On the True Church of Christ: Trent Horn and Vatican II vs. Roman Catholicism

Can the Church of Christ be found also in heretical sects?

On the True Church of Christ:
Trent Horn and Vatican II vs. Roman Catholicism

On Mar. 4, 2024, the professional Novus Ordo apologist Trent Horn of Catholic Answers had a discussion with a Calvinist on his Counsel of Trent YouTube channel. Entitled “Calvinism and Catholicism”, it was a roughly 100-minute chat with the YouTuber known as ‘Redeemed Zoomer’. The video, which can be found here, has received over 192,000 views so far.

As a loyal Novus Ordo adherent, Horn of course presented the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), not the teaching of the Catholic Church during the 1,900 years before that. And the difference is striking, as we will now see.

The Church Established by Christ

The first theological question they discussed was: Which ‘One True Church’ is the One True Church? In other words, which entity claiming to be the one and only Church founded by Jesus Christ, is in fact the one He founded? For someone who considers himself to be a Roman Catholic apologist, that question should have a very clear answer: The one and only Church founded by Jesus Christ is the Roman Catholic Church. He founded it as one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.

For a Novus Ordo apologist, who of course accepts the ‘New Ecclesiology’ of Vatican II, the answer to that question is a bit more — shall we say — ‘complex’.

Horn presents the official Novus Ordo (Vatican II) position as the middle ground between two extremes — the Protestant view of the Church as a purely spiritual and invisible entity on the one end, and the opposite error (or so he thinks) of identifying Christ’s Church exclusively with the “denomination” of the Roman Catholic Church on the other.

We have taken the essential part of Horn’s answer to his Calvinist interlocutor and put it in a video clip of our own, contrasting it with the traditional Roman Catholic teaching, clearly showing the contradictions between the two positions (in case the video won’t play, it can also be accessed directly on YouTube here):

We have transcribed Horn’s words below (edited to remove the conversational fillers and to enhance clarity).

So this is how Horn describes what he believes is the Catholic position on the identity and location of the true Church founded by Jesus Christ (with the most outrageous parts underlined):

So, there’s that, but then [there’s] the other view of saying that the Church of Christ only exists in one denomination — it’s this denomination or bust. What the Catholic Church has taught, and has explicitly taught since the Second Vatican Council — it says that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. So, it’s a very particular word that’s used there. It’s not saying that the Church of Christ is identical to the Catholic Church and so the Church of Christ cannot be found anywhere else. It’s saying that the enduring historical reality — where you can find that visible enduring reality that you can locate — is within the Catholic Church, of the bishops united to the Pope; but that elements, other Christians, can have more or less of communion with the Church. So, they can have — our goal would be that all Christians have a perfect union with the Church, [but for] others it’s more or less perfect. So, for example, the Eastern Orthodox — we as Catholics would say they are other churches. We use that word because they still have valid holy orders, valid sacraments; and we would say that, I would say, other Protestant denominations are closer or further away in that communion. I would say there’s a lot of Anglicans that are still pretty close. So, I would say that, first, when we’re looking at that, you have to have that understanding that there’s going to be the Church of Christ, what it subsists in, [and] other denominations that are closer and further away….

(Trent Horn, beginning at 5:39 in video “Calvinism and Catholicism”, Mar. 4, 2024)

There is no question that Horn has explained the Vatican II doctrine correctly. The problem is not with how Horn presents the doctrine but with the doctrine itself. It’s a hopeless mishmash of truth and error that was invented at Vatican II under the presidency of a false pope, Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini). With his approval, the conciliar assembly perverted the perennial Catholic doctrine by redefining what and where the Church is.

Substantial Doctrinal Change at Vatican II

The doctrinal modification in question occurred in the council text known as the ‘Dogmatic Constitution’ Lumen Gentium, solemnly promulgated on Nov. 21, 1964. It claims, precisely as Horn explained, that the one Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ “subsists in the Catholic Church, … although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure” (n. 8; italics added). The key phrase is “subsists in.”

Subsistence, it is true, is a narrower concept than existence in general; the nub, however, lies in the “in”. The false council teaches that the Church of Christ has its proper existence in the Catholic Church, although it also has existence in other ‘Christian’ religions, albeit only in a partial of imperfect way by means of ecclesial “elements”.

Contrast this with the timeless and true Catholic teaching found in the following excerpts from the traditional Roman Catholic magisterium (in chronological order):

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: ‘One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,‘ and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed.

