Catholicity

CATHOLICITY. - This is the third property of the Church, according to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: “I believe in the catholic Church.” This epithet, catholic, has served from the very beginning—it already appears in s. Ignatius of Antioch, who died in 107 (Ad Smirnenes, 8, 2)—to designate the hierarchical religious society founded by Jesus Christ to lead human beings to salvation: the Christian Church, the true Church spread throughout every place, in opposition to the local sects that have separated from II.
It is a fact that, in our own day, as in the past and at all times, the epithet “catholic” has remained the proper name of the Church that recognizes as its visible head the bishop of Rome, successor of the apostle s. Peter. The Catholic Church is none other than the Roman Church, that is, the Church that obeys the pope. The other Christian groups undoubtedly also claim the title of catholic, but they do so weakly and without much conviction, and none of them has succeeded in appropriating this designation for itself. The “Catholic Church” always remains, in the language common to all peoples, the Church whose supreme visible head is in Rome. Each of the dissenting Churches is generally designated by a particularizing term. One says: “the Orthodox Eastern Church, the Greek Church, the Russian Church, the Coptic Church, the Armenian Church, the Nestorian Church, the Anglican Church,” etc. The importance of c. as a property of the true Church is therefore evident. The difficulty lies in defining precisely what it consists in. The theologians, and especially the apologists, have distinguished all the varieties of c.: c. of time, of space, of doctrine; absolute c. and relative c.; simultaneous c. and successive c.; material c. and formal c.; quantitative c. and qualitative or attitudinal c.; c. of right and c. of fact; physical c. and moral c. The mind loses itself in all these distinctions, and we lack the space to explain them individually. We shall be content to give a general notion of c. and to consider it: 1º as an essential property of the Church; 2º as a note or distinctive sign of the true Church.

I. GENERAL NOTION OF C

The adjective «catholic» is a Greek word (= καθολικός, which derives from the adverb καθόλου = in general, in its entirety), meaning «general, universal». The Catholic Church is therefore the universal Church. When it is said that this religious society, the Church, is universal, what is meant is that it addresses all human beings without distinction of condition, race, nation, or culture; that it is open to all and claims to gather them all under its authority; that it intends to establish universal dominion from the religious point of view. This indicates that it works to achieve its programme and its destiny through proselytism, through what is today called «the missionary spirit»; for it is inconceivable that a society aiming at universality should not seek to incorporate the whole of humanity. Finally, this may mean that in reality this society is already universal in some way, because it is spread everywhere; that it has faithful everywhere in greater or lesser numbers. This universality in fact, though relative, is already proof that the Church’s claims to universality are well founded; that it possesses the capacity to fulfil them, since already people of every order, every country, every race, and every culture obey her and acknowledge her as their spiritual mother. Thus we have three meanings of the word «catholic», intimately connected with one another: the Church is catholic in her aim and destiny; she is so in her activity, capable of achieving this aim; and she is so also, at least in its initial state, in the result of this activity, that is, in her more or less dense diffusion over the entire surface of the earth. These, then, are the notions that the idea of universality, or of c., applied to a religious society, arouses at first sight.

Historically speaking, the third of these notions, namely expansion everywhere, was the first to be emphasized, from the earliest centuries, by the Fathers of the Church. There can be no doubt that this is the direct and historical meaning of the word «catholic» in the Symbol of Nicea-Costanthopoli, although the other meanings are not excluded. Indeed, already in the fourth century, s. Cirillo di Gerusalemme distinguishes several kinds of c., the first of which is geographical c. (Catechesis XVIII: PG 33, 1044). This is readily understandable, because diffusion through space is visible and easy to ascertain. It provided the Fathers with an argument readily at hand for demonstrating the falsity of schisms, local sects, and heretical novelties, by appealing to union in charity, in faith, and in subordination to the Roman primate, of the universal Church, the «Catholica», as s. Agostino often calls II. But one must not forget that universality of diffusion is far from exhausting the concept of c. This expansion is rather the visible manifestation of c. than c. itself. Hence the need first to deepen the notion of c. insofar as it is an essential property of the Church.
II. C., AN ESSENTIAL PROPERTY OF THE CHURCH. — That c., catholicity, is an essential property of the Church is clearly affirmed by the Sacred Books. The Old Testament describes the kingdom of the promised Messiah as a universal kingdom, destined to unite all the nations of the earth. Universalism is inseparable from messianism. All the messianic prophecies bear this mark (see, for example, Gen. 12, 3; 18, 18; 22, 18; Ps. 2, 8; 21, 26-29; Is. 2, 2; 60, 4 ff.; Ier. 3, 17; Dan. 2, 44; Mal. 1, 15). In the New Testament, the texts affirming the universalist character of the Church, the kingdom of God on earth, are innumerable. It is enough to cite the very words of Jesus Christ, first in Mt. 28, 18-19: « Data est mihi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra. Euntes ergo docte omnes gentes », and then in the Act. 1, 8: « Eritis mihi testes in Ierusalem et in omni Iudaea et Samaria et usque ad ultimum terrae ». Everywhere in the writings of the New Testament, the universalism of the new law promulgated by Jesus is set against the Jewish particularism described in the Old Testament. Jesus is the saviour of all, who died for all. It is God’s will that all men be saved and arrive at knowledge of the truth (I Tim. 2, 4). No more distinction between Jew and pagan; Christ himself is Lord of all, generous toward all who invoke him (Rom. 10, 12).

