Sunday, September 23, 2012

The Catholicity of the Catholic Church



Since Jesus Christ is uniquely God and man, there cannot be salvation outside of Jesus Christ. And if Jesus Christ is the sole source of salvation, the Catholic Church founded by Him must be universal. But the Church makes a critical distinction: that between object and subject. Only subjects subsist.  Objects exist. The Church teaches in Vatican II (Lumen Gentium) that Jesus Christ, as Subject (“I Am” [Jn. 8, 24]) subsists only in the Catholic Church, while objective elements of holiness and salvation exist outside of the visible Catholic Church.[1] Only the Catholic Church has all the means to become one with Christ such as to be “alter Christus” and thus achieve salvation. Hence, only the Catholic Church, with Peter in Rome has a universal- catholic – dimension.

In the light of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 1, 4 which reads “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish in his sight in love,” Bl. John Henry Newman argues that elements that are found outside Christianity in reality have always belonged to Christianity because Christianity pre-existed creation as did Christ whose humanity is continuous with the entire material from the beginning.

            Newman wrote: “The Anglican disputant took his stand upon Antiquity or Apostolicity, the Roman upon Catholicity. The Anglican said to the Roman: ‘There is but One Faith, the Ancient, and you have not kept to it:” the Roman retorted: ‘There is but One Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it.’ … The cause lay thus, Apostolicity versus Catholicity.”

John Jay Hughes wrote: “It is worth noting in passing that his standoff is replicated today in the dispute between the members of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and Catholics united with the Pope. The SSPX takes its stand upon the statements of 19th century Popes and Vatican I (with occasional side glances to the Council of Trent) and charges Catholics with having abandoned these immutable teachings at Vatican II. Catholics respond today as they did in Newman’s time: ‘There is but one Church, and you are out of it.”[2]

            Note that Newman also wrote: “In a higher world it is otherwise. But here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”[3]

“Now, the phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:—that great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth, is in its rudiments or in its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it,—"These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:" we, on the contrary, prefer to say, "these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen." That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have {232} tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; "sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;" claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.
“How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman, have thought that its existence told against {233} Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sibyl was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner's fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her Master's image.
“The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious. The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, "at sundry times and in divers manners," various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to appear, like the human frame, "fearfully and wonderfully made;" but they think it someone tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fullness, without gradual enlargement before Christ's coming or elucidation afterwards. They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive that the Church, like Aaron's rod, devours the serpents of the magicians. They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fullness. They seek what never has been found; we accept and use {234} what even they acknowledge to be a substance. They are driven to maintain, on their part, that the Church's doctrine was never pure; we say that it never can be corrupt. We consider that a divine promise keeps the Church Catholic from doctrinal corruption; but on what promise, or on what encouragement, they are seeking for their visionary purity does not appear.”[4]





[1] Lumen Gentium #8.
[2] Inside the Vatican, August-September 2010, 38.
[3] J.H. Newman, “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” (1844).
[4] John Henry Newman, “Essays Critical and Historical,” XI: Milman’s View of Christianity (1871), vol. 2, 232-233.




No comments: