In Defence of the Faith
What is the Catholic Church ?
[The writer of this searching analysis of Christianity has been for some years Dean of Winchester. He is a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, and author of numerous works on Church history.]
IT seems to me certain that, in any true conception of the idea, a religion cannot exist without a definite expression in a society. Thought tends, all the ages through, to embody itself in organization. Principles, to be effective, indeed demand an organization. So Burke emphatically declared, and history proves that he was right.
There is, we believe, a Catholic religion. History testifies to it. And it involves quite certainly a Catholic Church. There was no wiser teacher in the nineteenth century than Richard William Church. He said : " If Christianity had been a philosophy, or a literature, or an aristocratic religion, a religion for a select few raised *hove their fellows by power of intellect and thought, its great ideas might have been left to wander about the world, seeking and finding their homes in individual 'Minds." And he followed those words by a magnificent description of what the Church is, for all men, all nations, all the world.
Can there be any doubt that the Catholic Church came, in idea, not in detail of organization, from the mind of the Divine Founder of the Catholic Religion ? That certainly was the conviction of His earliest disciples. That explains Paul's startling comparison of the Ecclesia to the Body of the Lord : more than comparison indeed—actual unity in idea and spiritual fact. The Church. is Christ's Body ; and as a man acts in the world and on men through the physical members and the capacities, so Christ acts, and will act, through the Church. The Catholic Church then exists in indissoluble union with its Divine Founder. But in Christian teaching the Godhead con- sists of Three Persons—we do not pause to discuss the ambiguity and inadequacy of the English word. " The Catholic Faith is this : that we believe One God in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity." Again, we do not dwell on the philosophy ; our business is with history. The Faith, like everything else in human experience, Must be learnt ; and to be learnt it must be taught. And the function of the Catholic Church is to be the teacher of the Catholic Faith. Founded then by Jesus Christ, it exists to convey His teaching to the world. Where it fails to do this, where it ceases to do it, where it sub- stitutes for it or adds to it " the doctrines of men," it shrivels, just as Jewish teaching shrivelled at the denun- ciation of the Lord. " Other foundation hath no man laid than that is laid " : and that which is laid is the Gospel of the Son of God. That is the sure foundation of the Catholic Church. That it is which makes it avail- able and salutary, and in the ultimate sense necessary, for all ages and all men. But because it is the Body it exists also to convey to men Christ's strength. The way this is done—so it has taught immemorially—is through the Sacraments which owe their origin and their force to Him. His Body it is from which the power to live holly and justly and un- blamably comes, because it is His very life which is imparted to the faithful. This truly is a mystery ; but so it must be, since " We speak concerning Christ and His Church."
These are high regions of spiritual aspiration, under- standing, life. But what does the Body which exists mean when its organization is expressed in terms of the common world ? Certainly it must be something definite and practical. More and more we refuse to be content with an " invisible Church," which satisfied preachers of the sixteenth century and many more. We see that it must of necessity be something visible if it is to deal with human existence as it continues from age to age. It is not only organized ; it is organic. It haspower, as every institution must have, to define its own b mndaries, to fix its limits, to decide the qualifications of membership. And this it does because it is not bound by a: dead hand but is the home of a living Spirit.
At first that might seem to imply an unlimited change- ableness, a_ fluidity of progress. But that is excluded because it is the expression, if the phrase be allowed, of an unalterable Personality, of a coherent and eternal mind, the Mind of Christ. There is a permanence in the Catholic Church, and that permanence is embodied in laws which it believes to be the expression of the Will of God. Descend then to practical terms. The meaning of the word Catholic is simply Universal. It is for all ages and for all men : and so are its rules, the necessary rules which are inherent in the very idea of an organization at all. What are they ?
