Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
(Again, this particular session is actually all Fr Will; not Fr Staley)
Church of the Holy Cross
August 10, 2008
Part 21
We are still paused to look at “catholicity” as it relates to doctrine.
(We’re headed back toward: Christian
Duty: Christian Belief: The Three
Great Creeds: Concerning God:
Jesus Christ: The Incarnation:
The Blessed Virgin Mary)
- We have paused for the last two sessions to reconsider what catholicity means for us.
o Being catholic really means being a Christian – and conversely, non-catholic ways of being Christian are therefore atrophied iterations of Christianity – something is wanting in them.
§ And that is because Jesus is the bestower of catholicity. It belongs to him, and he gives it to his Bride, the Catholic Church. She is “Catholic” because she is His, and He is Catholic.
§ Being a Catholic means being brought into the “one new man” (Eph. 2.15) who is Jesus Christ, in whom we are reconciled to God and to one another. This means being a part of God’s plan for redeeming all of creation. Because this divine plan into which we are incorporated is universal in scope, we are “catholics” – because the plan is universal, and Jesus Christ is universal.
§ So being a Catholic Christian means, in a sense, being a “churchman” – belonging to the Bride of Christ, who is our Mother. We are begotten from the water and the blood flowing from the wounded side of our Lord’s Body (another word for the Church).
· Remember the Lord’s words to Nicodemus:
o [Nicode'mus] came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew [Grk: anwqen - “anew” or “from above”] he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicode'mus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3.2-6)
§ This means we are made new by these two great Sacraments of which “Holy Mother Church” is the dispenser: Baptism and the Eucharist. They are part of the Catholic Church’s “dowry” – what she is given by her husband, Jesus Christ. And also because she is mystically identical with his Body:
· The Catholic Church is “the Body of Christ” – because they are
Bridegroom and Bride: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'… So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 19.5-6). And the water and the blood flow from the wounded Body – the “one flesh”.
o So being a Christian means being a part of the “one new man” – the
universal Body of Christ, the Catholic Church.
§ “Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sos'thenes, To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…” (1 Cor 1.1-2).
· You see here the primacy of universality, of catholicity. There is one, catholic “church of God” and it subsists “at Corinth” – because the Corinthians are called to sanctity (another attribute of the Church – “we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”) “together with all… in every place” who call on the name of Jesus. So the call to holiness is in virtue of our being a part of the fellowship of the Catholic Church.
§ And being a Christian means (in part) a unity in Catholic doctrine (in Latin doctrina means “teaching” from docere – “to teach”).
· “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… teaching them … and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28.19-20).
o You see in this verse that “Catholic Doctrine” is a mandate of Jesus. Its about “teaching them” (doctrine) and its about “all nations” (catholicity).
o Combine this passage with the one above from 1 Corinthians, and you see that we are “called to be saints together with” those from “all nations” who have received the teaching of the Apostles.
§ This is not merely a geographic unity – in other words, its not only, as Paul says, a unity of those “in every place” – its also a unity of those in every time who have received the teaching of the Apostles, Catholic Doctrine.
· When Pope Benedict came to America recently, he addresses an ecumenical gathering of Christian leaders (including the Episcopalian Bishop of New York, Mark Sisk who filled in for our Presiding Bishop, who had something else to do that day). He said this:
o “Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called ‘prophetic actions’ that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition. Communities consequently give up the attempt to act as a unified body, choosing instead to function according to the idea of “local options”. Somewhere in this process the need for diachronic koinonia – communion with the Church in every age – is lost, just at the time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel.”
o Now he is talking about our own time, but his words are equally applicable to aberrations from Catholic Doctrine in any age. Remember that Christian unity in the teaching of the Apostles (“Catholic Doctrine”) is, according to Jesus, his gift “so that the world may believe” (John 17.21-23). And the phrase to notice is “diachronic koinonia”. Koinonia is the Greek word for “fellowship” (as in Acts 2.42: “they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship [Koinonia], to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
· St. Vincent of Lerins (born late 300’s or early 400’s) wrote in his
work The Commonitory that Scripture must be our guide in all matters of doctrine, but that a problem arises when people interpret Scripture differently. It therefore must be interpreted in accordance with the tradition of the Catholic Church, and the lenses of interpretation must be 1) antiquity, 2) universality, and 3) consent. Pithily put, we believe: “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus” – what was believed everywhere, always, and by all.
o “With regard to antiquity, that interpretation must be held to which has been handed down from the earliest times; with regard to universality, that which has always been held, if not by all, at least by the most part, in preference to that which has been held only by a few; with regard to consent, the determination of a General Council on any point will of course be of summary authority, and will hold the first place; next to this, the interpretation which has been held uniformly and persistently by all those Fathers, or by a majority of them, who have lived and died in the communion of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, whatsoever interpretation of Holy Scripture is opposed to an interpretation thus authenticated, even though supported by the authority of one or another individual teacher, however eminent, whether by his position, or his attainments, or his piety, or by all of these together, must be rejected as novel and unsound” (from “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers”, Series II, Voulme 11).
· We see this principle at work even in the apostolic age of the Church:
o “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thes. 2.15).
· With respect to the doctrine of “sola scriptura” or “scripture alone” (propounded, I am told, by Martin Luther): 1) it is itself not found in Scripture; 2) it assumes that Scripture is perspicacious, which it isn’t; and 3) the Church existed for some time without the New Testament, so we know as an historical datum that catholicity (and Catholic Doctrine) precedes Scripture.
In his biography of St. Silouan the Athonite (d. 1938) (which I have lately been reading), Archimandrite Sophrony (d. 1993) put it this way: The life of the Church means:
…life in the Holy Spirit, and Sacred Tradition the unceasing action of the Holy Spirit in her. Sacred Tradition, as the eternal and immutable dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the church, lies at the very root of her being, and so encompasses her life that even the very Scriptures come to be but one of its forms. Thus, were the Church to be deprived of Tradition she would cease to be what she is, for the ministry of the New Testament is the ministry of the Spirit ‘written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stones, but in the fleshy tables of the heart’ [2 Cor. 3.3].
Suppose that for some reason the Church were to be bereft of all her books, of the Old and New Testaments, the works of the holy Fathers, of all the service books – what would happen? Sacred Tradition would restore the Scriptures, not word for word, perhaps – the verbal form might be different – but in essence the new Scriptures would be the expression of that same ‘faith which was once delivered unto the saints’ [Jude 3]. They would be the expression of the one and only Holy Spirit continuously active in the Church, her foundation and her very substance.
The Scriptures are not more profound, not more important than Holy Tradition but, as said above, they are one of its forms – the most precious form, both because they are preserved and convenient to make use of. But removed from the stream of Sacred Tradition, the Scriptures cannot be rightly understood through any scientific research….
Men are wrong when they set aside Sacred Tradition and go, as they think, to its source – to the Holy Scriptures. The Church has her origins, not in the Scriptures but in Sacred Tradition. The Church did not possess the New Testament during the first decades of her history. She lived then by Tradition only – the Tradition St. Paul calls upon the faithful to hold [cf. 2 Thes. 2.15, above].
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