St Thomas More: Heretics leave the unity of the Catholic Church by their own act
Those who openly reject the faith step away from the unity of the Catholic Church – St Thomas More is yet another witness to their loss of membership being a logical outcome rather than a punishment.
Vines, Broken Branches and the unity of the Church
"He shall be cast forth as a branch and shall wither."
Unity and being
In previous essays, I have explained the importance of the note of unity for identifying the true Church of Christ – and shown that Catholic theologians treat this unity as a permanent property which the Church cannot lose.
Of the four marks or notes of the Church, unity seems to be the first and most fundamental. This is because, aside from being a note of the Church, unity is a sort of condition for “being” anything at all.
As previously stated, in analogical terms, unity is an essential property for something to be what it is. Insofar as unity is reduced or lost, being itself is also reduced or lost.
To follow the analogy used by Our Lord in the same set of discourses in the Gospel of St John, and developed along these lines by St Thomas More, let us consider the example of a vine.
More stands here as an interesting witness to the at the late medieval doctrine which he had received on the matter of the Church and her membership.
As we read these texts, let’s note how consistently he distinguishes between those who leave the Church by their own act, and who are ejected by authority. Similarly, there is no sense here that heresy results in a man leaving the Church only once it has been recognised by authority.
According to St Thomas More’s witness, it is the act and state of heresy that achieve this effect by their very nature, as we shall see.
Our Lord tells us that he is the vine, and we are the branches – and that apart from him, we cannot bear any fruit, or indeed do anything. This is rightly understood in terms of the life of grace in our souls, and in the impossibility of salvation outside the Church. But let’s abstract from salvation, and consider the matter in more fundamental terms, in relation to the being of the vine.