The Catholic Church: The Church of Christ

a) Meaning of the Catholic Church

a) MEANING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH By the Catholic Church (sometimes called the Roman Catholic Church because its visible head, the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, is Bishop of Rome) we mean the congregation of all those who profess the faith of Christ, partake of the same Sacraments, and are governed by their lawful pastors under one visible head. Those who deny any of the doctrines of the faith of Christ, which is found in its integrity in the Catholic Church alone, are, if unbaptized, called infidels or unbelievers; if baptized (thus claiming to be Christians), they are called heretics. Those who are baptized and claim to be Christians and accept the faith of Christ, but refuse to acknowledge the unique governing power vested in the visible head of the Church, are called schismatics. Since the truth of St. Peter’s appointment to the primacy is a truth of the faith itself, schismatics are also heretics. Those that claim to be Christians may be divided into three groups, viz., members of the so-called Orthodox Greek Church, Protestants, Catholics. By the Catholic Church we mean the congregation of all those who are properly called Christians, and who are members of neither the Orthodox Greek Church, nor of any Protestant sect, but of the Roman Catholic Church alone.

b) Marks of the Catholic Church

We have seen that the true Church of Jesus Christ must be characterized by the marks of Unity, Holiness, Universality or Catholicity, and Apostolicity. The Catholic Church alone makes any real claim to the possession of these characteristics. Therefore, the

Catholic Church alone makes any real claim to be the true Church of Jesus Christ. Let us see whether her claim is justified: 1. The Catholic Church is truly one. Catholics the world over profess one and the same faith; they partake of the same Sacraments, acknowledging seven Sacraments, neither more nor less; they have the one Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mass; they all recognize the one common authority of the successor of St. Peter, the Roman Pontiff. Thus the Catholic Church, the world over, is one in faith or doctrine, one in essential worship, one in government and authority. Obviously, the Catholic Church makes no false claim to unity, but is really one. No other Christian group than the Catholic Church is one. Such groups are not one in government or authority, for they have no common head or rule. They are not one in doctrine, for the Orthodox Greeks deny the doctrine of the primacy as vested in St. Peter and his successors in office, and they are split into different “independent” groups; and Protestants claim the right to interpret Holy Scripture at will, each believing whathe chooses by private judgment. 2. The Catholic Church is truly holy. No one who recites the Apostles’ Creed, which is a summary of Catholic belief, can doubt the holiness of her doctrine. She preaches “Christ and Him crucified” to her children, teaching them to restrain passion, to cultivate and practise virtue, to carry the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, to a stage of development far beyond what unaided nature can hope to achieve. She sanctifies the essential human relations of husband and wife, parent and child, ruler and subject. She inculcates a morality that knows no subterfuge, no tricky adaptation to convenience, no change. She stands squarely against the evils that come from the weak human quest of comfort and softness, and requires her children to bear the Cross of Christ in fidelity to the end, keeping their minds upon the truth that “we have not here a lasting city,” and filling their hearts with hope of that which we look for and which is to come to those that persevere in justice unto the end. She raises men’s minds to high ideals; she can point to a myriad of institutions for the care of the sick and poor, for the education of the young, for the rescue of the erring— institutions of men and women who have freely sacrificed worldly honor and comfort, and have bound themselves by a solemn vow to the marvellous perfections of poverty, chastity, and obedience in all things lawful to their spiritual superiors. Her Sacraments, instituted by Christ, bring grace, peace, courage, hope, and joy beyond man’s fondest dreams. The Church makes men holy, and has made millions holy. No one with a knowledge of history can doubt the holiness of Francis of Assisi, of Teresa, of Benedict, of Charles Borromeo, and thousands of other men and women who are great historical personages; nor can one doubt what made these persons holy—it was their religion, its truth, its Sacraments. Other bodies of Christians may claim a few martyrs; the Catholic Church points to her thousands and tens of thousands of martyrs. Martyrdom alone is not a proof of truth, for men may die for a mistake, they may even die for what they know to be untrue. But thousands and thousands of men and women and children do not die for one and the same thing, thousands of others do not endure persecution and evils worse than death for that same thing, unless the thing be true and worthy. Other bodies of Christians have outstanding heroes of virtue; the Church points to her hundreds of thousands of saints—men, women, and children, whose lives are nearly all available to us in the records of human history. Great heroism is not in itself a proof of truth, for men may be heroic for mistaken ideals; but hundreds of thousands of all ages, of both sexes, of all periods of history, are not heroic for the same mistake. No non-Catholic Christian body can justify a claim to holiness. Many persons may lead individual lives of great perfection as members of a non-Catholic religious group; but the group itself cannot claim holiness. For the founders of such groups were not holy. It would appear invidious to mention here the private characters of men like Luther and Henry VIII. Nor were the mistaken zealots who founded certain sects holy men; they lacked moderation, justice, and humility. Besides, the holiest man cannot presume of his own authority to set up a religion to make other men holy; the very presumption is a proof of his own lack of holiness. Only God can found a Church; only God can truly establish means for the sanctification and salvation of men; only God can communicate such means to His church for the welfare of her members and of all the world. Christ is God; Christ’s Church is God’s Church; and no existing body of Christians other than the Catholic Church can even reasonably claim to be instituted by Christ Himself. 3. The Catholic Church is truly universal or catholic. From the time of Christ the Church has existed, and she has spread to every part of the world. She still continues to grow and to fulfil the command of her Founder (Mark xvi, 15) : “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Other religious bodies exist in this age or that; they exist in this country or that; but the Catholic Church alone can claim existence in every age since Christ and among all peoples. No non-Catholic Christian group can justify a claim to universality. Such groups are all of recent origin; ages upon ages passed in which they were unknown. They have not spread through all the world, nor are they spreading. They have split up into innumerable sects and sub-sects until, at the present time, the little life that they took with them in their separation from Catholicism has mostly disappeared.