We venerate this Church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet: ‘Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword and my only one from the hand of the dog.’ [Ps 21:20] He has prayed for his soul, that is for himself, heart and body; and this body, that is to say, the Church, He has called one because of the unity of the Spouse, of the faith, of the sacraments, and of the charity of the Church. This is the tunic of the Lord, the seamless tunic, which was not rent but which was cast by lot [Jn 19:23- 24]. Therefore, of the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster; that is, Christ and the Vicar of Christ, Peter and the successor of Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter Himself said: ‘Feed my sheep‘ [Jn 21:17], meaning, my sheep in general, not these, nor those in particular, whence we understand that He entrusted all to him [Peter]. Therefore, if the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of Christ, since Our Lord says in John ‘there is one sheepfold and one shepherd.’

(Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam; italics given.)

…[A]ll groups entirely separated from external and visible communion with and obedience to the Roman Pontiff cannot be the Church of Christ, nor in any way whatsoever can they belong to the Church of Christ, namely, to that Church, which, in the Creed after the commendation of the Trinity, is proposed to be believed as the holy Church, the one Church, the true Church, the Catholic Church….

(Pope Pius IX, Holy Office Letter to Certain Puseyite Anglicans, Nov. 8, 1865)

No one can deny or doubt that Jesus Christ himself, in order to apply the fruits of his redemption to all generations of men, built his only Church in this world on Peter; that is to say, the Church, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic; and that he gave to it all necessary power, that the deposit of Faith might be preserved whole and inviolable, and that the same Faith might be taught to all peoples, kindreds, and nations, that through baptism all men might become members of his mystical body, and that the new life of grace, without which no one can ever merit and attain to life eternal, might always be preserved and perfected in them; and that this same Church, which is his mystical body, might always remain in its own nature firm and immovable to the end of time, that it might flourish, and supply to all its children all the means of Salvation.

Now, whoever will carefully examine and reflect upon the condition of the various religious societies, divided among themselves, and separated from the Catholic Church, which, from the days of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles has never ceased to exercise, by its lawful pastors, and still continues to exercise, the divine power committed to it by this same Lord; cannot fail to satisfy himself that neither any one of these societies by itself, nor all of them together, can in any manner constitute and be that One Catholic Church which Christ our Lord built, and established, and willed should continue; and that they cannot in any way be said to be branches or parts of that Church, since they are visibly cut off from Catholic unity.

(Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Letter Iam Vos Omnes, Sep. 13, 1868)

Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: “This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved” (Athanasian Creed).

(Pope Benedict XV, Encyclical Ad Beatissimi, n. 24)

A good number of [those who call themselves Christians], for example, deny that the Church of Christ must be visible and apparent, at least to such a degree that it appears as one body of faithful, agreeing in one and the same doctrine under one teaching authority and government; but, on the contrary, they understand a visible Church as nothing else than a Federation, composed of various communities of Christians, even though they adhere to different doctrines, which may even be incompatible one with another….

And here it seems opportune to expound and to refute a certain false opinion, on which this whole question, as well as that complex movement by which non-Catholics seek to bring about the union of the Christian churches depends. For authors who favor this view are accustomed, times almost without number, to bring forward these words of Christ: “That they all may be one…. And there shall be one fold and one shepherd” [Jn 17:21; 10:16], with this signification however: that Christ Jesus merely expressed a desire and prayer, which still lacks its fulfillment. For they are of the opinion that the unity of faith and government, which is a note of the one true Church of Christ, has hardly up to the present time existed, and does not to-day exist. They consider that this unity may indeed be desired and that it may even be one day attained through the instrumentality of wills directed to a common end, but that meanwhile it can only be regarded as mere ideal. They add that the Church in itself, or of its nature, is divided into sections; that is to say, that it is made up of several churches or distinct communities, which still remain separate, and although having certain articles of doctrine in common, nevertheless disagree concerning the remainder; that these all enjoy the same rights; and that the Church was one and unique from, at the most, the apostolic age until the first Ecumenical Councils.

…For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one [1 Cor 12:12], compacted and fitly joined together [Eph 4:16], it were foolish and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion with Christ its head [cf. Eph 5:30; Eph 1:22].

(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos, nn. 6, 7, 10)

Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter [Mystici Corporis] of a few years ago, and based on the sources of revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.

(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, n. 27; cf. Mystici Corporis, n. 1.)

Many more examples could be given, but let these suffice.

It is abundantly clear that the teaching of Vatican II, accepted and taught by Horn, is simply not the same as the pre-conciliar doctrine and is not reconcilable with it. Vatican II denied and renounced the strict identity that exists between the Church founded by Christ and the Roman Catholic Church, and the consequences have been predictably disastrous.

