I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
and the Communion of Saints
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
It may seem strange to begin with the statement that
Christ founded the Church during His visible stay on earth. But over the centuries,
this has been widely denied by many so-called Christians. They claim that
Christ merely inspired a religious movement, or started a reformed movement
of Judaism, or was a great leader whose ideals were later adapted and later
became what we now call the Church. Still others would admit that Jesus began
what we may call Christianity, but He did not actually found what we now recognize
as an established, organized institution known as the Church.
But Jesus Christ did found not only a Church, but the Church,
the same visible body of believers united under visible authority, which is
the Catholic Church. This is proved from all the evidence of recorded and
verifiable history. Of course, the Church of the first centuries was not as
fully organized as she is now. But she was the Church. There were bishops,
priests and deacons; there was the Bishop of Rome; there was the administration
of the sacraments and a definite body of faith and morals. Members of the
Church were identifiable. They were recognizable, already in the first century,
because they stood out as a distinct body of men and women who belonged to
the Church established by Jesus Christ who, we believe, was the Son of God
become man for the salvation of the world.
Since the Apostles’ Creed was composed, many other creeds were issued by
the Church. Among these, the most important is the Nicene Creed that we use
in the Eucharistic Liturgy. Here we declare our faith in the One, Holy, Catholic
and Apostolic Church.
Our plan, therefore, is to look at each one of these four marks of the true
Church, analyze their meaning, and then apply their implications for our moral
and spiritual life.
There Is Only One, True Church
Since the time of Christ, there have been literally thousands of churches
that have claimed to be Christian. In greater or less measure, they possess
some of the qualities of the one Church founded by the God-man. What do we
mean? We mean especially three things:
- This Church has received from Christ
the fullness of divine revelation and continues to receive from Him all the
graces she needs to remain faithful to His teaching.
- This Church is the Roman Catholic Church,
whose historical existence and continuity have remained essentially intact
from Pentecost Sunday until the present day.
- This Church can be proved to be the
one which Christ founded, because of her fidelity over the centuries to the
teaching which He entrusted to the Apostles.
So far, the meaning of there being only one true Church. Given the gravity
of this subject, we must provide other reasons why there is only one true
Church.
- Throughout the Gospels, Christ always
speaks of His “Church,” singular and never “churches,” plural.
- Christ stressed that He wanted His followers
to be united. Unity, therefore, is of the essence of love, and it is love
based on faith that is the Church’s bond of unity.
- There is only one, true Church.
Not only did Christ found one Church originally, but He wanted this one Church
to persevere until the end of time.
- There is only one true Church
founded by Christ. Since Pentecost Sunday, when the followers of Christ formed
one community bound by their common loyalty to the teaching of the Apostles,
there have been many departures from this original community. Nevertheless,
the original community of believers has remained substantially unbroken and
faithful to the teachings of Christ. Conformity with the original Church which
Christ established is fully verified only in the Roman Catholic Church. Other
religious bodies may be Christian indeed, but they cannot qualify as being
the one, true Church which Christ founded in the first century of the Christian
era.
- In the light of the foregoing, we dare
not say that the one, true Church is still in the process of formation. She
was substantially formed by her Founder. He gave His Church her basic doctrine,
all her basic laws of morality, and He instituted seven sacraments, by which
the members were to be sanctified. Moreover, with emphasis, He established
the Church’s authority in the successors of the apostles united with the successors
of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
Without unity, the Church could not be what she professes to be, the community
of Christian believers whose lives reflect the existence of one, true God.
The True Church of God is Holy
There are few aspects of the Church founded by Christ that are more crucial
than her holiness. As we look at the behavior of so many professed Catholics
in the world today, you wonder where this holiness has gone. The enemies of
the Church specialize in discrediting her sanctity. So many priests and religious
are not living holy lives. So many books and articles published under Catholic
auspices are anything but holy literature.
We better be clear in understanding how the true Church is holy, not only
in name, but in reality.
To begin with, we make a simple declarative sentence: The Church’s holiness
is obscured by the unholiness of her members. When we speak of the sanctity
of the Church, we mean especially three things:
- The Church is holy because her Founder was the
all-holy God who became man.
- The Church is
holy because she provides her members with the means of becoming holy after
the example and under the inspiration of Jesus Christ.
- The Church is
also holy in producing holy people. Their lives in conformity to the will
of God, their patience and unity and charity and chastity are living proof
that the Church provides the means for sanctifying her members.
