The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 by Adrian Fortescue is now in it’s fourth edition. The fourth edition came out from Ignatius Press in 2008 and is edited by Alcuin Reid. I picked up the slender volume at the bookstore the other day and was hooked after a few pages. Prior to reading this book, my feeling was that Ronald Knox in his The Belief of Catholics did the best job (as far as my knowledge of apologetic literature goes) of presenting the Catholic case vis-a-vis a moderate protestant position. Now, if I have to recommend a book to an inquiring and serious protestant, it will probably be this volume by Fortescue.

The work originated as a series of articles which appeared in The Tablet in 1919. Fortescue revised them and published them as a book in 1920. The purpose of the articles was to answer the protestants who say that the “Church” to which they owe allegiance (to which we all owe allegiance) is that Church which existed up until some time shortly after 451. Anything that was said or done by the “Catholic” guys at that date and earlier is a-okay. As a corollary, these protestants deny that the modern papacy is anything like (in the relevant Vatican I terms) the papacy at and before 451. Back then, so they claim, the pope was only one of many bishops, even though somewhat more preeminent.

Fortescue sets out to refute this position, and he does so by establishing that these four propositions were also held by Catholics prior to 451: (1) The Pope is the chief bishop, primate, and leader of the whole Church of Christ on earth; (2) He has episcopal jurisdiction over all members of the Church; (3) To be a member of the Catholic Church, a man must be in communion with the Pope; (4) The providential guidance of God will see to it that the Pope shall never commit the Church to error in any matter of religion.

Almost more interesting than the nuts and bolts of Fortescue’s evidence for those claims is the prefatory matter with which he introduces how Catholics think about these questions. He hammers home that Catholics believe in a visible unity; so really, (3) falls out from the Catholic claim that every Catholic is in communion with every other Catholic. This may strike the protestant like begging the question, but I don’t think that it is. The argument for the claim of visible unity is based on a few premises: (a) there was at some time a visible unity; (b) Christ promised that the Church would never fail; (c) the transition (apparently endorsed by the protestant) from visible unity to invisible unity counts as failing.

Fortescue also makes the point that, while he accepts the terms of the challenge - to establish the papal claims using only the evidence before 451 - these are not the terms on which any Catholic has to defend his faith. For the Catholic believes that the Church, founded by Christ, can never fail; it is the present, living reality of the Church which justifies the Catholic’s faith, not a perusal of the Scriptures or the Fathers, though such research may be a worthy endeavor.

The book is a mere 104 pages, though, and so I don’t want to take the time to dwell on some of the nice ways in which Fortescue elaborates those points. Instead, I want to draw your attention to a passage which I found particularly arresting because of the light in which it seemed to put the SSPX/FSSPX. I don’t maintain that the situations are at all precisely parallel; there were simply enough similarities to make me think twice.

In the chapter entitled “Communion with Rome”, Fortescue writes:

In [St. Cyprian's] time [d. 258], there were schismatic bishops (Novatian and Fortunatus, among others); yet the Catholic Church is not divided: she is one in the intercommunion of all her bishops. Novatian was a Roman priest in the third century, then bishop in opposition to Pope Cornelius (251-252). He had a large party in many countries, which lasted to the sixth century. The Novatianists had as much right to consider themselves a branch of the Church, out of visible communion with other branches through unfortunate misunderstandings, as have Anglicans. (Fortescue’s footnote on Novatianists: Novatian was scarcely a heretic. He was a rigorist in the matter of reconciling repentent apostates. He had many sympathizers in Gaul, Spain, Africa, Egypt, and Asia. They had a schismatic hierarchy.) St. Pacian (bishop of Barcelona, c. 360-390) does not take that view:

“Even if Novatian suffered . . . even if he was killed, yet he was not crowned. Why not? He was outside the peace of the Church, outside concord, outside that mother of whom he who is a martyr must be a part.”

Note again the “corcord” as essential; the Church is one united communion. We have quoted Optatus of Milevis already. He is a great authority on this matter, because his whole work is about the typical schism of the early Church. The idea of the unity of the Church - that schism is to be outside this unity (even if a man be baptized, even if he be no heretic), that schismatics are not members of the Church of Christ - occurs over and over again.

Interesting, no?