Radio Replies Vol 4 - Catholic Apologetics Online

It is not proof of that at all. What, then, does account for it? It is not because a larger percentage of Catholics fail to practise their religion than Protestants, even though Catholics who do yield to crime are failing in the practice of their religion. For there are far more Protestants than Catholics who are indifferent to religion. Again, it is not because there are proportionately more wicked people among Catholics than among Protestants. The kind of wickedness that lands a man in jail is not the only kind of wickedness. There is plenty of wickedness which does not happen to violate civil law which wealthier classes regard as even respectable and easily condoned—in this world. If you ask why the kind of sins which offend against civil law are proportionately more numerous among Catholics, the answer is to be found in social conditions. Catholics are more numerous among the poor whose temptations to lawlessness are greater. As Arnold Lunn has pointed out, Catholics may. be but one-fifth of the population in U.SA., but their share of the national wealth would be scarcely one-twenty-fifth. All that criminal statistics prove is that the majority of Protestants are, on the average, better off from this world's point of view than the Catholic minority; and where Protestants are in the majority, Catholics will find their religion no help towards becoming better off.

To a great extent, yes. Many migrant families from Catholic countries in Europe, owing to their lack of knowledge of the English language and their initial poverty had little chance of making good socially in the United States, even apart from the determination of the Protestant majority not to give them a chance. The outbreaks of persecution and oppression on the part of such organizations as the "Know-Nothings," and later of the "Ku-Klux-Klan," propagating hatred of "Catholics, Negroes and Jews," should make Protestants the last in the world to taunt their victims with belonging to an underworld to which they themselves drove so many of them.

The Communist "Guardian" would like to suggest, of course, that the Pope sent his blessing because he approved of Pohl's brutal crimes as a Nazi official. But it omits to tell its readers that Oswald Pohl was not a Catholic but a Lutheran Protestant at the time of the crimes. After being sentenced to death, Pohl was imprisoned at Landsberg, Bavaria. In prison he attended both Protestant and Catholic services. With time on his hands to reflect, he both repented of the crimes he had committed as a non-Catholic and decided definitely to become a Catholic. On his reception into the Church, at the request of friends, the Pope sent him congratulations on his conversion, and invoked God's blessing upon him.

Not by sensible people. When Christ offered to the dying thief on Calvary the consoling words: "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise," it was not because the man had been a thief, but because he had repented of his crimes. The merciful dispositions of the Pope would certainly be preferable to the merciless dispositions of the Communists. When Christ said: "I was in prison and you visited Me," Luke, XXIII, 43, Matt., XXV, 36. He promised to regard as done to Himself even an act of charity to a convicted criminal; and Communists are welcome to charge the Pope with such an act of charity.

So it is. The mercy and compassion of the Catholic Church towards even gangsters and gunmen at the last, doing her best to reconcile them with God, is to her credit, not to her discredit. And those who would make this an accusation against her know nothing of the spirit of Christ.

There is no admission that belief is more important than righteous living. But yours is a strange charge to come from a Protestant. At one time the stock charge was that the Catholic Church insisted on the necessity of good works for salvation. Protestants opposed to the Catholic Church their declaration that people were saved, not by good works, but by faith only. And that doctrine was much more open to the charge that belief is more important than righteous living. But prejudice does not bother about consistency.

He was given ordinary Catholic burial rites. The Church was not responsible for the number of relatives, friends, acquaintances and curiosity- hunters who attended the funeral. As for the mind of the Church, the whole world received cables of the public declaration of Father Raymond Jackson that, whilst the Catholic Church leaves to Almighty God the eternal fate of an individual soul and interprets as mercifully as possible her own law forbidding the burial of notorious sinners who have given no signs of repentance, she absolutely condemns all crime and vice, whether in the underworld with its barbarous and cowardly ways, or in high places where apparently respectable people sacrifice every decent principle for their own contemptible and selfish ends. Those words I quoted over the radio from our own Australian newspapers.

The value of that conclusion is dependent upon the facts that you can advance on its behalf, and the reasonableness of your deductions from them.

Bias has dictated that question. The very expression "tactics" suggests insidious methods, whilst "money-grabbing" suggests the unscrupulous extraction of cash from reluctant people for selfish purposes. None of these implications is true. It is scarcely necessary to say that the. Catholic Church does not ask for money for the sake of having money.

To do good in this world money is necessary. And the Catholic Church undertakes more works of charity than all the others put together. Her schools, her hospitals, her institutions for the deaf and dumb, her homes for orphans, for the aged and the dying, homes for the destitute, and her relief for the poor irrespective of their religious beliefs—all these activities require the expenditure of money. Much of that money is voluntarily subscribed by generous and charitable people. The rest is obtained from various functions organized by voluntary social workers. And the charge of "money-grabbing" is no more justified in regard to the Catholic Church than in regard to the "Red Cross Society" in its efforts to secure financial support for its own humanitarian efforts. That reproaches are not hurled at the "Red Cross" and other similar societies, but are reserved for the Catholic Church is accounted for, not by any real sense of justice, but by religious prejudice.

As people drift from the Christian Faith, heavenly and spiritual realities become less and less important to them, whilst earthly and material interests become more and more important. And they cannot understand any employment of money for religious and charitable purposes. When, therefore, they see people devoting money to such purposes, they cannot believe that they do so willingly. So they think it must be extorted from them, and they interpret "money-giving" as "money-grabbing." Naturally they dispense themselves from similar self-sacrifice on behalf of any church-upkeep and religious activities. If it is nice to say one is a Christian, that is easily said; and it is so comfortable to have nothing to do about it, and so much cheaper, too.

Barcelona has centuries of history behind it, being one of the oldest cities in Europe. Naturally it has a glorious collection of art treasures of all kinds, accumulated gradually throughout its thousands of years of history, many of its most beautiful possessions owing their inspiration to the traditionally Catholic religion of the country. I can well believe that this heritage of art and beauty and piety from all the past ages of Barcelona's history would be worth three times as much as the Golden Gate bridge of which San Francisco is so proud; and ten times more worth seeing in the eyes of visitors with sufficient education and culture to be able to appreciate them.

The accumulated art treasures of Barcelona, whether secular or religious, have nothing to do with commerce. They constitute an heirloom of the ages, a possession of which Barcelona is justly proud, and one which is certainly not for sale. The spirit of commercialism is rather on the side of those who say with Judas: "Why was not this sold for 300 pieces of silver and given to the poor?" "He said this," adds St. John, "not from any concern for the poor." Jn., XII, 6. So it is with critics of the Catholic Church in this matter. Meantime, there are few countries in the world to compare with Spain for a traditional practical charity towards the poor, not only in every age of its history, but on a proportionate scale of generosity which all who are well-informed on the subject find deeply impressive.

He stopped only when he could not think of any further financial or commercial activities, came to the limits of his knowledge of o-e0araphy and found his imagination going on strike against any further demands upon it. Probably he overlooked the more serious charge that the Vatican has secured the controlling interest in the little-known diamond-mines on the moon where specimens are so big that they can only be lifted by enormous derricks, erected with the help of the inter-planetary financiers.