In the light of what we have just said, the Church’s holiness on the third
level is obscured, even to the point of being denied, if her members do not
manifest the sanctity which Christ expects of His followers. Every break in
Catholic unity and every departure from Catholic Christianity has been occasioned
by the lack of holiness among those who profess to be Catholics, but whose
behavior contradicts their profession.
In my judgement, this is the core reason for the massive loss of millions
of once believing Catholics in the second half of the present century.
That is why moral sanctity is a powerful witness to the Church’s credibility.
Sure there are other reasons for believing that the Catholic Church is the
true Church of Christ. However, one of the most powerful grounds for this
credibility is the moral goodness of those who belong to the Church.
Moreover, the sanctity of her members not only gives great example to
others. It is a channel of grace to everyone whose life is touched by professed
Catholic believers. So true is this that, as history testifies, the Church’s
propagation in conversion to the Catholic faith is in direct proportion to
the moral sanctity of the Church’s professed members. Only holy people reproduce
holy people.
The Catholic Church is Universal
To its credit, a standard English dictionary defines Catholic as
“of, relating to, or forming the church universal; of, relating to, or forming
the ancient undivided Christian church or a church claiming historical continuity
from it; Roman Catholic.”
However, the most acceptable meaning of Catholic is the fact that
the Church has actually become diffused throughout the world. When Christ
told the Apostles to preach the Gospel to all nations, He was telling them
what they should do. They carried out this mandate to a heroic degree. St.
Thomas went to India; St. James went to Spain; St. Peter went to Rome. The
Church’s diffusion, therefore, began in apostolic times. But more significantly,
the Church’s diffusion has not been merely the dissemination of certain ideas.
It has been the diffusion of a way of life which places superhuman demands
on its adherents. More still, this diffusion has not been, as in Islam, by
fire and sword. Nor has it been a diffusion without opposition. The diffusion
of the Catholic Church throughout the world is absolutely unique in human
history. It testifies to the power of God’s grace, which Christ promised His
followers when He told them not to fear because, “I have overcome the world.”
The term “Catholic” was first used by St. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107
A.D.) in his letter to the Smyrneans. In context, He is telling the people
to “shun schisms, as the source of all troubles. Let all follow the bishop
as Jesus Christ did the Father.” Then He adds, “Wherever the bishop appears,
there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
Church” (8). The meaning here is that the Church is Catholic because she is
universal. Later on, the adjective “Catholic” also meant orthodox.
Since the time of St. Ignatius, the word Catholic is mainly used in five
recognized senses:
- The Catholic Church as distinct from
Christian ecclesiastical bodies that do not recognize the papal primacy.
- The Catholic faith as the belief of
the universal body of the faithful, namely that which is believed “everywhere,
always, and by all” (Vincentian Canon, 450 A.D.). By this triple norm of diffusion,
endurance, and universality, a Christian can distinguish religious truth from
error.
- Orthodoxy as distinguished from what
is heretical or schismatic; in other words, consistent with the truths of
revelation and in communion with the rest of the faithful, under the Bishop
of Rome.
- The undivided Church before the Eastern
schism of 1054; thereafter, the Eastern Church has called itself orthodox,
in contrast with those Christian bodies which did not accept the definitions
of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon on the divinity of Christ.
- Today the term “Catholic” refers to
those Christians who profess a continued tradition of faith and worship and
who hold to the apostolic succession of bishops and priests since the time
of Christ.
A closing observation. There is no geography for the Catholic as a Catholic.
We who believe in the Vicar of Christ are independent of space and time.
The Church of Christ is Apostolic
It may be surprising to say that the Catholic Church is apostolic because
for two thousand years her members had believed in the papal primacy. In ordinary
language, “apostolic” means deriving from the Apostles. However, the Church’s
apostolicity would have disappeared by the end of the first century, except
for the papal primacy. It was the supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome
over the bishops in the Church which has preserved her authentic, apostolic
character. Whenever bishops separate themselves from the authority of the
successors of St. Peter, they inevitably deprive the Church of more or less
of her apostolic character. This fact is especially evident in the departure
from Christ’s teaching which inevitably followed an episcopate separated from
Roman unity.
There is another profound definition of the title “Apostolic” applied
to the Church founded by Christ. This is the historical fact that sacred orders,
possessed by bishops and priests, are traceable, generation after generation,
back to Christ’s ordination of the Apostles at the Last Supper. The power
which He conferred on the Apostles on Holy Thursday night has been passed
on from them to every bishop, and every priest, in the world today.