The Greek Orthodox Church seems to have gone to shreds since the World War, and it takes no unkindly observer to notice that Protestantism as a religion is dead. For years now, the average Protestant pulpit has been content with the drooling of platitudes and with intermittent attacks “on Rome.” Indeed, many outstanding clergymen of different Protestant groups preach openly that Jesus Christ is not God! Nor have Protestant sects, or Protestantism if you prefer the term, kept the morality of Christ’s Church intact. As these lines are written, a brisk rebellion of clergymen against their bishop is going forward in New York City. And the cause of the uproar is this: a Protestant bishop had the sanity and the Christian courage to denounce a man of wide influence for teaching the propriety of the impure thing called “companionate marriage”: the clergymen do not think their bishop is justified in taking such an “extreme” view of moral requirements as to insist upon the observance of the Sixth Commandment and upon the respect that is due to the sanctity of Christian marriage!—Protestantism is not universal. Indeed, we should find it hard to define the term Protestantism and to declare what, in way of religion, it really stands for. Even if we use the name as a blanketterm for all the different sects, and call that the Church (which is strictly in the modern manner), we shall at once perceive the absurdity of attributing anything like universality to that woeful welter of conflicting theories (if they are definite enough to be called theories), to that chaos of muddled sentiments and abortive half-thoughts. 4. The Catholic Church is truly Apostolic. Human history brings the proofs; the history of the Catholic Church goes back unbroken to the Apostles. The doctrine of the Church is the doctrine committed by Christ to the Apostles, preached by the Apostles, and contained in Holy Scripture and Apostolic Tradition. No new “dogmas” or solemn pronouncements of articles of belief have since been made by the Church. When the Church, the infallible teacher of Christ’s truth, has been called upon for a pronouncement, a “dogma” of faith, this has always been the clearing up of a point of Apostolic doctrine about the character of which confusion existed in the minds of the learned. Thus, the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God was not defined as a “dogma” until 1854. But it was not a new article of faith. Every Catholic had always received and believed it. Every age had admitted it. Reason itself suggests, nay, demands it. But the question settled by the pronouncement of 1854 was this: Is this doctrine, which we all believe, which all Catholics have always believed, really a part of the divine faith committed to the Apostles, or is it merely the certain product of human reason working from the fact that Christ is true God and that it is unthinkable that He should take flesh from a source that had ever or in any way been soiled with original sin? The question was studied for centuries; finally there was need for an ultimate pronouncement on the point; the Church, as the teacher appointed by Christ, had to make that pronouncement; the Pope, as the successor of St. Peter, commissioned to feed the whole flock of Christ with truth and not to poison the flock with error, had to make that pronouncement: and so the pronouncement was made. The whole religion of Christ was committed to the Apostles, for they were His Church; no new article of that religion has been ever pronounced since the death of the last Apostle. The Church is truly Apostolic in doctrine, as she is in her history. No non-Catholic sect, is Apostolic. Indeed, not many representative leaders in such sects even make the claim to Apostolicity< Such sects are “sects” (i.e., “cuts”) .precisely because they cut themselves off from the Apostolic Church. Their founders were men of comparatively recent times. The doctrines of such sects, in so far as any clear and definite doctrines are still preached by the sects, are not the same as those of the Apostles. Nor are the rulers of such sects lineal and lawful successors of the Apostles.

c) Attributes of the Catholic Church

We have seen that the true Church of Jesus Christ has the attributes of Authority, Infallibility, Indefectibility. The Catholic Church alone, of existing