There is no need to do so. Bland assertions without an atom of proof are sufficiently met by an equally bland denial.

You have not devoted sufficient time to research and thought on this subject. By far the greater part of the estimated possessions of the Vatican does not constitute "purchasing power" at all. And even if any individuals could afford to buy the immensely valuable cultural collections preserved in the Vatican on behalf of the civilized world, it would be a crime to dissipate them for the merely temporal relief of the poor in a particular generation. One might as well suggest that England should sell the British Museum and all that it contains in order to tide a group of distressed workers over a temporary period of unemployment. As regards expendable revenue, that is necessarily great in a Church consisting of over 420 million adherents, even though every individual diocese has to meet its own local expenses before sending a relatively small subsidy to the Vatican. But the Pope regularly distributes large sums for the relief of the poor in various countries, adjusting disbursements to what he knows to be possible. It is rather presumptuous of people who have no idea of what the Vatican is able to do, nor of what it does do, to condemn it for not doing what they thjnk it ought to do.

It is necessary that they comply with the prescriptions of the Church, and the motive of the Church is that Christ may be duly honored and the dignity of His religion upheld. The vestments prescribed by the Church cannot fail to impress one with respect for the sacred office held by the Pope and the Bishops. The Pope and the Bishops realize, of course, that not their personal merit, but the office they happen to hold, is the reason for the reverence and respect shown by those who meet them.

There is nothing to prevent a man from being humble and simple, no matter how high his office, nor how great the respect shown him because of his office. For the rest, however Our Lord may have chosen to humble Himself, it is for us to honor Him, both in Himself and in His representatives. As a matter of fact, at various times, Our Lord took care that His power and glory should be manifested with an outward splendor we can never hope to imitate. His birth into this world was heralded by the singing of a heavenly choir of angels. Kings from the East came to greet Him with their ceremonial gifts. The ritual of His entry into Jerusalem with a procession of enthusiastic disciples, the waving of palms and hymns of joy, was quite in accordance with Catholic principles. In fact, when the Pharisees rebuked the people for making such a display, Christ rebuked the Pharisees, saying: "If these hold their peace, the very stones will cry out." His transfiguration in a blaze of glory was an indication of the honor in which we should hold Him at all times.

You betray an inadequate knowledge of the Gospels. Christ lived at home with Joseph and Mary until He began His public life. After that He sometimes slept in the open, so that He could say truly: "The Son of Man has not where to lay His head." But at other times He stayed with friends. Have you forgotten how He said to Zacchaeus: "This day I must abide in your house?" Lk.,XIX,5. He had no objection to dining in the house of the wealthy Pharisee, Simon. His needs were catered for by His disciples, one of whom, Judas, carried the purse. And He sent disciples ahead of Him to arrange accommodation for Him in various cities. It was upon one such city that the disciples wanted to call down fire because the inhabitants, who were Samaritans, refused Him rooms because He was going to Jerusalem. Moreover, good women waited on Him and attended to His comfort wherever He went. St. Luke speaks of certain women, Joanna the wife of Chusa, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto Him. Lk., VIII, 2-3. The very different circumstances now that the Church has been established and each diocese must have a resident Bishop exclude the possibility of Bishops leading the same kind of unsettled life as that of Our Lord. Nor does He want them to do so. The "gorgeous palaces" in which Bishops live exist only in your imagination. The average Bishop's house is anything but a gorgeous palace In large cities a more substantial residence is provided so that there may be accommodation for both local clergy and visitors from other dioceses and States. St. Paul insists that an outstanding quality of a Christian Bishop must be that of hospitality. But this subject is not worth discussing at greater length.

Only among those who know nothing of the subject. Professor Allison Peers, an Anglican, published in 1945 a book entitled, "Spain, the Church and the Orders." He knew Spain as probably no other foreigner to that country. He declared that, for the past twenty years before writing his book, he had spent a quarter of his time in Spain. And he points out that, whilst in the established Church of England the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, gets $60,000 a year, the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain, gets. $7,200 a year. Where the Anglican Archbishop of York gets $36,000 a year, the Bishop of London $40 000 and the Bishop of Durham $28,000, in Spain the Archbishops of Valencia and Seville get $6,000 each, and the Bishop of Barcelona $4,400. In Spain a Dean gets from $600 to $800 yearly; a Canon from $320 to $640- Parish Priests from $80 to $320 per year. There are over 4,000 of the parochial clergy with less than $120 a year, and over 10,000 with less than $160 a year. On page 31 of his book, Professor Allison Peers writes: "Writers of travel-books are always impressed by the splendor of Catholic worship in Spain and by the costliness of the vestments, plate, pictures statues and other adjuncts of worship. But these/of course, are inalienable heirlooms, and even anti-clerical propagandists have never suggested that any of them are sold (or could conceivably be sold) to satisfy the pangs of hunger. They are in a true sense the Church's treasure, for they symbolize the spirit of worship and devotion which is the greatest gift to God But behind the facade of rich heirlooms the Church in Spain is pitiably poor "

Judging by the way He adapted Himself to the conditions of His own time, He would have equally adjusted Himself to these days. He did not mind riding on a colt into Jerusalem on the Sunday before the Jewish Paschal Feast; and He asked to be taken across the Lake of Galilee, rather than walk around it. He would equally have made use of modern means of transport, car, boat, train or plane, whenever they might be useful for His work. One must try to be sensible.

In a sense, yes. In particular cases of administration, and in disciplinary laws not directly connected with revealed doctrines but adapted to circumstances of time and place, the Catholic Church as such could be mistaken in her policy. Thus, looking back on some particular event in history, we could say: "The Church made a wrong move that time, and with disastrous results." But if it is a question of "moral guilt," that cannot be attributed to the Catholic Church as an institution. If any of her members, even of her highest officials, are actuated by evil dispositions, that is their own personal responsibility, not that of the Catholic Church. They did not learn such dispositions from her. As an essentially holy Church she forbids such dispositions, and as an institution she can never be branded with moral guilt. We must remember that in her total reality the Catholic Church is more than the human beings belonging to her in any given age. The fact that she is the mystical body of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and endowed with holiness as one of her essential characteristics, makes it impossible for her responsibility as an institution to extend to anything morally wrong. In that sense she conforms to the description given by St. Paul: "A glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." Eph.,V,27.

To the extent in which the teachings of his particular Church are good and truly Christian, that is true. If his Church taught wrong doctrines or wrong moral principles, then it would not be good to believe or to act according to those. For example, Unitarians do not believe in the Divinity of Christ; and true Christians cannot believe that it is good to deny the Divinity of Christ. So, too, in the moral order, many Protestant Churches teach that contraception is permissible. To live according to that principle would not be good. But even in those teachings which are good, the Protestant would have been given an inadequate knowledge of the Christian religion.

I have. I was brought up in an entirely Protestant environment, and as a Protestant. And I have known, not only good, but really holy people belonging to various Protestant Churches. Moreover, since I became a Catholic and a Priest, I have devoted a lot of time to the instruction of converts and have received into the Catholic Church many who, as Protestants, have been remarkably faithful to moral ideals, people good, sincere and honest from every point of view. And I gladly pay my tribute to them.