An Ecumenical Foot in the Door

This doctrinal revolution provided ecumenists and Modernists with the proverbial foot in the door to set in motion a process that would gradually unravel the Church’s entire magnificent ecclesiology, rendering impotent and ultimately meaningless her traditional teachings on the Church’s exclusivity, uniqueness, and strict necessity for salvation.

Convoking an ecumenical council for the purpose of endorsing ecumenism had been the game plan of the innovators all along. This is revealed, for example, in a quote by Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960), related by Fr. Louis Bouyer (1913-2004), a convert from Lutheranism: “Finally, Louis Bouyer reports that on the day that Pius XII died, Beauduin remarked, ‘If they elect Roncalli, everything will be saved. He will be able to convoke a council, and he will consecrate ecumenism'” (Fr. Joseph A. Komonchak, “Pope John XXIII and the Idea of an Ecumenical Council” [2011], p. 3). The source given for the Beauduin quote is Bouyer’s Dom Lambert Beauduin: Un homme d’Eglise (Paris: Casterman, 1964), p. 181.

Since Roman Catholic ecclesiology is incomaptible with ecumenism, in order to join the ecumenical movement, the traditional theology had to be changed. Ecumenical dialogue is not possible with a religious institution that claims to be the one and only true Church founded by Christ. Therefore, the Catholic claims to uniqueness, necessity, and exclusivity — “that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church” (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quanto Conficiamur, n. 8) — had to go.

However, since the conciliar assembly could not simply repudiate Catholic dogma explicitly, it had to find a clever way to undermine it instead. It did so by pretending to offer deeper, more elaborate, more precise teaching on the subject. Never mind that the First Vatican Council (1869-70) had already condemned any attempts to modify dogma on the false pretext of a more profound understanding:

For, the doctrine of faith which God revealed has not been handed down as a philosophic invention to the human mind to be perfected, but has been entrusted as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding. “Therefore . . . let the understanding, the knowledge, and wisdom of individuals as of all, of one man as of the whole Church, grow and progress strongly with the passage of the ages and the centuries; but let it be solely in its own genus, namely in the same dogma, with the same sense and the same understanding.

(Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, Chapter 4; Denz. 1800; underlining added.)

The doctrinal alteration from is to subsists in, subtle though it may appear at first sight, gave the innovators the necessary doctrinal underpinning for ecumenism. None other than ‘Cardinal’ Joseph Ratzinger, better known in our day as ‘Pope’ Benedict XVI, admitted:

With this expression, the Council differs from the formula of Pius XII, who said in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi: “The Catholic Church ‘is’ (est) the one mystical body of Christ”. The difference between subsistit and est conceals within itself the whole ecumenical problem.

(Joseph Ratzinger, “The Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church”, Osservatore Romano, English edition [Sep. 19, 2001], p. 5; italics given.)

Indeed, the novel subsistit in formula opened the way to ecumenism because it constitutes, as Ratzinger himself admitted in 1969, a “reduction in the claim of exclusivity” on the part of the Church (see his book Das neue Volk Gottes [Düsseldorf, 1969], p. 236).

And the proof is in the pudding.

The Difference It Makes

Clearly, no one engaged in official ecumenical dialogue, whether on the Novus Ordo side (incl. Trent Horn) or on the Protestant side, adheres to the idea that the Catholic Church alone is the true Church and all baptized non-Catholics must return to her. In other words, Vatican II deliberately relativized and thereby reduced the Catholic Church’s exclusive claim to being the sole Church of Jesus Christ and means of salvation, in order to enable and facilitate ecumenism. The last 60 years have borne this out.

The difference the new teaching makes is also reflected in the change in name of the Chair of Unity Octave. Clearly, the ‘Chair of Unity’ had to go since it implies that unity cannot be found except under the Chair of St. Peter. Thus it was replaced with the smoother-sounding ‘Prayer for Christian Unity’, which no non-Catholic could possibly object to. But, as one Catholic bishop observed a year before Vatican II began:

The unity of Christ’s Church — Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic — has never been in question and admits of neither denial nor doubt. For this reason, we may not properly speak of the “re-union of the Church”; for this reason, too, appeals for prayers for “Church unity,” as these were made prior to the more exact emphasis on the “Chair of Unity” Octave, never rang quite true, either theologically or historically. The Church of Christ could never be other than one; however diminished by heresy geographically or wounded by schism historically, the Church always remained one.

(Bp. John Wright, “Reflections on the Current Ecumenicism”, American Ecclesiastical Review CXLV, n. 4 [Oct. 1961], p. 220.)

