Catholic Apologetics Online

Choose a topic from Vol 2:

God

Man

Religion

The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Faith

A Definite Christian Faith

The Protestant Reformation

The Truth of Catholicism

The Church and the Bible

The Dogmas of the Church

The Church and Her Moral Teachings

The Church in Her Worship

The Church and Social Welfare

Comparative Study of Non-Catholic Denominations

To and From Rome

Origin of the Church

283. When did the Church begin?

When Jesus called the Apostles to follow Him. They were taught by Him, given various necessary powers to act in His name, and finally sent to all the world on Pentecost Sunday, after having received a special communication of the Holy Spirit.

284. Modernists say that it cannot be proved that Christ ever referred to His Church as such, though He did have an idea of calling into being a community of faith.

Modernists dare not admit that Christ actually founded a visible and definite Church. If they did they would have no excuse for not submitting to the Catholic Church. Therefore, so long as they are bent on remaining non-Catholics, they must find some other solution. The concession that Jesus did intend to call into being a community of faith is a suggestion that Christ merely taught some nice moral principles, and that independently of Christ's will, later Christians were led by practical needs to adopt a discipline and establish a visible organization. So the origin of the Catholic Church can be explained by historical and natural evolution--and of course no one is obliged to accept that in the name of Christ!

285. Jesus refers to the Church only in two texts of doubtful validity, and of course it is tempting to identify the kingdom with it, since the mind of Christ was constantly preoccupied with the kingdom.

The texts in which Jesus speaks of the Church are not of doubtful validity. It is a modernist trick to hint that troublesome texts are either spurious, or at least of doubtful validity. The texts in question are perfectly sound and authentic; and if modernists reject or doubt them, it is merely because they don't like them. And if modernists do find it tempting to identify the Church with the kingdom, the sooner they yield to that temptation the better, for then they may discover the true Church at last.

286. If we accept the modernist conclusion, the community of faith is not necessarily identifiable with any present-day Church.

That is the modernist conclusion. But it is based on the false premise that Christ gave only some nice beliefs and moral teachings and did not establish a definite Church. The kingdom of Christ was not anarchy. He organized it, sending the Apostles as a corporate body to teach the nations and rule them in His name. The denial of this imputes to the early Bishops, trained by the very Apostles themselves, the gravest of sins--the deliberate distorting and perverting of the work of Christ. Those Bishops, most of whom died martyrs for the love of Christ, would have imposed upon the faithful a constitution invented by themselves, yet masquerading as the will of Christ, and to be accepted by an act of divine faith. Moreover, such a denial imputes to the faithful of those early times a bland indifference and a crass folly which would submit without a murmur to so fraudulent and lying an imposition. When St. Paul told the early Christians to obey their prelates, they would have asked what prelates! St. Paul knew that they knew and accepted the constitutional authority he preached. The kingdom of Christ is necessarily identifiable with the Catholic Church today.

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MORE FROM VOLUME 2

• About the Author
• Introduction
  - Rev. Charles Mortimer Carty
• Preface
  - John Gregory Murray
  Archbishop of Saint Paul
• Forward
  - Dr Leslie Rumble, MSC

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