Christian bodies, makes any real claim to the possession of these attributes. Therefore, the Catholic Church alone makes any real claim to be the true Church of Jesus Christ. Let us see whether her claim is justified: 1. The Catholic Church claims Obviously, we can make no direct demonstrative proof of the justice of this claim except by calling upon truths already established, viz., the true character of the Catholic Church as evidenced by her marks. Since such demonstration would be a sort of “begging the question/’ we shall not attempt it. We shall merely mention that the Church makes the claim, has always made it, has made pronouncements in virtue of the justice of that claim, and has never made a pronouncement that has been in any sense self-contradictory, as she could hardly fail to do if she were a merely human institution and had set up a pretense to infallibility. Certainly the true Church of Christ would make claim to infallibility; and certainly the Catholic Church is the only Christian body that makes that claim—it is not difficult to see the conclusion to which reason points. Error simply mil creep into the wisest plans, the most careful calculations of men, especially if the plans be of a bewildering intricacy and the calculations be extended through two thousand years of existence. And error is always suicidal; it eventually wipes itself out. A human institution, world-wide in influence, active in all times and among all conditions of men, simply cannot endure for a thousand years unchanged—that is, if it is merely a human institution and fallible. If the Catholic Church could teach error, certainly error would have been taught in its turbulent history of two thousand years; and certainly error would have destroyed the Catholic Church, even if the destruction was what is called an essential change in doctrine or worship. Such change has not come into the Catholic Church. Great forces have been brought to bear on the Church to induce such change; innumerable heresies have tried to sway her this way or that; kings have threatened; nations have defected; persecutions have raged; yet the Catholic Church has not changed her doctrine by a hair’s breadth. If the Catholic Church be not infallible, her existence is as solitary and as miraculous as the Incarnation. No Christian body other than the Catholic Church claims infallibility. This statement is obviously true; non-Catholics will be the first to admit it. Yet Protestants, if they are true to the basic tenet of Protestantism, claim that every member of their sects is infallible—what else does the doctrine of private judgment and individual guidance by the Holy Ghost mean? But no sect, no group of sects, claims infallibility. This fact is in itself a proof of the truth of the Catholic Church and of her claim to infallibility. For consider: the true Church of Jesus Christ simply cannot lead men away from Jesus Christ; and if it cannot—as reason demands—then it is infallible in its teaching. Therefore, the true Church of Christ is infallible. But surely the true Church of Christ must recognize its own true character; it must claim to be what it is. Therefore, the true Church of Christ will claim infallibility because it is infallible and because men need an infallible guide to salvation. No non-Catholic body of Christians claims infallibility. Therefore, by strict reasoning, no non-Catholic body of Christians really claims to be the true Church of Jesus Christ! The Catholic Church alone does make that claim. Reason inexorably concludes: the Catholic Church alone has a right to make it, because it is the true Church of Jesus Christ. 2. The Catholic Church claims authority. She claims the authority committed by Christ to the Apostles when he sent them as the Father had sent Him to teach all nations and to govern all men in the observance of all that He taught. Not only does the Catholic Church claim this authority; she exercises it, and has exercised it for two thousand years. If her claim to authority was fallacious, millions of men, the wisest and most learned with the humblest, have been unaccountably deceived into submission to an unjust claim. Certainly Christ gave His Church authority, and just as certainly the Catholic Church is the only Christian Church exercising such authority. Therefore, either the Church of Christ has disappeared from the earth (an impossibility, for Christ, true God, founded it for “all nations … all days”) or the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ. No non-Catholic group even claims a unique and common teaching and governing authority. Protestantism has no common government, and the basic Protestant doctrine, viz., private judgment of Scripture as the sole rule of faith, is especially formulated to deny teaching authority in the Church. The Oriental schismatics do not claim a common teaching authority or a common government, for the so-called Orthodox Greek Church is split up into about fifteen “branches,” each claiming independence, and, since the separation of the schismatics from Rome, the Orientals have made no pretense to a belief in one infallible teaching authority in their “Church.” Only the Catholic Church makes the claim to this unique authority, which the true Church surely has, and recognizes itself as having. It is not hard to see the one conclusion that reason can draw from this fact. 3. The Catholic Church is indefectible. We are not competent to read the future, but human wisdom confidently anticipates the continuance of what the past has demonstrated to be a persistently existent thing. The Catholic Church alone of existing Christian bodies has existed, as Christ established her, through two thousand years of continual attacks upon her doctrine, worship, and authority, through two thousand years of continual threats against her existence. Of the Catholic Church alone continuance in existence may be reasonably anticipated. No Church but the Catholic Church is Apostolic; none can therefore lay claim to indefectibility except the Catholic Church, for indefectibility presupposes Apostolicity. If the Catholic Church is not to endure intact until the end of time, where shall we find a Church of which this must be anticipated? Yet, surely, the true Church will and must exist intact until the end of time. Only the Catholic Church has come thus far unscathed; only she is qualified to make the remaining distance indefectibly: if she does not, none other shall. And the words of Christ must not be falsified, for He is God; He has said that His Church will endure “all days, even to the consummation of the world.” We may well close our present study by quoting the powerful words of Mr. G. K. Chesterton on the indefectibility of the Church {The Everlasting Man, pp. 326 f.) : “‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away? The civilisation of antiquity was the whole world, and men no more dreamed of its ending than of the ending of daylight. They could not imagine another order unless it were in another world. The civilisation of the world has passed away and those words have not passed away. In the long night of the Dark Ages feudalism was so familiar a thing that no man could imagine himself without a lord: and religion was so woven into that network that no man would have believed they could be torn asunder. Feudalism itself was torn to rags and rotted away in the popular life of the true Middle Ages; and the first and freshest power in that new freedom was the old religion. Feudalism had passed away, and the words did not pass away. The whole medieval order, in many ways so complete and almost cosmic a home for man, wore out gradually in its turn: and here at last it was thought that the words would die. They went forth across the radiant abyss of the Renaissance and in fifty years were using all its light and learning for new religious foundations, new apologetics, new saints. It was supposed to have been withered up at last in the dry light of the Age of Reason; it was supposed to have disappeared ultimately in the earthquake of the Age of Revolution. Science explained it away; and it was still there. History disinterred it in the past; and it appeared suddenly in the future. To-day it stands once more in our path; and even as we watch it, it grows. —If our social relations and records retain their continuity, if men really learn to apply reason to the accumulating facts of so crushing a story, it would seem that sooner or later even its enemies will learn from their incessant and interminable disappointments not to look for anything so simple as its death. They may continue to war with it, but it will be as they war with nature, as they war with the landscape, as they war with the skies. ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away? They will watch for it to stumble; they will watch for it to err; they will no longer watch for it to end.”

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have seen that the marks and attributes of the true Church of Jesus Christ—viz., unity, holiness, catholicity, apostolicity, authority, infallibility, indefectibility—are found to be the marks and attributes of the Roman Catholic Church alone. The conclusion is inevitable: the Roman Catholic Church alone is the true Church of Jesus Christ. Let Catholic apologists be bold to claim this truth; let them not surrender the cause of Christ, which they are to forward at all costs, by a milk-and-water philosophy of tolerance. Tolerance is for external conduct; it is not for the mind; the mind cannot tolerate error for an instant. When the non-Catholic says, “I think all Churches equally good,” let the Catholic apologist make him see that his remark is the same as, “I think error and truth equally good.” When the non-Catholic says, “I think it is monstrous that you claim that you are right and all others are wrong,” let the Catholic apologist answer, “Can’t you say that of your religion? If you can’t, why, in God’s name, do you profess a religion that you are not absolutely sure is the true religion? You are not mentally honest if you do profess such a religion. You have no right to teach it to your children if you are not absolutely certain that it is the truth. And, of course, if you are sure it is the truth, then you are sure that all contradictory religions are false. My position is the only logical position; I do know that I am right, and in knowing it, I’ve got to know that those who believe differently are wrong. It is not a monstrous claim; it is common sense. I did not invent my religion, and then declare myself the best inventor of religions. I did not make up my belief, and then declare that others cannot make up theirs. I have accepted my faith as a gift of God, but I have incontrovertible evidence that it is a gift that I must take and value above all the world. Reason is the force and power behind my acceptance of that faith. What reason have you for accepting yours ? Leave off for a moment attacking my faith, and show me the cold and inexorable force of reasoning that supports you in your attachment to your own. If you can’t, then listen at least to the reasoning that I can offer for mine.” The big thing that stands in the way of the Catholic apologist is prejudice, unconscious prejudice for the most part. Many non-Catholics have a deeply ingrafted conviction that, whatever is true, the Catholic Church must not be true. Nor can such non-Catholics give any reason for their conviction. It is inbred if not inborn; and with it there exists a bitterly persistent determination not even to consider the possibility of the Catholic Church being the true Church. Chesterton truly remarks {The Everlasting Man, p. xvi) : “The worst judge of all [of the true Church] is the man now most ready with his judgments: the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing whathe has never heard.” Against this prejudice the Catholic apologist must make his patient, steady, persevering claim; he must not grow weary with bearing about the burden of truth, for it is truth that he bears; he must labor in season and out of season, by life, by prayer, by example, by word wherever possible, to make the world look at the claims of truth. The world, in the apt language of its own cheap philosophy, may declare that it “can’t see the Catholic Church”; but the wofld can’t help seeing Catholics. Let Catholics be trye apologists, and the world shall be made to see what now it will not see.