Bowler, Do you carefully read in a studious way or do you read it like you would read the sports section?  If you are reading the book there must be some sincerity in you.

http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/13Jul/jul17ftt.htm

This chapter in Monsignor Fenton claims the opposite on Saint Robert Bellarmine's teaching that you claim he makes.

One of the most tragic, yet in some ways comical, stories recounted in the history of theology has to do with a highly important misunderstanding of the teaching set forth by St. Robert himself in the most important of his writings, the book De ecclesia militante. This misunderstanding had most unfortunate consequences in the teaching about the necessity of the Church for the attainment of salvation.

    St. Robert's De ecclesia militante is essentially devoted to the defense of one thesis: the truth that God's true and only ecclesia of the New Testament is an organized and visible social unit. This thesis is presented in the second chapter of the book, and all the rest of the work is devoted to a detailed and classically effective demonstration of this truth. It will be impossible to understand how St. Robert's teaching was misinterpreted without a knowledge of what he actually said in that second chapter.

    The first part of this chapter "On the Definition of the Church" is devoted to the description and the refutation of the various theories evolved by heretics to explain the composition of the true Church militant of the New Testament. St. Robert deals with five of these theories, and then sets forth his own teaching, which is true Catholic doctrine. This is the pertinent section of the second chapter.

        But it is our teaching that there is only one ecclesia, and not two, and that this one and true Church is the assembly of men bound together by the profession of the same Christian faith and the communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate pastors, and especially that of the Roman Pontiff, the one Vicar of Christ on earth. From this definition it is easy to infer which men belong to the Church and which do not belong to it. There are three parts of this definition; the profession of the true faith, the communion of the sacraments, and the subjection to the Roman Pontiff, the legitimate pastor.

        By reason of the first part all infidels, both those who have never been in the Church, such as Jews, Turks, and pagans; and those who have been in it and have left it, as heretics and apostates, are excluded. By reason of the second part catechumens and excommunicated persons are excluded, because the former are not yet admitted to the communion of the sacraments, while the latter have been sent away from it. By reason of the third part there are excluded the schismatics who have the faith and the sacraments, but who are not subject to the legitimate pastor and who thus profess the faith and receive the sacraments outside [of the Church]. All others are included [within the Church in the light of the definition] even though they be reprobates, sinful and impious men.

        Now there is this difference between our teaching and all the others [the "definitions" offered by the various heretics, and discussed in the first section of this second chapter of the De ecclesia militante], that all the others require internal virtues to constitute a man "within" the Church, and hence make the true Church invisible. But, despite the fact that we believe that all the virtues, faith, hope, charity, and the rest, are to be found within the Church, we do not think that any internal virtue is required to bring it about that a man can be said absolutely to be a part of the true Church of which the Scriptures speak, but [that what is required for this] is only the outward profession of the faith and the communion of the sacraments, which are perceptible by the senses. For the Church is as visible and palpable an assembly of men as the assembly of the Roman people or the Kingdom of France or the Republic of the Venetians.

        We must note what Augustine says in his Breviculus collationis, where he is dealing with the conference of the third day, that the Church is a living body, in which there is a soul and a body. And the internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope, charity, and the rest are the soul. The external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments are the body. Hence it is that some are of the soul and of the body of the Church, and hence joined both inwardly and outwardly to Christ the Head, and such people are most perfectly within the Church. They are, as it were, living members in the body, although some of them share in this life to a greater extent, and others to a lesser extent, while still others have only the beginning of life and, as it were, sensation without movement, like the people who have only faith without charity.

        Again, some are of the soul and not of the body, as catechumens and excommunicated persons if they have faith and charity, as they can have them.

        And, finally, some are of the body and not of the soul, as those who have no internal virtue, but who still by reason of some temporal hope or fear, profess the faith and communicate in the sacraments under the rule of the pastors. And such individuals are like hairs or fingernails or evil liquids in a human body.

       Consequently, our definition takes in only this last way of being in the Church, because this is required as a minimum in order that a man may be said to be a part of the visible Church. [De ecclesia militante, c. 2.]