Because the good teachings of the Protestant Churches are not really Protestant. When the Protestant movement began, the existent religion was Catholic. The reformers kept a certain amount of the Catholic doctrine they had learned, rejected other sections, and added various errors. Any- good material they took with them from Catholicism is still in Catholicism. The elements proper to Protestantism are the various omissions and errors giving rise to the various sects. The good in Protestant systems is common to both Catholicism and Protestantism, but is essentially Catholic. And whilst a Catholic is holy if he lives up to Catholic principles, a Protestant is holy only if he departs from specifically Protestant principles and acts on Catholic principles, however unconscious of this he may be. It may seem a paradox, but the goodness of Protestants proves the truth of the Catholic religion, for it is due to such Catholic elements as their Churches have retained.

Yes. But not in the same way. Christ established the Catholic Church as His kingdom on earth, and compared it to a field in which good wheat was sown, but which an enemy oversowed with cockle or tares. And He said that the tares would be left growing with the wheat until the harvest. But it was Satan's wisdom, when inspiring separation from the unity of the Catholic Church, to allow some of the good wheat to continue growing with the tares; and it is the presence of this good wheat which accounts for the continued existence of Protestantism. The wheat, however, is not specifically Protestant. It was not the personal contribution of the reformers to the creeds of their new Churches. The specifically Protestant thing in Protestantism is its essential independence of the authority of Christ vested by Him in the Catholic Church; and independence of the authority of Christ is not holiness.

It has been said that the Catholic religion is a beautiful one to die in, but a difficult one to live in. I do not deny the difficulty. How could I, when Christ Himself said: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Matt.,XVI,24. But I do insist that the Catholic religion as no other provides all the'help necessary to meet and surmount that difficulty, for those who have the goodwill to practise that religion fervently.

Surely that is only to be expected! The Catholic Church will never water down Christian ideals to suit anybody. She is ever mindful of Our Lord's words: "Be ye perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect." Matt., V, 48. But she knows that perfection is not the work of a day; and she makes full allowances for the weakness of human nature which alternately succeeds and fails in the struggle for virtue. I doubt whether there is a Catholic in the world who would not tell you that he finds a certain inability to adjust his life to the teachings of his religion, and that he wishes to heaven that he were a better Catholic than he is!

So long as they keep doing that they'll be all right. It is when they stop struggling with themselves that there is need for anxiety. For the Christian life is a warfare, a continual struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. And certainly the road to self-conquest cannot be an easy one. The Catholic Church cannot give virtue to people. She helps them to acquire it. But the building up of a Christian character with the help she offers remains, and must remain, the work of each individual Catholic.

That is true. Christ said that He would establish His Church; and in explaining the nature of His Church and what it would be like He gave many descriptions of it, both directly and indirectly, in various parables. He called it the "Kingdom of God" or at times the "Kingdom of Heaven" in this world. Again, He likened it to a growing tree, to one sheepfold, to a net holding various kinds of fish, and to a holy city. But He gave no express name to His Church. That came later. Acts XI,26, tells us that at Antioch His disciples were first named "Christians." From then on, people spoke of the "Christian Church." At the end of the first century St. Ignatius of Antioch first used the word "Catholic." In his letter to the Smyrneans he wrote: "Where the Bishop is, there is the Catholic Church." And that has remained the traditional name of the true Church established by Christ.

Christ said that His Church would be just what the expression "Catholic Church" means. We must consider, not mere words, but the realities those words are intended to describe. If a man said to his wife: "I see from the papers this morning that Jones met with a fatal accident yesterday," it would not be very reasonable for her to ask: "But does it say that he was killed?" Alternative descriptions of the same thing do not argue to different things. The thing described as the "Catholic Church" is the thing Christ intended His Church to be.

Catholic means universal, as you say. But the Christian Church Christ founded was universal. For He founded a Church which, remaining one and the same, was to go to all nations by His own command, which was to teach mankind all that He had made known to the Apostles, which all who realized its truth would be obliged to join, and which would last all days till the end of time. The word "Catholic" therefore means universality of doctrine; universality of appeal to all men, regardless of their national differences; universality of time from then till the end of the world; and universality of obligation. That the Christian Church had not yet become universal in extent, from the viewpoint of geographical expansion, in the time of Christ did not make it any the less Catholic. His Church was Catholic in principle, with the right and the duty and the power to expand even geographically over the face of the earth. One cannot expect actual geographical universality to be a fact from the very beginning, any more than one can expect the full grown oak tree to be a fact the day one plants a seedling. But the right, duty and power to expand to all the world made the Church Catholic from the viewpoint of geographical expansion, even as it was Catholic in all the other ways I have mentioned. One cannot rightly divorce the Christian religion from its essential requirement of being Catholic.

True. For the word "Catholic" means "Universal", and the universal is the opposite of the particular. The Catholic Church, therefore, cannot be the Church of a particular nation. It cannot be the particular Church founded by a Martin Luther, or a John Calvin, or a Henry VIII, or a John Knox, or a John Wesley. It must be that Church which is outside all national and particular considerations; that Church which was founded by Christ Himself and has remained one and the same Church, through all the ages since the Apostles, to whatever nations or localities it has extended its activities. This one, united, universal Church is the Catholic Church to which no particular, independent and separated Churches can claim to belong. To abandon the Catholic Church yet to claim still to belong to it is impossible.

It means what it meant to those who drew up the "Apostles' Creed," which includes the words: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." If one intends today anything other than they intended then, then he is not really thinking of the Holy Catholic Church at all. Now those who originally compiled the Apostles' Creed intended one visible Church and one only in this world. The term cannot be made to include a whole collection of different Churches, separated from one another and contradicting one another, Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Christian Scientists, Witnesses of Jehovah, Salvation Army, Christadelphians, Plymouth Brethren, and so on almost indefinitely! Those who wrote the Apostles' Creed never dreamed of such a thing.

If the Catholic Church is a body in Christ, of what is it a body? It is a body of visible human beings living in this world. Therefore it is a visible body, one organic body, a definite association to which men can be known to belong. Men are born of God, not of the will of the flesh but of the will of the Father, by the visible external rite of Baptism, the Sacrament instituted by Christ in order to make men members both of Himself by grace and of His one visible Catholic Church. And if we are looking for the Holy Catholic Church in this world we must find that one visible Catholic Church. To omit all reference to the visible unity of the Church is not to talk about the Holy Catholic Church in the ordinary sense of the word.

That happens to be true of the Catholic Church. There are many flocks, each under the care of a Catholic Bishop; but there is only one fold, that of the one Catholic Church throughout the world. There are many congregations, the Catholics of each parish under the care of their Parish Priest; but all these parishes belong to one and the same Church. There are many sheep; but all are under one shepherd, the Pope, acting in the name of the Good and Supreme Shepherd, Christ Our Lord. To interpret flocks and congregations and sheep in such a way as to include today all those Churches whose founders abandoned the Catholic-Church at the time of the Protestant reformation will not do.

