The moral obligation to convert to the Catholic church

Corrado Gnerre

I have heard that many Anglicans have switched to the Catholic Church. But is it right to allow this? I have always known that ecumenism requires dialogue, not conversion.

Dear …, unfortunately there can be two types of ecumenism. The “unfortunately” will be immediately clear to you.

There is the right approach to ecumenism, which is aimed at dialogue, not for the sake of dialogue itself, but to achieve unity among Christians which, inevitably, must aim at the return to the Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church, the only Church commissioned and founded by Christ.

Then there is (here is my “unfortunately”) another type of ecumenism, the one that is present today in the imagination of many faithful and also of many theologians and ecclesiastics, that is, an ecumenism that should only serve to form a sort of “super-church,” according to the well-known conviction of the so-called Ecumenical Council of Churches, established in Amsterdam in 1948. At the bottom of this type of ecumenism there is the conviction that the only true Church commissioned by Jesus, even if it existed, would not still manifest visibly. Only the numerous different churches would be visible; for which the visible unity of Christians would be achieved only thanks to the confluence of all Christian “churches” into a new visible Church, distinct but also more perfect. This is an unacceptable statement, because the only one true Church established and founded by Jesus already exists in a visible way, and it is precisely the Catholic Church.

Christian unity is to be hoped for, but it must be achieved with the due recognition of the Catholic Church by all the Christian communities and therefore of the need to return to it. It must be said that Jesus decreed and established a church that is “visible” to all until the end of the world, like the “city set on a mountain” (Matthew 5:14). Now, if this church were invisible today, it would mean that Jesus would have uttered falsehood and his mission would have failed.

It was precisely in the period in which the Ecumenical Council of Churches was about to be established – precisely in 1943 – that Pius XII wrote in the Mystici Corporis: “Are they far from truth those who imagine the Church as if it could not be reached or seen, as if it were a something ‘pneumatic’ as they say, for which many communities of Christians, although mutually separated by faith, would nevertheless be joined together by an invisible bond.”

Dear …, only the Catholic Church has historically preserved the connection with Peter over the centuries. Only the Catholic Church has preserved “One” as Jesus promised when he said: “One fold and one Shepherd” (John 10:16). Only in the Catholic Church has the same doctrine been truly preserved intact. In fact: the Orthodox Church was formed definitively in 1054, Protestantism in 1517 and Anglicanism in 1534.

We come now to the return of the Anglicans. Dear …, I would like to point out three important points.

First: Undoubtedly, what has happened is a positive fact, also because it constitutes a precedent that can open very interesting perspectives regarding the number of conversions to the Catholic Church.

Second: However, we must avoid treating this event exclusively in the light of freedom of conscience. Many, in fact, driven by hyper-ecumenical convictions (in the sense of that “incorrect” ecumenism I mentioned earlier) and forgetting the traditional doctrine that wants the Catholic Church as the only saving reality, have tried to explain what happened only by motivating as a question of freedom of conscience; neglecting, however, the moral obligation to adhere to the Catholic Church and therefore, for schismatics and heretics, to return there.

Third: We must be convinced that a choice to join the Catholic Church cannot be made legitimate only by the scandal and therefore the rejection of aberrations now frequent in the Anglican “church” such as female ordination or gay marriages, but – indeed – the recognition of Catholic truth. It is no coincidence that among the points (on some an adequate explanation would be needed to avoid misinterpretations) of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (document which regulates the return of these Anglicans) there is also adherence to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.