By JOE SIXPACK
One of the most mighty rulers of the world was the first Napoleon. All of Europe was at his feet. The year 1804 was set for his coronation as emperor, and he invited Pope Pius VII to do the crowning. He tried to persuade the Pontiff to move the papal throne to Paris. With high-sounding language and energetic gestures, the conqueror set before the Holy Father the advantages of such a change.
“How well you act comedy,” the Pope remarked.
Angered by this remark, Napoleon snatched up a drawing of St. Peter’s Basilica at Rome, tore it to bits and exclaimed, “This is what I will do to the Church! I will completely crush her.”
“Now you act tragedy,” the Pope said calmly.
And tragedy it proved to be. Twice Napoleon practically put the Pope in prison. Then he grabbed the papal states of the Church. Exactly four days after that move, Napoleon suffered his first defeat in battle. And the Pope, a prisoner, old and weak, knew his rights and duty. When he excommunicated the emperor in 1809, the Napoleon scornfully remarked, “Does the Pope think that the weapons will fall from the hands of my soldiers because of his excommunication?”
A few years later, an army report from the icy plains of Russia read: “The weapons are falling from the hands of our soldiers.”
Napoleon was forced to a disgraceful retreat from Moscow in 1812, and the following year he was completely beaten by the allied armies. In the same castle of Fontainebleau in which he had kept the Pope a prisoner, the Emperor of the French had to sign his own abdication. Pius VII had in the meantime returned to Rome amid the rejoicing of the Christian world.
Upon establishing the Church on St. Peter as the Rock, Jesus said, “. . .and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it [the Church]” (Matt. 16:18b). This was Jesus’ promise that the Catholic Church would stand until the end of time — that no force in Hell or on Earth could ever destroy her, and that she would remain in her absolute purity as a divinely created entity.
Throughout history there have been many antichrists. The very first was the Roman Emperor Nero, who murdered Catholics with abandon in his attempts to destroy the Church. He was followed by other Roman emperors over the next 200 plus years. There were also many others; among them are Attila the Hun, Mohammed, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Stalin, Hitler, and, today, even the United Nations.
Despite all the Church’s many enemies and assaults upon her existence and sovereignty, she continues to stand today, and in perfect continuity for 2,000 years. No other government, nation, organization, or entity of any kind can make that claim. The question we must ask ourselves is: Why would Jesus make the guarantee that the Catholic Church would last until the end of time?
The first thing to understand is, when Jesus talked about the “Kingdom of God” or the “Kingdom of Heaven,” He was not talking about Heaven, per se. He was talking about the Church. The Catholic Church exists on three planes of existence: She exists on Earth (the Church Militant), in Purgatory (the Church Suffering), and in Heaven (the Church Victorious)…all simultaneously. With this understanding of the Church’s existence, we can go back and read the Gospels and see that they have a much better, brighter meaning for us, rather than the confused understanding of our separated brethren. So Jesus made His Church indefectible so she would last until the end of time for all of mankind — all those He redeemed.
Jesus also made His Church infallible. But why? We can answer this with two other questions: Would a good God, “who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), fail to provide His Revelation with a living, infallible teacher? Would a just God command us to believe all that He teaches under penalty of Hell (Mark 16:16), and at the same time leave us to the mercy of every false and lying teacher, preaching a Gospel opposed to His (2 Peter 2:1; Gal. 1:8)?
No! The Church Christ founded is everywhere spoken of in the New Testament as a divine, infallible teaching authority! Because Jesus and His Church are one, and because He is an infallible God, His Church must also by necessity be infallible.
For 2,000 years — from St. Peter to Pope Francis — the Church has taught the same faith in perfect continuity, without so much as a smidgen of change in her teachings on matters of faith and morals. We have two primary responsibilities in this regard. The first is to obey Holy Mother Church in all matters of faith and morals, because obedience to the Church is the only way we know we are obeying Christ.
The second is to reach out to other people, particularly our separated brethren (i.e., Protestants), in a spirit of true ecumenism. In other words, we have the duty before Almighty God to share our faith with non-Catholics toward the end of helping them into the Catholic Church.
The first question non-Catholics ask is, “How can I recognize which church is the Church Christ founded?” After all, the primary scandal of Christianity in our country is that there are about 40,000 Christian religions in existence. So what we’ve examined so far in this column is only a small part of the proof that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. The next thing we will look at in this series will be the marks of the Church; that is, that she is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
In case you haven’t noticed, this is a subject I’m rather excited about, and I hope to help you get excited about it as well. We’ll continue with our examination of the Catholic Church next week.
If you have any questions or comments, you can reach out to me by visiting the “Ask Joe” page at JoeSixpackAnswers.com; in the alternative, you can email me directly at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to The Cantankerous Catholic podcast. It’s free!
If you’re a priest who wants to help his parishioners better learn and understand the faith with a system that makes them actually want to learn on their own without any effort on your part, shoot me an email at Joe@Cantankerous
Catholic.com and I’ll shoot you a link where you can watch a short video to learn all about it.
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