If so there could be no Catholic Church at all. For what is a Church? A Church is essentially an association of human beings united in their religious convictions and practices. If people are united in other things, but not in their religious beliefs and practices, they will create other forms of society, whether national, or civic, or for any purposes based on common interest. But their social group will not constitute a Church. If, then, to form a Church, people must be united in religious convictions and practices, the Church as a Church must exclude from its membership those who do not share in its religious convictions and practices. If it does not do so it will not keep going as a Church but will just dissolve. Also if a Church believes in the truth of its religious convictions it cannot tolerantly admit that other people's opinions opposed to those convictions are equally true. It must be doctrinally intolerant, however tolerant its members may be towards the persons of others who do not belong to it. Truth is necessarily intolerant and exclusive of error. A Church is Catholic which has the full truth, wants all men to have it, welcomes all whatever their nationality who are willing to accept it, yet which defends that full truth by refusing to tolerate any attempts to alter or corrupt it, and excludes from her membership those who reject it. There is one Church which answers to that description; and it is the Catholic Church in the sense that comes to the mind of every normal person before he has time to start thinking how he can juggle with words to make them mean something else.

If one really believes in "One Holy Catholic Church" he cannot speak of "the divided Church." Unity is opposed to division. A genuine Catholic necessarily believes that his Church is one and undivided. The non-Catholic Churches are divided from Rome. They are independent of Rome. They differ from Rome in teaching, in worship and in discipline. They cannot, therefore, be part of the same Church with Rome. Nor, when it comes to practice, do non-Catholics really believe their Churches to be part of the same Church. I myself was brought up as a Protestant. I submitted to Rome. No Protestant has ever suggested that I merely went from one part of the same Church to another. I was told that I ought not to "change my religion," and I was regarded as having gone to another and distinct Church altogether.

One cannot judge the nature of the Church Christ established in this world from His procedure at the last judgment. On the last day some good Mahometan, because he sincerely lived up to what he wrongly thought was right, will find his mistakes overlooked and himself acknowledged by Christ because of his sincerity. Are we to say that it therefore .does not matter whether a man is a Mahometan or a Christian in this world? Everyone who believes Christianity to be true would regard it as a duty to convert Mahometans to Christ even now. And as we cannot justify I^ahometanism against Christianity by the fact that on the last day there will be among the saved many good Mahometans who did not know any better, so we cannot justify Protestant Churches as opposed to the Catholic Church on the score that there will be many good Protestants who did not know any better numbered among the saved. In discussing the Church we must confine ourselves to that subject, and not jump to another subject altogether—that of the last judgment.

It must welcome all peoples without distinction, not with what as non-Catholics they have hitherto believed to be their treasures of faith, truth and beauty, but to the real treasures of faith and truth and beauty contained in the religion of Christ. And of course to be Catholic it must not be a national Church, but one above all merely national considerations. There is one Church which complies with these requirements, the Catholic Church over which presides that Bishop who is successor of St. Peter the Apostle, the present Bishop of Rome, Pope Pius XII. To believe anything else is to contradict Scripture, to ignore history, and to violate reason. In the end, it is the Catholic Church in this sense of the word, or nothing.

Yes. We know that Christ established His Church and called the Apostles, devoting three years to their training. These Apostles He appointed as constitutional officials in His Church, giving them the threefold power to teach, rule and sanctify others in His name. But it is to be noted that He commissioned them, as the appointed officials of His Church, to "teach all nations" and promised to be with them "all days till the end of the world." Now it is clear that the Apostles themselves could not "teach all nations;" nor could they personally live "all days till the end of the world." Yet the Church had to continue, and with the constitution Christ had given it. It follows that the power and the authority of the Apostles must have been transmitted to their official successors. For evidence that this did happen we can scarcely look to the New Testament itself, which was written whilst the Apostles were still alive; but documents from the earliest days of the Church record the fact. Thus St. Clement of Rome, writing before the end of the 1st century, tells us that the Apostles appointed others to succeed them St. Clement knew the Apostles personally, and is himself mentioned by name in the New Testament, Philip, IV, 3. In the 2nd century St Irenaeus in his controversy with the Gnostics who claimed to possess secret doctrines derived from the Apostles, pointed out the publicly known succession of the Bishops in the Church from the Apostles, enumerating particularly the Bishops of Rome as successors of St. Peter, and declaring that no authority could belong to the teachings of those not in union with these official successors of the Apostles.

Catholics do not maintain an unbroken line in the sense you have in mind. We do not hold that, after the death of one Pope, there cannot be any intervening period before the election of another. Constitutionally the Papal Office remains, whilst an unbroken continuity of Apostolic orders and jurisdiction is ever maintained in the Catholic Church.

We do not claim that. We claim that there has never been a break in the continuous transmission of valid priestly and episcopal orders in the Catholic Church from the Apostles themselves, a subject with which I have dealt in the previous chapter, nos. 94-101. There is bound to be a break of some kind between the death of one Pope and the election of another.

True. Therefore the Apostolic Succession of valid priestly and episcopal orders has continued in the Catholic Church. Also, as an office, the primatial episcopal See of Rome has continued. Naturally that See is vacant between the death of one Pope and the election of another; but the office itself does not go out of existence. It continues with all its prerogatives and authority according to the constitution of the Church. Canon Law itself provides that, on the death of a Pope, some two weeks must be allowed to elapse before the election of another so that the Cardinals even from the most distant places may arrive in Rome in time for the Conclave. That break of two weeks—and it would not matter if it were two months or two years—does not mean a break in the continuity of the Papal Office.

A revised list of the names of the various Popes from the very beginning was then published by the Vatican. This new list is the fruit of many years of critical historical research. At various stages during the past twenty centuries different writers have compiled lists of the Popes until their day, relying on such authorities as were accessible to them. But there were differences between the catalogs on which they relied, sometimes due to copyists' errors, at other times due to lack of historical precision. Some were obviously content with giving an approximate list only, preferring to include rather than omit names of which they were doubtful. In 1947 Vatican scholars published the results of a comprehensive study of all ancient lists, eliminating inaccuracies whereever they had crept in.

There is no need for him to be sure of that. Protestant papers are hard put to it when they have to fall back on such supposed arguments against the Catholic Church! The fact that the Vatican itself published its own correction of previous lists of the Popes should have made the editor of "The Evangelical Christian" realize that the matter was merely one of historical research, with no bearing on the question of the truth of the Catholic Church and its claim to an unbroken succession of Papal authority from St. Peter himself. Catholics have never been required to believe in the infallibility of historians and copyists in recording or transcribing previous records of names and dates belonging to different periods of history! No intelligent scholar or theologian would dream of basing an argument against the Catholic Church on such considerations.

The historical argument. The more I thought over the whole matter the more convinced I became of the truth of Cardinal Newman's statement that "to be deeply read in history is to cease to be a Protestant." Christ had promised to be with His Church all days till the end of the world. The true Church, therefore, must have been in this world all days since His time and must still be here even as it will continue till the end of the world. The Catholic Church is the only Christian Church which can comply with the first of these conditions. She alone has been in this world since the time of Christ and of the Apostles; and if she is not the Church established by Christ, there never was a Church established by Him at all. Believing in the absolute truth of the Christian religion I had no option but to join the Catholic Church.

Yes.

Yes, if one wishes to stress the fact that the headquarters of the Catholic Church are in Rome; not otherwise.

