[Question:]{.underline} Is it true to say that the Church has never sinned?
[Answer:]{.underline} This is a question of fundamental importance, for the most frequent reason given for not converting to the Catholic Church is the belief that it is in some way tarnished by the sins of its members and hierarchy. The difficult in answering it lies in the fact that the Church is not just an invisible reality, as instituted by Christ Our Lord, but made up of real men. It is consequently visible in its hierarchy, its teaching, its government, and in its members, all of whom are sinners. It does not take much knowledge of history to realize how frequently men of the Church have made erroneous decisions, bad judgments and sinful compromises with the world.
However, it is certainly true to affirm that the Church, which St. Paul affirms to be “holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph 5:27) has never sinned. Firstly, this is because sin is the act of an individual who breaks God’s law, and not of an institution, even though sins be committed in its name. However, there is a second and much more convincing reason why the man of Faith cannot admit that the Church has sinned. For although a human community, composed of men, it is as Pope Leo XIII declares “a society divine in its origin, supernatural in its end and in the means proximately adapted to the attainment of that end” (in his encyclical ‘On the Unity of the Church’, Satis cognitum). The soul of the Church is the Holy Ghost, and the life of the Church is that of divinely infused Faith, Hope and Charity, of grace, by which we share in the life of Christ.
We must consequently love and venerate the Church, Christ’s mystical body, as we do Christ Himself. As Pope Pius XII so well wrote in his 1943 encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ: “We must accustom ourselves to see Christ Himself in the Church. For it is Christ who lives in His Church, and through her teaches, governs and sanctifies”. (93) Hence the indefectibility and the infallibility of the Church, that no man can harm in any way. Men can fail and abandon the divine life and principles and sanctity of the Church, but it is not the Church that fails. All the while, Christ continues to live his supernatural life of Faith and Charity, and of the Cross in some of His members. Yet, as pure and immaculate as the Church certainly is, “Nor does it suffice to love this Mystical Body for the glory of its divine Head and for its heavenly gifts; we must love it with an effective love as it appears in this our mortal flesh - made up, that is, of weak human elements, even though at times they are little fitted to the place which they occupy in this venerable Body.” (Ib. 92).
Here we are the heart of the mystery of the Church, endowed with the divine life of Christ Himself, and yet made up of sinful, fallible, weak men. Far from being a reason to be scandalized, it is the occasion of the greatest possible wonderment, that God made man would deign to continue his admirable Incarnation in this way, being present in weak human flesh. It follows from this mystery that no man, however, high in the hierarchy, can divide, split, harm, injure the Church, and that the Church as a divine institution, can neither do wrong nor teach error. All that is truly of the Church is good, true and holy, and those things that are not good, true and holy (such as the New Mass and Ecumenism) are not of the Church at all.
Heresies and schisms, like sins of Catholics, cannot and do not harm the Church herself in any way, nor diminish her authority and credibility. They in no way belong to the Church, but entirely to fallible men, whether they be united to Her or separated from Her. It is for this reason that it is regrettable, to say the least, that Pope Benedict XVI stated in his Apostolic Constitution providing for personal Ordinariates for Anglicans that “Every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists.” Nothing could be further from the truth than this very human way of thinking. As much evil, division, harm and suffering as the false Anglican religion has brought to the world, it cannot be said to have in any way harmed the one true Church Herself. Of course, if one maintains, as does Vatican II (Lumen gentium 8), that the Church of Christs subsists within the Catholic Church, but by implicit understanding also outside of her, then the Church is no longer divine, and is greatly wounded by the schisms, heresies and sins of the baptized, and can be blamed for certain excesses done by its members, as Pope John Paul II did in his repeated apologies!
It is Pope Pius XII in the above-mentioned encyclical who states very clearly that these human faults and failings are not to be attributed to the Church: “And if at times there appears in the Church something that indicates the weakness of our human nature, it should not be attributed to her juridical constitution, but rather to that regrettable inclination to evil found in each individual, which its Divine Founder permits even at times in them most exalted members of His Mystical Body…” ( 66). It is not the Church that is at error, or that sins, or that is wounded or harmed by the sins of men, Catholics or not. It is the individuals themselves, and it is they who owe the apology, not the immaculate spouse of Christ.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.