Pope Pius XII

Rome, 1958

Shortly before the death of Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII promulgated in 1943 an encyclical letter concerning the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. In this letter he writes:

If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ―which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church―we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ"―an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scripture and the holy fathers . . . . 
But a body calls also for a multiplicity of members, which are linked together in such a way as to help one another. And as in the body when one member suffers, all the other members share its pain and the healthy members come to the assistance of the ailing, so in the Church the individual members do not live for themselves alone, but also help their fellows, and all work in mutual collaboration for the common comfort and for the more perfect building up of the whole Body . . . .

Keep we beg you, O Lord, your Church with your perpetual mercy. Since without you the weakness of man is ready to fall, may we ever be withdrawn by your help from all harmful things and directed to those which are salutary.

☼

Women Before God

Newman Press, 1961

718,000