    In the passage just quoted, St. Robert Bellarmine sets out to explain and to define the thesis he is going to defend and explain throughout the rest of the book De ecclesia militante. The outstanding talent of this great Doctor of the Church is precisely his power of forceful and clear exposition. In the section we have just cited, that talent was exercised as perfectly as it is in any section of his works.

    St. Robert contends that the one and only supernatural kingdom of God on earth, the ecclesia spoken of in the Scriptures, has been constituted by God as a society composed of members or parts whose appurtenance [going with and belonging - J.G.] to this company is manifest to all men. He asserts that the factors by which a man is constituted as a member or a part of this company are the profession of the true Christian faith, access to the sacraments, and subjection to the Roman Pontiff. The group which is God's one and only ecclesia in this world is actually the company of men who have these factors of unity.

    He acknowledges the presence within the Church of faith, hope, charity, and the other supernatural virtues. Furthermore he realizes that these infused virtues themselves constitute another bond of unity with Our Lord and among His disciples. Nevertheless he insists that this spiritual or inward bond of unity is not the factor which constitutes a man as a part or a member of the Church militant of the New Testament.

    Yet despite the perfection of St. Robert's teaching and the clarity of his exposition, this section of the second chapter of his De ecclesia militante was destined to be the source of serious and highly unfortunate misunderstanding by subsequent theologians. The weak part of this, perhaps the most important single passage in the writings of any post-Tridentine theologian, was St. Robert's use of the terms "soul" and "body" with reference to the Church.

Can you grant me the point just one time?  Have I clarified that Father Fenton did not say Bellarmine erred in his teaching?  

The problem was the terminology that he used was misuesed by future theologians and what I will post in the following post regarding his reference to Augustine.  The problem was not him erring but the misunderstanding of his work.

Bellarmine, Fenton and the Catholic Church are in 100% agreement on the issue.

   In the first place, St. Robert's reference to St. Augustine's Breviculus collationis is lamentably inexact. There is no such statement as "the Church is a living body, in which there is a soul and a body" to be found in any part of the Breviculus collationis. In a subsequent chapter of the De ecclesia militante, St. Robert again attributes this soul-body dichotomy to this particular book by St. Augustine, and there he indicates the sentence to which he obviously refers here as well as in the later chapter. In the ninth chapter of the De ecclesia militante we find the following passage.

        Because of these sources [a citation from one of St. Augustine's works and references to other statements made by him] not only Brenz and Calvin, but even some Catholics imagine that there are two Churches, but this is only imagination. For neither the Scriptures nor Augustine ever indicate two Churches, but they always speak of only one. Now, in the Breviculus collationis, in the account of the conference of the third day, when the Donatists were urging against the Catholics the calumny that the Catholics taught that there are two Churches, one containing only the good, and another containing good people along with evil individuals; the Catholics retorted that they had never dreamed that there were two Churches, but that they had only distinguished two parts or periods of the Church. There are parts, because good people belong to the Church in one way, and bad people in another. For the good people are the interior part and, as it were, the soul of the Church. The bad people are the outward part and, as it were, the body [of the Church]. And they gave the example of the inward and the outward man, who are not two men, but two parts of the same man.

        Distinguishing the periods of the Church, they say that the Church exists in one way now, and that it will exist in a different way after the resurrection. For now it has both good and evil [members]. Then it will have only the good. And they gave as an example Christ, who, although always the same, was mortal and subject to suffering prior to His resurrection but, after it, is immortal and not subject to suffering. [Ibid., c. 9.]

    With this passage from the ninth chapter of the De ecclesia militante before us, it is quite easy to find the passage of the Breviculus collationis to which St. Robert appealed to justify his use of the expression "body of the Church" and "soul of the Church." Here is the actual teaching of the Breviculus collationis.

