By DON FIER
As we profess each Sunday in the Nicene Creed and has been demonstrated over the past two weeks, the one true Church founded by Christ possesses the mark of holiness. She is holy in her origin, in her purpose, in her means, and in the fruit she produces. She lovingly embraces sinners, calling them to repentance and conversion.
As the “universal sacrament of salvation” (Lumen Gentium, n. 48 § 2), the Church is the primary instrument through which grace flows to the People of God. The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes this dogmatic teaching of our faith in a marvelous manner which bears quoting in its entirety:
“The Church is holy insofar as the Most Holy God is her author. Christ has given himself for her to sanctify her and make her a source of sanctification. The Holy Spirit gives her life with charity. In the Church one finds the fullness of the means of salvation. Holiness is the vocation of each of her members and the purpose of all her activities. The Church counts among her members the Virgin Mary and numerous Saints who are her models and intercessors. The holiness of the Church is the fountain of sanctification for her children who here on earth recognize themselves as sinners ever in need of conversion and purification” (n. 165).
Having examined the marks of unity and holiness, the Catechism focuses next on the third of the Church’s four marks: catholicity. What does the word “catholic” mean, and what is its origin? “The word ‘catholic’ means ‘universal,’” teaches the Catechism, “in the sense of ‘according to the totality’ or ‘in keeping with the whole’” (CCC, n. 830).
Another common definition is “all-embracing.” Its etymology is from the Greek katholikos, or the Latin catholicus. According to Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, “In general, 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” (Modern Catholic Dictionary, p. 87).
Even in the Old Testament there is no lack of texts that foretell the future universality of the Church. This is true even though the Lord God established the old covenant with only the Chosen People of Israel.
In his general audience of November 13, 1991, Pope St. John Paul II cites several passages that indicate God’s plan in this regard. In the first book of Sacred Scripture, God promises Abraham: “By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gen. 12:3). This promise is renewed several times and is extended to “all the nations of the earth” (Gen. 18:18), not only through the offspring of Abraham but also through those of Isaac and Jacob. St. John Paul II points out that “the same concept is repeated in other expressions by the prophets, especially in the Book of Isaiah” (see Isaiah 2:2-4; 25:6-7; 42:6).
At the same time, however, it is interesting to note that the word “catholic” does not appear in the New Testament. Nonetheless, it has a long heritage that dates back to the early second century when first used in about AD 110 by Early Church Father and martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch: “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8, 2; as cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 830).
The Catechism refers to this as the first sense of the Church’s catholicity: She is catholic precisely because Christ is present in her. The Church is the Body of Christ, united fully with Him as her Head. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, “The head and members are as one mystical person” (Summa Theologiae III, Q. 48, art. 2). This implies, as indicated in Vatican Council II’s Decree on Ecumenism, that it is from Jesus Christ Himself that the Catholic Church receives “the all-embracing means of salvation” (Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 3 § 5).
In this fundamental sense, the Church was “catholic” from the day of Pentecost. It was on that occasion that the Holy Spirit descended providentially upon the early members of the Church when “there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). Miraculously, the apostles were given the ability to speak in a manner so as to be understood in the native language of all those present. What a powerful sign that the Catholic Church and her teachings were destined by God to be spread to the four corners of the earth!
Another biblical reference showing that Christ intended His Church to be universal is apparent in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Shortly before Jesus was to depart to join His Father in Heaven, He appeared to His disciples and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:18-19). It was not long after her foundation that St. Paul was able to say of the Church that she “was spreading the word of the truth, the gospel, . . . [and] in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing” (Col. 1:5-6). Indeed, as Fr. Hardon notes in his Pocket Catholic Catechism, “there were some one hundred Catholic dioceses established in Europe, Asia, and Africa by the beginning of the second century” (p. 85).
In the Constitution on the Church, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council explain God’s plan for the Church’s catholicity in vibrant language:
“All men are called to belong to the new people of God. Wherefore this people, while remaining one and only one, is to be spread throughout the whole world and must exist in all ages, so that the decree of God’s will may be fulfilled. In the beginning God made human nature one and decreed that all His children, scattered as they were, would finally be gathered together as one (cf. John 11:52). . . . This characteristic of universality which adorns the people of God is a gift from the Lord Himself. By reason of it, the Catholic Church strives constantly and with due effect to bring all humanity and all its possessions back to its source in Christ, with Him as its head and united in His Spirit (cf. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies III, 16, 6; III, 22, 1-3)” (LG, n. 13 §§ 1-2).
Local Churches
If the Church in her entirety is “catholic,” what are we to say about local or particular churches? For example, St. Paul speaks of “the churches of Galatia” (Gal. 1:2) and “the church of the Thessalonians” (2 Thess. 1:1).
The Council Fathers affirm that the “Church of Christ is truly present in all legitimate local congregations of the faithful which, united with their pastors, are themselves called churches in the New Testament. . . . In these communities, though frequently small and poor, . . . Christ is present, and in virtue of His presence there is brought together one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” (LG, n. 26 § 1).
In other words, as long as they are in full communion with the Church of Rome (possessing the same faith, sacraments, and bishops in apostolic succession in union with the Bishop of Rome), they are truly “catholic” because for their particular locality, they express the fullness of the universal Church founded by Christ.
In familiar language, the phrase “particular church” first refers to a diocese or archdiocese. According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, “Particular churches, in which and from which the one and only Catholic Church exists, are first of all dioceses. . . . A diocese is a portion of the people of God which is entrusted to a bishop for him to shepherd with the cooperation of the presbyterium, so that, adhering to its pastor and gathered by him in the Holy Spirit through the gospel and the Eucharist, it constitutes a particular church in which the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and operative” (canons 368-369).
Priests and deacons serving in parishes within the diocese are to act in union with their bishop. So important is the unity of particular churches with the Church of Rome that the Catechism cites an important quote from the great seventh-century Byzantine theologian St. Maximus the Confessor: “All Christian churches everywhere have held and hold the great Church that is here [at Rome] to be their only basis and foundation since, according to the Savior’s promise, the gates of hell have never prevailed against her” (Opuscula Theologica; as cited in CCC, n. 834).
Yet, as Pope Paul VI points out in his 1975 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, it is critically important “not to conceive of the universal Church as the sum, or…the more or less anomalous federation of essentially different individual Churches” (n. 62). Rather, “the rich variety of ecclesiastical disciplines, liturgical rites, and theological and spiritual heritages proper to the local churches ‘unified in a common effort, shows all the more resplendently the catholicity of the undivided Church’ (LG, n. 23 § 4)” (CCC, n. 835).
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
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