The Church is therefore made for all men, open to all. If this is so, God must have endowed it with all the means and all the elements necessary to fulfil this destiny. These elements too must bear the mark of c., of universalism. Every man must be able to assimilate them; they must be free from every particularism unsuited to the multitude. These constitutive elements of the Church, these means for carrying out the universalist programme, are of two kinds: some are internal and invisible, others external and visible; for the Church is at the same time spirit and matter; it has a soul and a body. The soul is the entire supernatural, invisible apparatus that gives it strength, vivifies it, sanctifies it, and unites it to the One and Triune God: Grace, the theological virtues, infused gifts, and various charisms. The body is what appears externally in the Church: hierarchy (the papacy and the episcopate), preaching,

teaching authority, ministry and the Sacraments, the visible union of all the faithful in charity, in obedience to their pastors, and in participation in sacred things. It can easily be observed that in the Church all this bears the mark of universality, is assimilable, and is suited to man in general, without any particularism, as occurs in other religions. It should merely be noted that the internal elements are catholic because they are spiritual, free from matter, the mother of particularisms; and that the external elements, as we see them functioning in the Roman Church, are so as well because of their simplicity, flexibility, and capacity to adapt to legitimate national and cultural particularisms, without losing anything of what essentially constitutes them.

Catholic in its destiny, in its constitutive elements, and in its means of action, the Church must also be so in its activity, in the sense that it must work without ceasing to associate and incorporate the entire human mass, in order to realise, insofar as possible, the universal kingdom of God on earth.

This activity, willed and ordained by Jesus Christ, cannot be fruitless. Necessarily it will produce what is called « c. di fatto », the diffusion throughout all parts of the earth. Here we find c. once again, precisely as the ancient Fathers understood

II. Catholicity in space is the sign, the external manifestation of c

the property as briefly described.

III. CATHOLICITY AS A MARK OF THE TRUE CHURCH

It remains for us to examine catholicity insofar as it may serve as a means of recognizing which is the true Church among the Christian Churches now existing; for it is a fact that several Christian societies exist, each claiming to be the true Church, or at least to be a true part of the one Church founded by Jesus Christ. This question of catholicity as a mark is the one that has chiefly occupied apologists and theologians since the appearance of Protestantism. Little attention has been paid to catholicity as a property, such as has just been defined. At first apologists had in view only the Protestant sects, and it was relatively easy for them to demonstrate that none of these, taken separately, possessed catholicity. The question became more complicated when attention was turned to the dissident Eastern Churches, especially the Greco-Russian Church, impressive both by the number of its faithful and by its geographical extent.

In our day, the geographical catholicity in which the Roman Church could take pride has been somewhat obscured, both by Protestant proselytism and by the spread throughout all countries of certain sects or Churches, made possible by the ease of communication between continents. There are also historical objections which have had to be answered. Thus Catholic apologists have found it increasingly difficult to demonstrate that catholicity was a “positive and exclusive” mark of the true Church. They have had to revise their definitions and multiply the distinctions to which allusion has been made. Several have said that catholicity was merely a negative mark. Others have abandoned spatial or quantitative catholicity in order to turn to qualitative or dispositional catholicity. Yet here too serious difficulties arise with regard to certain dissident Churches. It may be said that Catholic apologists have not so far succeeded in demonstrating clearly that catholicity is a positive mark belonging exclusively to the Roman Church (cf. G. Thils, Les notes de l'Eglise, pp. 214-54).

This failure perhaps derives from the fact that it has been forgotten that the separated Churches, especially those which have retained almost everything constituting the true Church, except for the dogma of Roman supremacy, were not devoid of all the elements entering into the definition of the four properties of the Church enumerated in the Symbol. In some of them one may find a certain unity, a certain holiness, a certain catholicity, and a certain apostolicity. The test must be repeated by means of the four marks, resorting to the method of comparison and transcendence: the true Church is that which best realizes the concepts of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity, in what these concepts express of genuine perfection externally verifiable. With regard to catholicity, the following elements are externally verifiable: 1) geographical diffusion; 2) missionary activity; 3) freedom from every particularism, unacceptable to certain categories of men, which hinders their entry into the Church. Among such obstacles may be mentioned the subjection of a Church to civil power and its lack of independence. It is evident, moreover, that catholicity, in the method of comparison, is inseparable from unity. Now unity is the element most lacking in the separated Churches, not only in the Protestant sects but also in the autocephalous Churches of the East: for example, what is called the Eastern Orthodox or Greco-Russian Church is not a single Church, but a collection of Churches independent of one another—at present there are about thirty—which are not even united among themselves by the bond of communion in sacris, some of them anathematizing the others. It is not difficult to show that the Roman Church surpasses, by far and eminently, each of the separated Christian groups with regard to every one of the externally verifiable elements of catholicity. These elements, moreover, are capable of progress. It may be said that catholicity as a mark is always in fieri. This is evident with regard to geographical expansion and likewise to missionary activity. History also shows us that in certain periods Roman Catholicism had to struggle to free itself from certain particularisms and from the domination exercised over it by a given secular power. As Congar has written, op. cit., p. 131: “The Church, which inwardly participates without limit in the divine being, must participate, in the outward aspect of its organization, in the infinity proper to human becoming. It must always be engaged in adapting itself to humanity in order to incorporate it.”