It is for this reason that a Holy Office instruction issued under Pope Pius XII in 1949 insists that when Catholics have theological discussions with Protestants, “by no means is it permitted to pass over in silence or to veil in ambiguous terms the Catholic truth regarding … the only true union by the return of the dissidents to the one true Church of Christ” (Instruction Ecclesia Catholica, n. II).

And yet, in the Vatican II Church not only is this Catholic truth, as the instruction rightly calls it, veiled in ambiguous terms or passed over in silence, it is denied and contradicted outright.

For example, in 2005, Benedict XVI pointed out that the “Christian unity” for which he hoped “does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history”. Four years later he described ecumenism as “the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith [sic]”. In 2012, he made clear that ecumenical “dialogue does not aim at conversion, but at better mutual understanding….”

Until ‘Pope’ Francis, there was perhaps no clearer repudiation of the traditional Catholic position on Christian unity than in 1993, when the so-called Balamand Declaration was released, which rejected “the outdated ecclesiology of return to the Catholic Church” (“Uniatism, method of union of the past, and the present search for full communion”, n. 30). This declaration was the work of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, and it was referred to approvingly by ‘Pope’ John Paul II in his 1995 manifesto on ecumenism, the encyclical Ut Unum Sint (n. 60).

Thus we can see that between the traditional Roman Catholic ecclesiology and the ecclesiology of Vatican II there is really no genuine doctrinal development but only doctrinal corruption because the two views are simply not compatible. They are in contradiction with each other — if the one is true, the other is necessarily false. No one can adhere to both the perennial Catholic doctrine and the Vatican II ‘updated’ version because they are substantially different.

This is occasionally conceded by Novus Ordo authorities, we might add.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

For example, Fr. Avery Dulles (1918-2008) noted in 1976 that “Vatican II quietly reversed earlier positions of the Roman magisterium on a number of important issues”, including ecumenism: “…the Council cordially greeted the ecumenical movement and involved the Catholic Church in the larger quest for Christian unity, thus putting an end to the hostility enshrined in Pius XI’s Mortalium animos” (Dulles, “Presidential Address: The Theologian and the Magisterium”, Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, vol. 31, p. 240).

The Jesuit Fr. Francis Sullivan (1922-2019) is another theologian who candidly acknowledged that

on several important issues the council clearly departed from previous papal teaching. One has only to compare the Decree on Ecumenism with such an encyclical as Mortalium animos of Pope Pius XI, or the Declaration on Religious Freedom with the teaching of Leo XIII and other popes on the obligation binding on the Catholic rulers of Catholic nations to suppress Protestant evangelism, to see with what freedom the Second Vatican Council reformed papal teaching.

(Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church [Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1983], p. 157)

The Rev. Thomas Guarino concedes this as well:

Surely the council represents a significant volte-face [about-face] on ecumenism. Mortalium animos casts doubt on the entire ecumenical enterprise, forbids Catholics from engaging in the movement, and comes close [sic] to calling Protestantism “a false Christianity, quite foreign to the one Church of Christ”… The Decree on Ecumenism [Unitatis Redintegratio of Vatican II], in contrast, warmly welcomes ecumenism, encouraging intelligent and active participation in it (UR §4). The discontinuity between the two documents is the source of consternation for some [sic] Catholics.

(Thomas G. Guarino, The Disputed Teachings of Vatican II: Continuity and Reversal in Catholic Doctrine [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2018], pp. 108-109)

To be fair, we must mention that Guarino proceeds to attempt to smooth over and justify the reversal, but that is beside the point for our purpose, which is to establish that there is evident rupture, contradiction, discontinuity between Vatican II and the pre-conciliar magisterium, and that not only sedevacantists, or traditionalists in general, can see that.

A more recent and somewhat amusing case in which a Novus Ordo prelate admitted to the discontinuity with the prior dogma is that of ‘Abp.’ Fabio Fabene:

Vatican Prelate Accidentally Admits Vatican II Ecclesiology Denies Unity of the Church

For more information about the doctrinal revolution at Vatican II with regard to the Church, ecumenism, and religious unity, we recommend the following links:

Some time ago we made a video about this, demonstrating that this change in doctrine could not possibly have been approved by a true Pope, for it dissolves the nature of the Catholic Church:

Given all of the foregoing, we challenge Trent Horn to try to explain how the New Ecclesiology of Vatican II does not contradict the traditional Catholic magisterium on the issue.

Good luck!

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On the True Church of Christ: Trent Horn and Vatican II vs. Roman Catholicism