The Church of Christ subsistit in the Catholic Church (Lumen Gentium 8)

Abstract

The anomaly of divisions among Christian lies in the fact that Christian communities (churches and ecclesial communities) separated from the institutional Catholic Church yet form part of the single sacramentality of Christ’s Church. As diverse religious institutions, such churches and ecclesial communities lie outside the Catholic Church, but their saving sacramentality remains that of the single subject in which Christ’s Church persists from the beginning. Wherever there is ecclesiality, there is participated mediation in the subsistence of the Church which occurs only in the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council affirms that the Church founded by Christ as a visible institution subsists in the Catholic Church in a way that is proper and unique, that is to say full, and that separated churches and communities participate in that full ecclesiality. The idea of participation as applied to Ecclesiology is therefore important.