        They [the Catholics] did not say that this Church which now has evil members interspersed within it is distinct from the kingdom of God, where there will be no evil members; but [they said] that the Church exists in one way now, and is going to exist in another way in the future. Now it has evil men mingled within it. Then it will not have them. Likewise now it is mortal, in that it is made up of mortal men. Then it will be immortal in that no one within it will die even a bodily death. In the same way there are not two Christ's just because He first died and afterwards was immortal. And they also spoke of the outward and the inward man, who, although they are different, still cannot be said to be two men. There is even less reason to say that there are two Churches, since these very same good persons who now suffer the evil men mingled among them and die as people who are going to rise again are the ones who then will have no evil members mingled with them and will be completely immortal. [St. Augustine, Breviculus collationis cuм Donatistis, coll. 3, c. 10, n. 20. MPL, XLIII, 635.]

    In this passage the word "soul" does not occur at all. The word "body" is found once, but with a meaning completely different from any it might have when employed in the expression "body of the Church." In this section of the Breviculus collationis the word is used in a clause explaining that the Church triumphant is called immortal "quod in ea nullus esset vel corpore moriturus." St. Augustine has used the word in explaining the Catholic teaching that the Church triumphant is truly immortal because none of its members will be subject to the spiritual death of sin or even to bodily death.

    It would, of course, be grossly inaccurate to say that St. Robert misquoted the Breviculus collationis. He was a man of his own time and, in line with the customs of the period in which he lived, he referred to older writings in a way that would be considered quite unacceptable according to the stricter standards of modern scholarship. The teaching he attributed to this section of the Breviculus collationis is actually to be found in that docuмent, at least in an implicit manner. But St. Robert couched that teaching in his own terminology and, without quoting his docuмent verbatim, wrote as though his own terminology as well as the truths expressed in that terminology were to be found in the original source.

    St. Robert obviously was fond of employing the "body" and "soul" dichotomy to explain and illustrate various distinctions within the Church. In the two passages quoted from the De ecclesia militante in this book, we find the term "body" used with reference to the Church in three ways, and the word "soul" in two. He speaks of the Church itself as "a living body." Despite the fact that this terminology is not found in the Breviculus collationis, as St. Robert's manner of speaking would imply that it was, it is a standard expression used to describe the Church of God. Basically, of course, it is the name of the Church employed in the epistles of St. Paul. The Church is such that it can accurately be designated under the metaphor of a living body, the body of Christ.

    In the very same sentence in which he speaks of the Church as "a living body," St. Robert states that "there is a soul and a body" within the Church. This "body" in the Church is described as consisting in "the external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments." The "soul" within the Church, according to the De ecclesia militante, is constituted by "the internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope, charity, and the rest."

    He then goes on to explain the function of the "body" and the "soul" that he has described as existing within the living body that is the true Church. He tells us that "some are of the soul and of the body of the Church, and hence joined both inwardly and outwardly to Christ, the Head." In other words, in this second chapter of the De ecclesia militante, "soul" and "body" are metaphorical names applied to two distinct sets of forces or factors that function as bonds of unity within the Church militant of the New Testament. A person who is what St. Robert calls "de corpore ecclesiae" is one united to Our Lord in His Mystical Body by the profession of the true faith, access to the sacraments, and subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical authority. The individual who is "de anima ecclesiae" is joined to Our Lord in His Church by all "the internal gifts of the Holy Ghost," or at least by genuine divine faith.

    St. Robert was not by any means the first of the Counter-Reformation theologians to incorporate an explanation of these two factors or bonds of unity within the Church into his defense of the Catholic position. Some teaching along this line had always been a necessary part of the defense of Catholic truth against opponents who claimed that the true supernatural kingdom of God of the New Testament was not an organized society at all, but was merely the entire group of men and women in the state of grace. St. Augustine had faced a similar problem in his controversy against the Donatists, and his writings were freely used by the Catholic writers who defended the Church against the Protestant polemicists.

    Two of the earlier Counter-Reformation theologians, John Driedo and James Latomus, both professors at Louvain, prepared the way for St. Robert by their work in describing these two bonds of unity within the true Church. Driedo spoke of them in this passage from his famous work, De ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus.

        Augustine teaches in the seventh book [On Baptism] against the Donatists that there are two ways of being in the House of God or in the Church. One way is to be in it as a member in the body of justice, that is, as one sharing in the spiritual life or joined with the other members in the spirit of charity. The other way to be in the House of God, or in the Church, is to be attached to the other members as the chaff is to the grain. [Driedo, De eccelsiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus (Louvain, 1530), IV, c. 2, p. 517.]

    Driedo goes on to explain that people must be considered to be in the Church or, as we would say today, to be members of the Church if four conditions are fulfilled. The members are those who are "visibly attached to the Church by the sacrament of faith," living peaceably with the Christian people, not having been expelled from the Church, and not having left it. His teaching on this point is exactly what St. Robert was to give in his De ecclesia militante half a century later.

    The outward or visible bond of unity within the Church, the reality to which St. Robert attached the name "body of the Church," is described by Driedo as a joining "according to a kind of visible form of the Christian faith." What St. Robert called "the soul of the Church" appears in the De ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus as "the unity of the spirit and the bond (vinculum) of charity." Catholics in the state of mortal sin remain joined to the Church in a bodily way (corporaliter), although they are inwardly separated from it.

    James Latomus refers to these two bonds of union within the Church as the bodily communication and the spiritual communication.

        All ecclesiastical communication is either bodily or spiritual. The spiritual communication belongs to those who are in the house as composing the house itself. This is the communication of those who possess charity and who are united to the one God and among themselves. Likewise this spiritual communication pertains to those who are in the house, but who are not parts of the house itself. These are still spiritually joined to the parts of the house; and, on the other hand, the parts of the house are joined to them in Catholic peace. Although this Catholic peace is the effect of charity, its extension is far greater than that of charity, and it is found in some persons in whom charity does not exist. I mean charity of a pure heart, through which the Holy Ghost dwells in a man's heart. Through this union the bad Catholic shares even spiritually in many gifts which the heretic and the schismatic do not share. The bad Catholic is deprived of these gifts when he is justly excommunicated and delivered over to Satan.

        Likewise the bodily communication is divided. There is a certain bodily communication according to place, and in a common life, and in the active and passive communication of the visible sacraments. There is another bodily communication of superior and subject. [Latomus, in his Ad Oecolampadium responsio, in the Opera (Louvain, 1550), 131.]

    In the field of ecclesiology it is St. Robert Bellarmine's special glory that he clarified and perfected the teachings of Latomus and of Driedo on this particular section of the treatise on the Church, and used this teaching as the key to his classical definition of the Church in terms of its membership. What turned out to be quite unfortunate for the understanding of St. Robert's teaching by subsequent theologians was his application of the terms "body" and "soul" to the two bonds of union within the Church which had been recognized and described by his predecessors.

    It is one of the ironical twists of history that St. Robert, pre-eminent among the writers of the Catholic Church for the clarity of his expression, should have offered the occasion for such serious misunderstanding. There can be no doubt whatsoever about the magnitude of his accomplishment in the line of clarity in his exposition of the two bonds of ecclesiastical unity. In effect, Latomus and Driedo had taught in what would be regarded today as a highly esoteric [understood by only a few - J.G.] fashion. Their theses were couched in the words and phrases of St. Augustine, and a man would have to be fairly well aware of what St. Augustine had written, particularly in his controversial writings against the Donatists and in his In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos in order to understand the full import of what either Latomus or Driedo had written. St. Robert, on the contrary, wrote effectively and clearly so that anyone capable of reading Latin would have no difficulty in grasping what he had to say.

    It would have been easier for him and much more profitable for subsequent theologians if he had simply named the two bonds of unity in the Church for what they actually are. His brilliant younger contemporary, Francis Sylvius of Douai, did exactly that. Sylvius spoke of a twofold colligation within the Church militant of the New Testament. He stated that: "One is internal, of minds, through faith and through the common affection which is called in the Second Epistle of St. Peter the 'love of the brotherhood (amor fraternitatis).'" And explained that "the other bond of union is external, consisting in the administration and the reception of the sacraments and in other matters pertaining to the worship of God and to the administration of the Church." [Sylvius, Controversiarum Liber Tertius, in his Opera Omnia (Antwerp, 1698), V, 237.]