Because the compound title is a very different thing from applying the two terms separately to the Church, which is Catholic because universal and Roman because it has its supreme authority vested in the See of Rome. Also the compound title is self-contradictory. Catholic means universal. To prefix the word Roman as limiting Catholic would mean the "not-universal universal Church!" Thirdly, the Catholic Church has expressly rejected the expression "Roman Catholic" as a right description of itself. Finally, Protestants invented the term "Roman Catholics" in order to pretend that there were other kinds of Catholics. It would be wrong to confirm them in that mistake.

I am quite sure not one of my radio listeners is in any doubt. No one dreams that I am speaking of the Greek Orthodox Church or of any of the Protestant Churches. In the 4th century, 1600 years ago, St. Augustine wrote: "Although all heretics would fain call themselevs Catholics, yet to the inquiry of any stranger, 'Where is the assembly of the Catholic Church held?' no heretic would dare point out his own basilica or house." He wrote that when speaking of the Manichaean heretics. Today he would have to write it in reference to the various forms of Protestantism.

Not if you are thinking in terms of a person's religion only. If you are thinking of two totally different things, the place where a person lives and also the religion he professes, then just as a person living in Australia might say: "I'm a Melbourne Catholic," or "I'm a Sydney Catholic," and just as a person living in America might say: "I'm a Boston Catholic," or "I'm a Chicago Catholic," so a person living in Italy who is a citizen of Rome could call himself a "Roman Catholic." But obviously the term "Roman" would not refer to his religion but to his place of domicile.

The High-Church Anglican Bishop W. H. Frere explains it as follows in the "Dictionary of English Church History." When, after the death of Mary Tudor, the break with Rome was renewed in England under Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) it became necessary to find some name for those who remained loyal to the Pope and refused to accept the new English Church. At first they were called "Recusants." They themselves spoke of them^lves as "Catholics," and of all others as "heretics." The "heretics" spoke of themselves as "Protestants" and of Catholics as "Papists." Many Anglicans, however, denied that they had forfeited their right to the title "Catholic," and they adopted the terms "Romish" and "Roman" as a qualifying adjective suitable for the recusant Catholics. So it was in Elizabethan times that Anglicans invented the expression "Roman Catholic." In reality, of course, the Catholics of England remained just as they had ever been, one with the Catholics of France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and other countries on the Continent, whom no one thought of except simply as Catholics.

It does. But the two words "Romana Catholica" do not appear there thus associated. The word "Catholica" stands alone, unqualified by the word "Romana." The Catholic Church leaves no room for the idea that there can be different kinds of Catholics, some in union with Rome, others not. One can rightly speak of a Holy Church, of a Catholic Church, of an Apostolic Church, or of a Roman Church in the sense explained under No. 249 above. But one cannot rightly speak of a "Roman Catholic" Church.

He does not. I have the document in question. It is addressed to Bishops having "peace and communion with the Apostolic See and to all the faithful throughout the world." Nowhere in the Encyclical, from beginning to end, does the Pope use. the expression "Holy Roman Catholic Church." He uses the official title once in the text: "Sancta Ecclesia Catholica Romana," which is correctly translated, "The Holy Catholic and Roman Church," not "The Holy Roman Catholic Church."

In official dealings with legal authorities because those legal authorities themselves insisted upon it, yes; but that does not mean that they approve of the term or think of themselves as "Roman Catholics." When Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the throne the Catholic Bishops sent her a congratulatory message on behalf of the Catholics of England. The Home Office refused to present it to her unless the wording was altered to read: "on behalf of the Roman Catholics of England." But the Queen knew quite well that they had not willingly so described themselves, and in her reply of grateful acknowledgment she graciously and courteously avoided the term and wrote that she thanked the "Catholics" of England for their kind message. The Home Office could do nothing about that!

If so, they have not learned the lesson very well. Not one in 100,000 Protestants, if asked his religion, would say: "I'm a Catholic." He would say: "I'm a Baptist," or "I'm a Methodist," or "I'm an Episcopalian." When caught off their guard they speak normally. And if in an argument they say that they, too, are Catholics, it is not for the purpose of professing their own religion, but for the purpose of denying that ours is the one true religion which they are vaguely and gradually coming to realize must be Catholic.

They may say those words. But anyone can say anything. It is another thing to prove the truth of one's claims. When the Apostles' Creed was formulated, which contains the words: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," the Protestant Churches did not even exist. So they could not have been intended. Nor does any Protestant dare to say that his is the Catholic Church. When pressed for an explanation he has to say that he really only belongs to a "bit of it." But the Catholic Church cannot be a thing of bits and pieces. One no more becomes a Catholic merely by saying: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," than I, an Australian, would become an American merely by saying: "I believe in America."

That sounds very learned. But notice that the words occur in the "Constitutio Dogmatica de Fide Catholica"; i.e., in the "Dogmatic Constitution Concerning the Catholic Faith." Simply that. "Concerning the Catholic Faith." No mention of the "Roman Catholic Faith." Again, it is the Church which is called "the" Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church. The nature of the Christian Church, not of a mere branch of it, was being defined. • Now for the long description of the Church. There is a difference between a brief title and a formal, official definition. For example, some Americans, if asked their religion, would reply briefly that they were "Episcopalians" the one word would do. Everyone would know to what Church they belonged. But the formal and official description adopted by their Church is: "The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America"; "Protestant" to show they were not "Catholics"; "Episcopal" to show they still believed in having Bishops; "Of the United States of America" to show they were not still to be identified with the National Church in England. In the same way, the Vatican Council spoke simply of the "Catholic Faith," but gave the formal and official definition of the Church which accords with that Faith as "The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church"; "Holy" to show that her chief concern is the salvation and sanctification of souls; "Catholic" to show that she is not limited to Englishmen or to Americans, but is truly universal, drawing her members from all nations; "Apostolic" to show that the true Church must, as she alone can, be able to trace herself continuously back to the Apostles; and finally, "Roman" to show that whoever belongs to the true Church must be in union with the Bishop of Rome, who is the lawful successor of St. Peter whom Christ made head of the visible Church on earth. There must be a head of the visible Catholic Church somewhere in this world. And if one wants the Catholic Church, he will find its primacy not in Constantinople, not in Moscow, not in Canterbury, but in Rome where St. Peter died and where succession to his office in the Church has continued ever since. It should be noted carefully that the Bishops assembled at the Vatican Council made sure that the word "Roman" was separated from the word "Catholic." When, during the Council, the matter was being discussed, Archbishop Ullathorne spoke at length on the subject, pointing out that the expression "Roman Catholic Church" could be made to imply that we Catholics belong to a part only of the Catholic Church, and not to the Catholic Church in the full and complete sense of the word. The assembled Bishops agreed unanimously that the description could not be accepted and that officially the Church must be described as "The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church," not as "The Roman Catholic Church." People are either Catholics, or they are not. If they are Catholics, they are in union with and subject to the Bishop of Rome. That is the sense of the Vatican Council's formal and official description of the Catholic Church. It is good to get the record straight, even at the cost of so lengthy an explanation. With that I conclude this section. If one is seeking the true Church of Jesus Christ, this shall be the sign which will lead him to it as surely as the shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem were led into the presence of their Savior. He will find it in the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, with which this book is concerned.