First, Baptism. Entrance into the Church, from the very earliest days, is by Baptism with water in the Holy Name. This may be performed by any one, man or woman, though the Church has always desired it should be performed by one of her ministers. Strange that even the greatest writers should ignore what is part of the very alphabet of Christianity and is the very first thing a theo- _ logical student learns. Thomas Hardy, in a famous passage in Tess, committed an inexcusable blunder when he made the clergyman say that the baptism of her baby (which is stated quite exactly as performed with water, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost) was ineffectual, though the poor clergyman's charity makes him add that it would not really matter. No priest could be so ignorant. This leads to a further rule, the necessity of a ministerial priesthood. The Church never doubts the priesthood of the laity. Every Christian man or woman baptized and confirmed is a real minister of Christ. But beyond that there is a definite ministerial priesthood. From the days of the Apostles it is quite clear that this existed, and it cannot be otherwise than that it existed by the ordering of the Lord Jesus. The Church believes in Apostolic succession. But this is no mechanical process. From the earliest days succession was regarded as essential because it made plain that the " doctrine and fellowship " of the earliest Church was continued by those who succeeded the Lord's first dis- ciples in teaching . and in ruling. Those who departed from, or did not accept, the full teaching of the Apoitles- and their successors, were heretics, followers of their own judgment. But the succession was not due to the mere laying on of hands, though that from the first was a recognized means of conferring the grace which God bestows in answer to prayer ; it was due also to the plain following of the Apostles in teaching, locally and through- out the wide spreading Church. Apostolic succession means a continuity of belief, orders, and jurisdiction. And holy orders" are three : those of bishop, priest, and deacon. To each of these belong particular functions : the bisholis to admit into the ministry of the Church by ordination to a sacred function : the priests to minister to the people, and on their behalf, the sacraments which the Lord has ordained and the Church continuously accepted ; and the deacons, as in the Acts of the Apostles, to serve those in higher office in spiritual works of teaching and of charity. The Catholic Church as a continuing body has never parted with the belief in the necessity of a con- tinuous ministry, of men definitely set apart by those who have by succession exercised authority froin the earliest organization of the Church. Not till the six- teenth century was the ancient doctrine and the need of succession seriously disputed. And it is still believed by those whose unbroken descent from the ancient rulers of the Church is historically certain. But throughout the minister's acts,'whether the bishop's as he ordains or the priest as he celebrates the other sacraments, the function is representative. In no way does the ordained minister stand between the people and God : he acts solely on their behalf, because the whole Church has delegated to him the authority so to do, and has believed that God has given to His ministers power and commandment to do these acts. The priest is at once the minister of men and the minister of God. The power comes from the Body of which Christ is the Eternal Head.
Into this Body and by this means, then, man becomes a Catholic Christian. He belongs to that Society of which the faith and the organization are universal. And through this admission much more is involved. Baptism is in- complete, as the Apostles saw, without Confirmation, the gift, as from the ancient days it was called, of the Holy Spirit, whereby man receives the full spiritual powers which God bestows upon His servants. And for the main- tenance and the growth of these powers divine means are given. The Lord the same night that He was betrayed showed how this was to be ; and there is no stronger proof of the meaning and continuity of the Church than the unbroken succession in the holy communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Other gifts of God come to men through the mediation of a ministerial priesthood, those which the English Articles say are commonly called sacraments. The Church is knit together by the ordinances which have been her means of grace always everywhere and to all men. And what any part of the Catholic Church teaches or observes which another part does not cannot be of the essentials of Catholicism. Here it is that we can believe the Church of Rome, the Churches of the East, and the Churches of the Anglican Communion to be undoubtedly parts of that Holy Catholic Church which the Creeds proclaim. Weakness, arrogance, sin, in Churches as in individuals, mar and delay the triumph-of the Lord Jesus : so long as the world lasts the human side of the Church will not be perfect, though the divine in it will grow, expand, and reveal the action of the Spirit of God to " the end of the age." .
The Catholic .Church then has the doctrine. of Christ, the limits of membership, and the distinctness of obliga- tion which set it apart from the world and from those who do not accept that teaching which is age-long and unalterable. That is the meaning of " extra eecle- slam nutlet salus." At Lausanne last year the- learned vigorous and kindly Archbishop of Athens said this, which represents the Eastern Orthodox view the Church " is a divinely instituted fellowship of men united with one another by the same faith, sanctified by the same mysteries, and governed by those pastors and teachers whose office originated in the Apostles." This definition is very much the same as that by which the English Article 19 describes the conditions through which a National Church is a true member of the Church Universal : " A congregation of faithful men [i.e., _those _ who have faith in Christ] in the which the pure word of God is preached and the Sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things which of necessity are requisite to the same" [i.e., matter, form, and apostolic ministry].
But when all is said, the Catholic Church never forgets, though her opponents too often fancy that she forgets, the words of St. Augustine, which express most simply and truly _what is an abiding principle of her faith and hope : " The redeemed family of Christ the Lord,, the pilgrim city of Christ the King, will ,remember that even among her enemies are concealed those who will be her citizens, and so she will not think it unprofitable to bear with their hostility until she can meet them as confessors
[Next week Canon Edward S. Woods, Vicar of Croydon, contributes an article, " The Sermon on the Mount in 1929." Previous articles in this series have been : "Philosophy and Religion," by the Archbishop of York, "The Elements of Religion," by Professor Albert A. Cock, of University College, Southampton, " Evolution and Revealed Religion," by Dr. Charles E. Raven, " The Nature of Christ," by Dr. Alfred Garvie, Principal of New College, Hampstead, and Hackney College, " The Gospels as Historical Documents," by Professor C. H. Turner, " The Miraculous Elements in the Gospels," by Dr. Gordon Selwyn, " The Ethic of Christianity," by Dr. F. R. Barry, " The Witness of the Saints," by Evelyn Underhill, " The Philosophy of Prayer," by the Abbe Bremond, D.Litt., Member of the French Academy, " The Meaning of Sacraments," by Canon Oliver Quick, of Carlisle, " The'Spirit of Catholic Devotion," by the Rev. Martin D' Arcy, and "The Spirit of Orthodox (Eastern) Devotion—I. and II.," by Professor N. Arseniev.]
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