    Obviously Sylvius, like many of his contemporaries, did not agree with St. Robert in his concept of membership in the Church. The Douai theologian was mistaken on this point, but he was much more felicitous [well-suited - J.G.] than St. Robert had been in designating the factors which unite men with Our Lord and to each other in God's supernatural kingdom on earth. Fenton

__________

Saint Robert did not quote Augustine exactly but Saint Robert did not teach error.  His way of summing up what Augustine taught as if quoting him was common then as Monsignor Fenton explains for those who took the trouble to read the above.

It does not surprise me that you do not see it. What did you need for Fenton to say, that Bellarmine did not know what he was talking about?

If you do not believe the clear dogma as it is written, how on earth can I expect you to believe anything that is written?

Quote

Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Cantate Domino, 1441, ex cathedra:

The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church , not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only those who abide in it do the Church's sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia productive of eternal rewards; and that nobody  can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

One thing is for certain, Fr. Fenton's theory is acknowledging the dogma that to be a member of the Body, one must be sacramentally baptized. He is just trying to reconcile that with the baptism of desire of St. Thomas. He is trying like all the others before him, to reconcile the unreconcilable. Doesn't it surprise you that it took till 1957 for the Church "to learn the truth" from a Fr. Fenton? No.

Luckily I don't engage in personal insults otherwise I would say you are out of your mind.

One thing is for certain, Fr. Fenton's theory is acknowledging the dogma that to be a member of the Body, one must be sacramentally baptized.

He is just trying to reconcile that with the baptism of desire of St. Thomas.

You are one of those that claim to know the inner workings of Fenton's mind?

He is trying like all the others before him, to reconcile the unreconcilable. Doesn't it surprise you that it took till 1957 for the Church "to learn the truth" from a Fr. Fenton? No.

He has read (and unlike you, understood) the entire body of teaching on salvation theology and helped put it together.  When was the Immaculate Conception Defined.  the Church was busy dealing with the Protestant Revolt before dealing with an objection that the Protestants did not bring up.

You keep missing the obvious.  It would seem that is a result of bad will, being more sure of yourself than ANYONE else.  I don't even think Jesus Christ Himself could convince you.

One thing is for certain, Fr. Fenton's theory is acknowledging the dogma that to be a member of the Body, one must be sacramentally baptized.

He is just trying to reconcile that with the baptism of desire of St. Thomas.

You are one of those that claim to know the inner workings of Fenton's mind?

What is there to know? If they were members of the ecclesial body, there would be no need for Fr. Fenton's or St. Robert Bellarmine's dissertations.

Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Cantate Domino, 1441, ex cathedra:

The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church , not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only those who abide in it do the Church's sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia productive of eternal rewards; and that nobody  can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

Bowler wrote:
Therefore, the point of using Fr. Fenton to teach the "within thing", is hypocricy, since you believe as the Salamances that the unbaptized can be saved, even if they have no explicit desire to be Catholics, nor belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation. You reject Fr. Fenton.

You conveniently skipped this part. You are a hypocrite to use Fenton in your straining of a gnat, when you reject him in your swallowing the camel of the Salamances.

This answers your question bowler as to why "it took until 1957 to 'get it right'"

They explained it more clearly is what actually happened:

Quote:

"The writers of school theology from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth are not guilty of neglecting the teaching on the Mystical Body simply because this section of sacred doctrine has been developed in our own times. They knew and explained the theology of the Mystical Body even though they did not write the complete twentieth century type of treatise on this subject. The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and the older school theologians were quite well aware of the fact. The theology of the Mystical Body is that portion of sacred doctrine in which we find the scientific exposition of the revealed message about the connection of the Catholic Church with our Lord. The school theologians knew and taught the theology of the Mystical body. A complete theological treatise on the Mystical Body is one in which all the theological elements pertinent to the Church's union with our Lord are brought together and compared, for the sake of a still more perfect and profound understanding of the mystery. The complete theological treatise on the Mystical Body is one of the glories of our own day. It would be naïve in the extreme to blame earlier theologians for not having done what has been distinctively a twentieth century work. Fenton

Monsignor Fenton has read all the theological elements pertinent to the Church's union with our Lord have you?

The Monsignor fully understood the complete theological treatise on the Mystical Body, you do not.  Why do you dare claim he does not know what he is talking about as you suggest when you tell us all that he erred on this issue?