On all matters about which she has made an authoritative declaration, yes. It is clear from the New Testament that Christ intended His Church be our authorized teacher, interpreter and guide in Christian doctrine. He bade the Apostles: "Go, teach all nations"; and He said to them: "He that heareth you heareth Me." Matt., XXVIII, 19; Lk., X, 16. In accepting the teaching of the Church we are accepting the authority of Christ vested in her.

No well-instructed Catholic is in such a state of doubt where religious truth is concerned. He is quite sure that the official teachings of the Catholic Church are absolutely reliable. Other Churches which object to what they call the authoritarian teachings of the Catholic Church naturally cannot claim to teach with similar authority themselves. Uncertainty in teaching means uncertainty in believing, leading to all those haunting doubts which you think every else must experience like yourself.

Do you really know any Church? Or the Creed of any Church? Have you ever really studied and learned the teachings of any Church sufficiently well to be able to pass an examination on the subject? If not, your lack of belief may be due to lack of knowledge and not to any reasonable conviction that the teachings of any particular Church are wrong. Certainly you do not know the Catholic Church, the grounds for her claims, dr the nature of her teachingOs .

The very word "Church" means an assembly of people united in the same beliefs and religious practices. One's own mind alone cannot be that. At present you can but say that you belong to no Church; and that your religion, if any, is one of isolated individualism. But such independence of the Church is a wrong attitude to adopt. By his very nature man is a social as well as an individual being; and above all, men should be associated as fellow children of God in their religious acknowledgment of Him as their Heavenly Father, and in the fulfillment of their duties towards Him.

You ask the impossible and the absurd. Moreover, you demand what you would not ask in any other sphere of human knowledge. There is no need of course for bias, save in the good sense of the word—an inclination to believe the good and the true as opposed to evil and falsehood. Apart from that, I say you ask the impossible. Th/e vast majority of men, engaged in other necessary duties, have not time, and most of them have not the training and ability, to verify the foundation of every claim made. Again, you ask the absurd or unreasonable. For it is quite reasonable, once a person has good grounds for confidence in an authority, to accept the teaching of that authority on matters within its competence. You yourself accept that principle in every other sphere of human activity. And there is no reason except bias why the principle of authoritative teaching should be rejected where religion is concerned, yet accepted in law, history, medicine, science, art, music, and every other kind of human culture.

I grant that as it stands. But a truth may be capable of proof, yet some given individual may personally be incapable of proving it. Do you forbid him to assert that truth on the authority of experts whose knowledge and veracity are certain? For example, scientists have proved that the hybridization of plants is dependent upon the chromosome numbers of the plants to be crossed. That is capable of proof, indisputable and unshakable. It has been proved. But 999 people out of 1,000 are not capable of proving it. Do you deny that they have any right to assert it, quoting other authorities for it? Why, then, may not a Christian who is certain of the reliability of his

The Gospels contain part of the truth Christians must believe, according to the sense intended by the Gospels. Notice the two qualifications. The Gospels contain part of what Christians must believe, not all that they must believe. And before we attribute any teaching to the Gospels we must make sure that we have rightly understood the sense intended by those Gospels themselves.

That is the common mistake prevalent among Protestants. The error was introduced by the Protestant reformers in the 16th century against the whole weight of Christian teaching and practice throughout all preceding ages right back to the Apostles themselves. The truth is that the Gospels are not the only source of information we have, nor are they the sufficient source. I include with them the rest of the New Testament which you have overlooked. The whole of the written Word of God is an inadequate and insufficient guide to the full Christian truth. I am putting an idea before you which will be new to you and may even shock you; but for that very reason it is deserving of further thought.

That is true. Since what the Gospels contain is true, all that they teach must be included in the teaching of any Church which claims to be Christian. But since the Gospels do not contain all the truth, there may be much in the teaching of the Church which is not included in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In concluding the Fourth Gospel, St. John himself wrote: "There are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written." John, XXI, 25. And St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: "Stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle." II Thess., II, 14. There he indicates two sources of teaching, by oral teaching and by written documents.

There must not be a conflict between the teaching of the Church and anything truly contained in the Gospels. But, equally certain, an individual's personal ideas as to what the Gospels mean cannot be a substitute for the authoritative teaching of the Church. Christ Himself said: "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen"; i.e., not as a Christian at all. (Matt., XVIII, 17). You must remember that the Church was in existence and doing her work before any of the Gospels was written. In later years, when many different books had been written about Christ and His teachings, it was the Church that decided which of these books were the inspired Word of God, and which were not. We get the Gospels from the Church and we cannot divorce them from the Church. It is a mistake to forget that the Church first taught men the Christian religion, then gave them the Scriptures which she knew to contain nothing in conflict with what she had been teaching. And she has gone on teaching all through the ages just as she did before the Gospels were written. And her teaching is still the authentic guide for Christians as it was in the beginning. The real mistake is to make the Gospels, interpreted or misinterpreted as each man thinks fit, a substitute for the authoritative teaching of the Church.

The Christian religion itself declares that it must be spread and explained to men by other men. Christ ordered His Apostles to go and to teach all nations whatsoever He had taught them. Matt., XXVIII, 20. Those whom the Apostles first converted to Christianity would not have been reasonable had they complained that the Christian religion should have been sufficiently clear to them without any explanation.

No. And it was never meant to be. Its fundamental law for our hearts, that we should love God, and our neighbors for the love of God, is simple enough for the least child. But the Gospel is not simple for our' minds. It contains doctrines about God and man, nature and grace, time and eternity, which are as deep and profound as God Himself. The Gospel does not merely give a program of life apart from doctrine; it gives a doctrine upon which a way of life must be based. And it is essential that we grasp the doctrines taught by the Gospel about God, Christ, the Church, the worship we must offer to God, the means of grace at our disposal, the good and evil destinies possible to man in eternity, and the conditions that will decide each man's fate. All these things can be known with certainty only by those willing to be taught by the Catholic Church which alone has authority to speak in the name of Christ Himself.

When Christ said He would choose the foolish to confound the wise, He was not referring to ignorance as opposed to learning. He was referring to the fact that unbelievers, who think themselves wise, regard as foolish those who have faith in the Christian religion. Some who do not believe in Christ are very ignorant people, whilst others are very clever as regards earthly knowledge. But whether they are ignorant or clever, they imagine that they are wiser than poor fools who believe in Christ. What Christ did mean was that He will not choose proud men who are wise in their own conceit and who are unwilling to be taught even by God to preach His doctrine to the world and share,in His victory over the world, but those who are humble and willing to have faith in what God reveals. Yet this, as I have said, does not mean ignorance. Those called to be priests and to teach others are obliged to fit themselves for the duty by more study than others. God Himself said to the priests of the Old Law, through the prophet Osee: "Because thou hast rejected knowledge I also will reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me." Osee, IV, 6. In writing to Timothy, St. Paul insisted on his duty to study and acquire sound learning. "Attend to reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine," he wrote, "meditate upon these things. Be wholly in these things, that thy profiting may be manifest to all. Take heed to thyself, and to doctrine. For in doing this, thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." I Tim., IV, 13-16. Christ therefore does not want ignorant priests. But if unbelievers think themselves wise, if they think that those who believe in our Lord are fools, they will learn some day that they themselves were the fools, and that those who believed in Christ were truly wise. And that will be their confusion.

St. Paul did not "find" that he was on the wrong track at all. He had completed his training in the true religion, the Old Law of the Jews still then in force, under Gamaliel, one of the most celebrated teachers of the time. Having graduated as a Rabbi or teacher himself, he zealously labored on behalf of the Jewish religion. He did not suspect that the coming of Christ was the coming of the Messiah promised by the Jewish religion, and did not find out for himself that he was mistaken in rejecting the claims of Christ and in still adhering to Judaism. Christ Himself had to step in and appear to him on the way to Damascus; and St. Paul ever afterwards attributed his conversion to this miraculous appearance of Christ, to an immediate and divine revelation, not to his having discovered for himself that his former teachers were wrong and to his having left them "to go his own way."

She does not. She claims to be the true Church, and to have authority from Christ to explain to men all the truths of religion necessary for them to know. This does not put the Catholic Church above the truth, any more than the fact that a lawyer may be able to explain to you the law of the land puts him above the law. The Catholic Church is our God-given guide to the truth revealed by Him. She cannot alter that truth, or take away from it, or add to it. She can but teach and explain it, ever remaining subject to it herself.

No. For not undue submission, but due submission to the authority of Christ vested in His Church is required. If a person thinks that the exercise of any authority is despotism, then he will reject all authority and end in anarchy. When Christ sent His Church to teach all nations whatsoever He had revealed, He conferred on that Church magisterial authority. And because His doctrines are divinely revealed the Church has to insist that faith in Christ demands acceptance of them, her members submitting their own judgment to them. So St. Paul speaks of the mission of the Church to cast down "imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." II Cor., X, 5. Would you hold that submission to the authority of Christ on our part implies "despotism" on His part?

Granted and impartial and intelligent study of the subject, it is true that the Catholic would find reasons only to confirm him in his faith, whilst the Protestant would find reasons calculated to make him doubt his position. Such a Protestant would either become a Catholic, or remain a Protestant at the price of ignoring persistent doubts, or else drift from religion altogether.

Our Lord, of course, must have intended us to possess that certainty and security. He said: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Jn., VIII, 32. Surely Lie intended us to be free from uncertainty, indecision and doubt about all that is necessary for salvation.

The answer to that question could be from what we call the viewpoint of apologetics, or from that of strict theology. Apologetics deals with the rational foundation of faith and with the external facts of history. The Catholic realizes that the Catholic Church alone can trace herself back historically to Christ and the Apostles, whilst all Protestant Churches were founded by men in subsequent times. Then, too, the Catholic Church, truly universal and embracing men of all nations as the religion of Christ should, manifests an extraordinary unity in faith, worship and discipline, offers an inspiration to holiness exemplified by the Saints throughout the centuries, and speaks with the consciousness of a divine authority not to be found elsewhere. These considerations together with many others, give the Catholic a rational certainty of the divine origin of the Catholic religion. From the theological point of view, the certainty of the Catholic arises from the action of God Himself. For it is God who, by divine grace, enlightens one's mind to perceive the truth of what He has revealed and is taught by His Church; and inspires one's will with the determination to cling to it till death even under persecution and threats of martyrdom. Thus both human reason and divine grace co-operate to give one who has the Catholic Faith absolute certainty of his position.

Before asking anyone to believe in the infallibility of the Catholic Church we presuppose that he believes in the Divinity of Christ and in the power of Christ to do what He said He would doï¿½preserve His Church from the possibility of error where divinely revealed truth is concerned. Granted the Divinity of Christ, the terrible thing would be to imagine that, though God, He left no authoritative and infallible Church to safeguard the truth, abandoning men to their own resources so that they would not only fall into doubt, uncertainty and error, but even into despair of ever being able to know with certainty whether they possessed the true religion or not!

Since the infallibility of the Catholic Church cannot possibly be due to any merely human efforts or wisdom, but is due entirely to the power of God, it can in a true sense be called a miracle.. For indeed without God's miraculous protection the Catholic Church could not have remained infallible as Christ predicted it would. As it is, the Catholic Church today is still as St. Paul described it in I Tim., Ill, 15: "The Church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of truth." Catholics who accept the infallible teaching-authority of the Catholic Church know exactly where they stand, whilst others who reject that teaching-authority are not only without certainty, but can never hope to have certainty. Christ never intended His followers to be reduced to such a sad plight.

If it were but self-made, with none but natural and human resources to rely upon, it would indeed be pretentious. But it is not a self-made claim, nor does the Church pretend that merely natural and human resources account for her infallibility. She owes that to the influence of the Holy Spirit, and offers historical evidence to prove that Christ commissioned and guaranteed her in her mission to teach all nations. If I claimed to be able to sentence you to prison it would be a pretentious claim indeed. But if an accredited judge makes the claim it is not pretentious for his claim is, not that he is doing it, but that the State is doing it through him. All he has to do is to prove that he is an authorized agent of the State. And the Catholic Church is quite prepared to prove that she is the authorized agent of Christ in this world.

You can scarcely blame him for speaking in exactly the same way as the Apostle St. Paul spoke. Look up in your New Testament the epistle to the Galatians, I, 8. There you will find St. Paul's words: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." If you do not object to St. Paul's speaking in such a way, why object to a priest saying the same thing of the same religion as that which St. Paul taught?

On the grounds that Christ, having established His Church, declared that He would be with it all days even till the end of the world; Matt XXVIII, 20, and promised that the Holy Spirit of Truth would abide with it forever. John, XIV, 16-17. He Himself said that if a man would not hear and obey the Church he was to be regarded as the heathen. Matt., XVIII, 17. Christ could not oblige us to be guided by the Church unless He guaranteed that the Church could not lead us astray. And tjhe Catholic Church, the only one that claims to be infallible, is the only one in complete harmony with the requirements of the New Testament.

Catholic teaching is derived not merely from the Scriptures but also from Apostolic traditions over and above what is written in the New Testament. Those traditions have been divinely safeguarded and handed down in the Catholic Church from the earliest Christian times. Thus the Catholic Church has preserved the whole of the faith, as St. Jude puts it, "once delivered to the saints." Jude, 3. The whole of the faith once delivered to the saints means more than merely that section of it which was committed to writing in the books "of the New Testament.

It would be strange indeed if centuries of study and meditation did not result in an ever more exact classification and clarification of Christian teaching. Then, too, in every age there have arisen those who,, falling into human errors, have proclaimed as Christian teachings what were not really Christian teachings at all. In such cases the Catholic Church, acting officially in accordance with her divine commission and safeguarded by divine protection, has condemned false doctrines and defined the true doctrines. These definitions neither modified nor added to the original Christian teachings, but gave new statements and clarifications of them.

