Traditional Catholic Teaching - Lesson 3

Lesson 3 - The Church

Christ's public teaching and preaching was spread over rather less than three years. How was His work to continue after He had left the world? It continues by means of the Church which He founded.

I am the way and the truth and the life, He said. (John 14.)

And now the Church teaches us the truth about God and man, shows us the way to go to God, and brings us to life and keeps us alive spiritually so that we can go to God.

Did Christ Found A Church?

There are those who say that Christ did not found a Church. They say He launched ideas; He set on foot a religious movement in a vague and general way; He gave an example. That all this talk of teaching, of authority, of ceremonies is the creation of men. They say that after the death of Christ little bodies of men gathered together, set up some organisation of a loose sort if they felt like it and that was all. They will admit that these "Churches" are useful for those who feel the need of them. But, they say, Christ never intended to set up any one particular organisation.

The Catholic holds the exact opposite. We hold that Christ intended and Christ proclaimed that He was leaving behind Him a definite organisation with a head; with a body of teachers speaking with authority; with fixed method of entry and mode of procedure.

More than that He proclaimed that this body which He called "My Church" would be the very means by which we would come to life again, be re-born, re-made. It is in the Catholic Church that we begin the life that we will enjoy in its fullness in heaven with God.

His First Teaching

When Christ first began His public life His preaching was simple, open and given to the masses of the people at large. He spoke in their homes, in the fields and streets, on the hillside. He spoke to all.

But already He was gathering together a small select body. He made that twelve should be with Him, says the Gospel. These twelve were the Apostles. (The word "apostle" is from the Greek meaning an envoy "one who is sent".) Some months after He had started His preaching there came a sort of crisis. He had healed a sick man. And the crowd instead of thanking God began to murmur that Christ was in league with the devil.

Special Training For The Apostles

From that time He spent more and more time with the twelve Apostles. He began to preach in parables. He would tell the people a parable, a story like the story of the sower who went out to sow his seed. (Matthew 13). But He left it at that. He did not explain it any further to the people. But He did explain it to the twelve Apostles when they asked Him. He said to them:

To you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God
but to the rest in parables. (Luke 8.)

So that if any man of good will listened to Christ He must be prepared to do something himself. He must make an effort to find out more about Christ's teaching. And how was he to find out? By going to the Apostles and asking them to explain. They had the special guidance of Christ. They were the authorised representatives. In the same way we have to go to the Church and to the successors of the Apostles to find out what is the true teaching of Christ. Right from the beginning we see that the Church of Christ must speak with authority.

Christ Creates An Organised Church

HE set up an organised body. He described it in different ways. He called it a Kingdom. He called it a net cast into the sea in which there are good fish and bad. He called it a field in which there is good wheat and weeds to be separated at the harvest. He called it a sheep-fold of which He is the Good Shepherd. He called it quite definitely "My Church" when Simon acknowledged Him as God and Christ changed his name to Peter which means a rock and said:

Upon this rock I will build My Church. (Matt. 16.)

This Church is so carefully organised by Christ that there is a definite way of entering it — by Baptism.

Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit he cannot
enter into the Kingdom of God. (John 3.)

Once a man is a member of this Church there are certain definite things to do. He must go, for instance, to the Apostles for forgiveness of sins because it was to the Apostles that Christ said:

Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven, whose sins you shall retain they are retained. (John 20.)

He must receive Christ in Holy Communion:

Except you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood you shall not have life in you. (John 6.)

And the Apostles are the ones who are commanded to give Christ to the others. At the Last Supper when He said over the bread and wine:

This is My Body. This is My Blood.

He also said to the Apostles:

Do this for a commemoration of Me. (Luke 22.)

The Church Has Authority

But what makes an organisation, as opposed to a loose gathering of individuals, is authority. Now Christ gave authority to teach and rule His Church quite definitely to the body of men that He had picked and trained — the Apostles.

Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, He said, shall be bound also in heaven.
Whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matt. 18.)

The final commission He gave them can be read St. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 28. It sums everything up. He reminded them first of all that He Himself had complete authority divine and human:

All Power is given to Me in heaven and in earth.

(They will remember that He once said: As the Father hath sent; Me I also send you.)

Going therefore teach ye all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.

Four times He uses the word "all".

All power belongs to Him.
They are to teach all nations — not just Jews or Greeks or Europeans but all men. The Christian religion is to supersede all other religions.
They are to teach men all things that Christ had commanded. Not just what they felt might be convenient or comfortable or "in accordance with modern thought". But all things that Christ had commanded; neither more nor less.
Christ promised to be with them all days. The Church would last till the end of time and Christ would guide it forever.

