The Church founded by the Redeemer is one, the same for all races and all nations. Beneath her dome, as beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations and tongues; there is room for the development of every quality, advantage, task and vocation which God the Creator and Saviour has allotted to individuals as well as to ethnical communities.
The Church’s maternal heart is big enough to see in the God-appointed development of individual characteristics and gifts, more than a mere danger of divergency. She rejoices at the spiritual superiorities among individuals and nations. In their successes she sees with maternal joy and pride fruits of education and progress, which she can only bless and encourage, whenever she can conscientiously do so. But she also knows that to this freedom limits have been set by the majesty of the divine command, which founded that Church one and indivisible.
Whoever tampers with that unity and that indivisibility wrenches from the Spouse of Christ one of the diadems with which God Himself crowned her; he subjects a divine structure, which stands on eternal foundations, to criticism and to modification by architects whom the Father of Heaven never authorized to interfere. The Church, whose work lies among men and operates through men, may see her divine mission obscured by human, too human, combination, persistently growing and developing like the cockle among the wheat of the Kingdom of God. Those who know the Saviour’s words on scandal and the giver of scandals, know, too, the judgement which the Church and all her sons must pronounce on what was and what is sin. […]
Duty to square one’s conduct with Divine and Church Law
In Our Encyclical on the priesthood and on that of Catholic Action, We have urged attention to the sacred duty of all those who belong to the Church, chiefly the members of the priestly and religious profession and of the lay apostolate, to square their faith and their conduct with the claims of the law of God and of the Church. And today we again repeat with all the insistency We can command: it is not enough to be a member of the Church of Christ, one needs to be a living member, in spirit and in truth, namely, living in the state of grace and in the presence of God, either in innocence or in sincere repentance.
If the Apostle of the nations, the vase of election, chastised his body and brought it into subjection: lest perhaps, when he had preached to others, he himself should become a castaway (1 Cor 9:27), could anybody responsible for the extension of the Kingdom of God claim any other method but personal sanctification?
Only thus can we show to the present generation, and to the critics of the Church that “the salt of the earth,” the leaven of Christianity has not decayed, but is ready to give the men of today – prisoners of doubt and error, victims of indifference, tired of their Faith and straying from God – the spiritual renewal they so much need.
Authentic reform springs from personal integrity
A Christianity that keeps a grip on itself, refuses every compromise with the world, takes the commands of God and the Church seriously, preserves its love of God and of men in all its freshness, such a Christianity can be, and will be, a model and a guide to a world which is sick unto death and clamours for directions, lest it be condemned to a catastrophe that would baffle the imagination.
Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers.
On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. […]
Exterior abandonment of the Church cannot be reconciled with interior fidelity to her
In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a chorus urging people to leave the Church. […]
If the oppressor offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: “Begone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Mt 4:10).
And turning to the Church, he shall say: “Thou, my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly promises or threats, I betray the vows of my Baptism.”
As for those who imagine that it is possible to reconcile exterior infidelity to the Church with interior fidelity to her, let them hear the warning given by Our Lord: “He that shall deny Me before men shall be denied before the Angels of God” (Lk 12:9). ◊
Excerpts from: PIUS XI.
Mit Brennender Sorge, 14/3/1937