The implications of this truth are beyond human explanation. Except for
this apostolic succession from the eve of Good Friday, there would be no validly
ordained bishop or priest on earth. Except for this apostolic succession,
there would have been no Real Presence, no Sacrifice of the Mass, and no Holy
Communion as the principal source of grace for the human race over the past
two thousand years.
More still, except for this apostolic succession, there would be no remission
of sin in the sacrament of penance and no preparation for death in the sacrament
of anointing.
Finally, except for the Church’s apostolic succession, what Christ revealed
during His visible stay on earth would not have been preserved as the treasury
of truth on which our destiny depends.
Nowadays, there are so many mystics and seers and visionaries, all claiming
to have received revelations from God, that we better have some divinely authorized
norms for sifting objective truth from subjective imagination. We have these
norms. They are the public revelation, completed with the death of St. John,
the last Apostle. Whatever conforms to this apostolic heritage is true. Everything
else is a mirage.
Some Basic Implications
No single article of the Apostles’ Creed has more practical implications
than our profession of faith in the Holy Catholic Church. But one implication
is fundamental. Strange to say, it is contained in the second part of this
article, namely, “The Communion of Saints.”
What do we mean by the Communion of Saints? We mean the unity and co-operation
of the members of the Church on earth among themselves and with those in heaven
and in purgatory. They are united as being one Mystical Body of Christ. The
faithful on earth are in communion with each other by professing the same
faith, obeying the same authority, and assisting each other with their prayers
and good works. They are in communion with the saints in heaven by honoring
them as glorified members of the Church, invoking their prayers and aid, and
striving to imitate their virtues.
The term mystical perfectly describes the relationship among the
members of Christ’s Church in time and in eternity. They share with one another
the graces which God has given to them; they are, as we say, channels of grace
to one another.
But that is not all. The Second Vatican Council identifies the Church
as the universal sacrament of salvation. This means that all the graces which
the human race receives from God are mysteriously communicated through the
Church which Christ instituted. She is therefore the communion of saints not
only among her members, not only among the baptized. She is the communicator
of grace to the whole world. It is in this profound sense we say that there
is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.
To receive grace is to be sanctified. In the measure that those who belong
to the Church are themselves holy in their union with Christ, in that measure
they are used by Christ as conduits of His grace to the whole of mankind on
earth and in purgatory, as they await the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity.
One very important question still remains. Must we say that the Church
is absolutely necessary for everyone’s salvation? Yes. Next question. Does
this mean that only professed Catholics will reach heaven? No. What it means
is that the hundreds of millions of Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists are beneficiaries
of the grace which Christ communicates through the one, true Church which
He founded in first century Palestine.
Fundamental to all of this is the basic principle that “divine grace depends
on the possession of the truth.” The Church which Christ instituted is the
repository of the truth revealed by Christ. She is its custodian and interpreter.
She is the arbiter of the possession of truth by any person or institution
in the visible world.
Our responsibility as professed Catholics is breathtaking. We are bound
by divine law to do two things: to grow in our understanding of the faith
we possess, in a word, we are to grow in our possession of the truth. But
we are bound by the same divine law to share this truth with everyone who
enters our lives. There is no such thing as chance in the vocabulary of God.
Nothing ever “happens.” Everything is part of the mysterious providence of
God. On these premises, we are to share our Catholic faith with every single
person who even momentarily touches our lives.
How are we to do this? By living our faith, not only faithfully but, should
I say it, heroically. By speaking our faith in words, whether verbally or
bodily. By suffering for our faith, especially from those who do not share
what we believe. By our readiness to die for our faith. Let us have no illusion.
We are living in the Age of Martyrs. If the early Church could say,
“The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians,” how much more in our day
when the culture of death has replaced the culture of life and, in the words
of our Holy Father, the untruth has become the norm of so many cultures that
are starving for the Truth, who is Jesus Christ our Lord.
Prayer
“Dear Jesus, with St. Augustine I believe that, ‘No one can find salvation
except in the Catholic Church. Outside the Catholic Church, He can find everything
but salvation.’ These mysterious words I do not fully understand. But this
much I know, You have founded the Church and built her on the rock which is
Peter. Keep me faithful to your teaching by remaining loyal to the Vicar of
Christ. Help me to share what I believe with everyone whom you place into
my life. This, I am confident, will assure me of joining you and your saints
in that Church Triumphant for which I was made. Amen.”
Copyright © 1997 by Inter Mirifica
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