The Church Has A Head

The authority that He gave to the Apostles as a body He gave in a particular manner to the one whom He chose to be head of the Apostles, Simon whom He re-named Peter (Matt. 26.)

Thou art Peter He said, and upon this rock I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it and to thee I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth it shall be bound also in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth it shall be loosed also in heaven.

The Church Is Infallible

Moreover at the Last Supper with His Apostles He promised them the special guidance of the Holy Spirit:

The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind whatsoever I shall have said to you. (John 24.)

From all this it is clear that Christ intended that His work of teaching and ruling men should be carried on by His Church; and that He guaranteed that His Church would be infallible. Which means that the Church can never go wrong in her teachings as to faith or morals.

Here is how the matter appeared to a clergyman of another Christian body who became a Catholic. He was disturbed because he had to face the fact that within the borders of his own denomination there was no unity of teaching. In the next parish to his own the people were being taught quite different doctrine from what he was teaching. "We were both clergymen and we were both flatly contradicting each other from our respective pulpits."

This is what he writes in his account of how he became a Catholic. "The whole question boiled down to the question of infallibility, and on that everything hung."

"I entered upon an intensive study of the point. I read the history of the doctrine, the Fathers and the Councils of the Church and what they had to say; examined its rationality. At the end of some months I came to this conclusion — that as far as Holy Scripture, history and reason were concerned the Catholic Church could prove her claim to be God's infallible teacher up to the hilt."

"If, as outside the Catholic Church, Christian doctrines are a matter of private judgment, and therefore the Christian religion a mere matter of human opinion, then there is no obligation on any living soul to believe in it. Why should I stake my immortal soul upon human opinion? For that is all you have it you refuse the infallible Church."

"In itself her claim may he reduced to this; the Catholic Church, when she defines a doctrine of faith or morals when she tells us what to believe and what to do — in a word, what the Christian religion is — then, and then only, she is prevented by God from making a mistake from teaching untruth. The Church is God's mouthpiece — His voice. Could God's voice speak untruth?" (What I Found. By Owen Francis Dudley. In The Road to Damascus; Allen, "Pinnacle Books" 2s.)

In short the Church now continues the work of Christ with the authority of Christ and with the certainty of Christ. As He said to His Apostles:

"He that heareth you heareth Me,"

The Church Gives Us Life

So far we have spoken of the Church as the way and the truth. But the Church is also the life. Christ lives on in His Church. We live spiritually by being joined to Christ in His Church. The example Our Lord gave was that of a vine:

Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abide in the vine so neither can you less you abide in Me. 1 am the vine you the branches. He that abideth in Me and I in him the same beareth much fruit for without Me you can do nothing. (John 25.)

St. Paul in the Scriptures uses the example of a body. The Church is the body of Christ. The members of the Church are the limbs and organs of the body. So when we become members of the Church of Christ we are no longer alone. We have all the strength, the guidance, the teaching of Christ.

And so in the Church we can know God as we ought to know Him (that is Faith) We can trust God as we ought to trust Him (that is Hope). We can love God as we ought to love Him (that is Charity).

The Catholic Church is Christ's Church

If then we would find which among the various bodies that claim the name of Christian is the true Church of Christ what must we look for? We must look for a Church with Baptism with Christ really present under the appearance of bread and wine, with the forgiveness of sins.
We must look for a Church which speaks with authority, which knows its own mind.

We must look for a Church which has an unbroken link with the Apostles. We must look for the successor of St. Peter.

Now among the bodies which claim the name of Christian only the Catholic Church can show all the marks listed above.

In particular among all the Christian bodies in England only the Catholic Church knows its own mind and speaks with authority

Catholics are glad to acknowledge that there are great numbers of Protestant Christians who love Christ Our Lord and follow him as best they can. But all that is good in each of the Protestant bodies is found in the Catholic Church. They all derive their goodness from the Catholic Church from which they separated.

But only in the Catholic Church is there clearly seen Authority — and only in the Catholic Church is there the successor of St. Peter.

In Lesson 5 we shall explain further how the Pope is the successor of St. Peter.

But before that we shall, in Lesson 4, look at the Catholic Church from the outside, We shall show that, even if we leave aside the Gospels for the moment, the Catholic Church is so remarkable a thing that its existence can only he explained by the hand of God.

Is One Religion As Good As Another?

There is good in all religions. But the best religion is true religion. The true religion is Christ's religion. We hold that is the Catholic Church which He founded.

Once a man knows that Christ is God: that Christ founded a Church: that the Catholic Church is that Church: then there can only be one fully true Religion for him.

End of Lesson 3

Supplement A

Supplement B: "Calling In The Desert"

Appendix: "The Sadducees and the Pharisees"

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