Lumen Gentium 8

The meaning of "subsist," subsistit, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger TCRNews2.com, Catholic Reflections & Reports Remarking on deficient notions regarding the Church and her own pleroma of unity, Cardinal Ratzinger, in a book condemning liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, puts it this way: ". . . In order to justify [his position], L. Boff appeals to the constitution Lumen Gentium n. 8 of the Second Vatican Council. From the council's famous statement, 'Haec ecclesia (sc. unica Christi ecclesia) Catholica subsistit in ecclesia Catholica' (This Church — namely the sole Church of Christ — subsists in the Catholic Church), he derives a thesis which is exactly contrary to the authentic meaning of the council text, for he affirms: 'In fact it (sc. the sole Church of Christ) may also be present in other Christian churches' (p. 75). But the council had chosen the word subsistit — subsists — exactly in order to make it clear that the one sole 'subsistence' of the true Church exists, whereas outside her visible structure only 'elementae ecclesia' — elements of the Church exist: these being elements of the same Church tend and conduct toward the Catholic Church (Lumen Gentium, n. 8). The Decree on Ecumenism expressed the same doctrine (Unitatis Redintegratio nn. 3, 4) and it was restated in Mysterium Ecclesiae ."13 Cardinal Ratzinger, On the Unity of the Church: (U.S. Catholic Conference Documentary Service, April 4, 1985, vol. 14, n. 42, pp. 685-686).