide it." The same text says that believers "may fall away and be separated from the Church."

In this view there are not many churches to choose among. There is one, and a person is either within it or has gone out from it.

What this means for an Orthodox reader: your Church does not see itself as one choice among many. It is where the bishop is and the Eucharist is given, and to leave it is to leave that communion. Moving between parishes, or between canonical jurisdictions in communion with one another, is not leaving the Church.

If you are thinking of leaving the Church itself, speak with your priest, and ask him to tell you plainly what your Church holds. If a priest harmed you, or protected the one who did, you do not owe him that conversation. Go to another priest, or to the bishop, and see Chapter Two.

Lutheran. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 defines the Church by what happens in it: "The Church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered." It adds that "for the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments."

It is frank about the mixture: "many hypocrites and evil persons are mingled within them in this life," and the Word and the Sacraments are still effective "even if they are administered by evil men" (Articles VII and VIII, Concordia translation).

What this means for a Lutheran reader: your Confession tells you to look first at what is preached, and what is given at the altar and the font. The faults of the people around you, even of the pastor, do not by themselves undo a church where the gospel is taught and the sacraments are given. Abuse is not one of those faults. No confession quoted here asks you to stay under it.

Reformed and Presbyterian. John Calvin gave a whole chapter of his Institutes to this question, and he titled it the duty of "cultivating unity" with the true Church, "as the mother of all the godly." Wherever the word of God is "sincerely preached and heard" and the sacraments are "administered according to the institution of Christ," he wrote, "there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence" (IV.1.9).

He warned hard against leaving such a church over its faults: "we are not on account of every minute difference to abandon a church, provided it retain sound and unimpaired that doctrine in which the safety of piety consists, and keep the use of the sacraments instituted by the Lord" (IV.1.12). Of people who demand a perfectly pure congregation he said that "through hatred of wickedness" they "withdraw from a genuine church" (IV.1.13). He called that attitude "more the result of pride and a false idea of sanctity" (IV.1.16).

But Calvin also held the other half, in the next chapter: "The communion of the Church was not instituted to be a chain to bind us in idolatry" (IV.2.2). Where the gospel and the sacraments have been corrupted, he believed departure was right. He applied that to the Roman church of his day, which the Catholic Church rejects. This book reports both and settles neither.