If the official teachings of the Catholic Church resulted only from the thinking of human beings left to themselves you would be right. If there were no more than that to it, no one could reasonably be asked to make an act of faith in such teachings. Even the best of Catholic theologians is not infallible. Even the Pope, merely as a theologian, is not infallible. The Pope is infallible only when acting as the supreme and official spokesman on behalf of the Catholic Church. Then there is the infallibility of the Catholic Church, exercised through him, the Holy Spirit Himself preserving the Pope from error for the sake of the whole Church. Our faith in the infallibility of the Church, therefore, is not based on the reliability of any merely human thinking, but on the guidance and protection of the Holy Spirit which Christ promised to His Church precisely to preserve it from all error in such vital matters.

I have already quoted St. Paul's words to Timothy (n. 280) that the Church is the "pillar and the ground of truth"; and to the Galatians that an angel from heaven would be wrong were he to preach anything contrary to the Apostolic teaching (n. 282). St. John claimed infallibility for all the Apostles when he wrote: "He that is not of God heareth us not. By this you know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." I Jn., IV, 6. And that the Apostles were conscious of the assistance of the Holy Spirit in their official decisions on behalf of the Church is evident from their declaration at the Council of Jerusalem: "It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." Acts, XV, 28.

There are three classical passages in Scripture showing that infallibility belonged in a very special way to St. Peter, and to the Pope as his successor. In Matt., XVI, 18-19, we find Christ saying to St. Peter: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." In St. Luke, XXII, 31-32, we read: "And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not; and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren." In St. John, XXI, 15-17, we find our Lord commissioning St. Peter to feed His lambs and to feed His sheep; i.e., to provide for His whole flock, preserving all in the true religion. The office granted to St. Peter, with its prerogatives, has continued in the Church all days since then, even as Christ promised to be with His Church all days till the end of the world. And the Pope, as successor of St. Peter, succeeds to the supremacy and infallibility conferred upon that Apostle. From the viewpoint of reason, the infallibility of the Church demands that the final court of appeal in the Church must itself be infallible; and the final court of appeal is the See of St. Peter, occupied by the Pope. If the Pope, as final court of appeal, were not infallible, then the Church itself could go astray in its duty of teaching the truth; and if that happened, then the gates of hell would have prevailed against the Church despite Christ's assurance that such a thing will never happen. It all comes back to faith in Christ. Those who really believe in Christ know that He could and has done what He said He would do. He has rendered His Church, and therefore the Pope as official head of the Church and successor of St. Peter, unable to teach error in His name.

We claim that the Pope is infallible only in his official capacity when declaring a truth essentially connected with divinely revealed religion, and intending his decision to be binding upon all members of the Church throughout the world. He is not infallible in his private capacity. So infallibility does not mean that he cannot be mistaken when not acting officially as supreme teacher in the Church. It does not mean that the Pope could not commit sin in his personal life, as though he were impeccable. It does not mean that he can teach what he likes, or that he cannot go wrong on matters of science, or history, or economics or politics. It means only that God will not permit him to define officially for the whole Church any religious doctrine opposed to the teaching of Christ. For the Christian religion must be preserved intact in this world.

It was not defined as a dogma of the Catholic Faith until then. But the doctrine had been declared and taught in the Church over and over again throughout the preceding centuries. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274, 600 years earlier, wrote that "greater and more difficult questions of the Church" must be referred "to the authority of the Supreme Pontiff" to whose authority it pertains to "determine finally those things which are of faith, so that the faith may be retained without corruption by everyone." (Summa Theologica, Ha. Ilae. Q. I, Art. X). Even though not yet defined technically as a dogma or article of faith, the doctrine was declared at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., when the assembled Bishops accepted unanimously the doctrinal decision of Pope Leo the Great, exclaiming with one voice: "That is the faith of the Fathers, the faith of the Apostles . . . Peter has spoken through Leo."

It was not defined officially as a dogma in the precise terms decided upon by the Vatican Council before 1870 because the particular conditions prevailing in 1870 had not arisen before then. And 1870 was not really such a long time after the Catholic Church was established proportionately to the life of the Church. After all, the Catholic Church is still in its early days, and we are the "early Christians." Since the Church will last all days till the end of the world, people in 10,000 A.D. will look back to our 1954 A.D. much as we look back to 200 A.D. We tend to take altogether a too limited view of history, measuring all by our own small moment in time.

Not when it was defined; before it was defined. At the Vatican Council in 1870 all the Bishops present were quite free to express their opinions in the discussions preceding the definition. The American Archbishop Kenrick, as he had a perfect right to do, expressed his opposition to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility being defined as a dogma of the Faith. But the majority of the Bishops present voted for the definition; and once it was defined all accepted it. Archbishop Kenrick publicly proclaimed the dogma in his cathedral as soon as he arrived back in his Archdiocese in America; and when asked afterwards whether he disowned all his previous arguments against the dogma declared that his public proclamation of it sufficiently indicated their lack of value. Certainly, as Archbishop Kenrick did not regard the definition as any reason for abandoning the Catholic Church, his attitude in the matter cannot afford any reason for not joining the Catholic Church, on whatever other grounds one might be reluctant to do so.

The word "preposterous" means "utterly absurd and foolish." You should at least realize that it cannot be that, in view of its acceptance in all seriousness by millions of Catholics - outnumbering all other professing Christians taken together - millions which include outstandingly intelligent people in all walks of life. At most you should limit yourself to saying that you personally do not think it a well-founded dogma, or that you cannot bring yourself to accept the proofs for it. You are certainly not justified in saying that, properly understood, it is absurd and does not make sense.

There would be reason to complain if, when the Bishops had assembled at the Vatican Council to discuss the matter, freedom had not been granted to them to voice their opinions both for and against the proposal. A minority of the Bishops present disagreed with those who advocated it, and protested against the proposal. All held that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope was a perfectly lawful opinion in the Church. But some of the minority thought that it was not the kind of doctrine that could be defined in accordance with sound principles; whilst others held that, although it could be defined, it would be more prudent to leave it undefined. In the event, the majority of the Bishops decided that it could and should be defined. And that was that. No point of any value is made against the truth of the dogma by pointing to the fact that before it was defined and while they were quite free to do so, a minority of the Bishops expressed views unfavorable to the definition being made.

The full report you have in mind is a forgery. It was written by an apostate priest who was bitterly hostile to the Church he had abandoned, and who did not stop at deliberate lies in his campaign of hatred. The speech he composed and attributed to Bishop Strossmeyer was translated into many languages and published by Protestant papers throughout the world, besides being circulated in pamphlet form. It is still being dishonestly printed and distributed today. Indignantly and repeatedly, during almost twenty years, Bishop Strossmeyer repudiated and denounced that forgery. And the publication of the official Acts of the Vatican Council has made it clear that no such speech was made at the Vatican Council by any Bishop.

There was. And he was strongly opposed, not to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, but to the advisability of defining it at that particular time. He was a Croatian who had great hopes of winning back to Catholic unity the schismatic Orthodox Churches in the Balkans, and he felt that the definition of Papal Infallibility might prejudice his efforts. He therefore spoke against the proposal; but he said nothing resembling the forged speech unscrupulous enemies of the Church have branded with his name.

That, is not true. He at once declared his acceptance of it, and made it quite clear that he would not consider for a moment the thought of abandoning the Catholic Church. It took him some time, however, to get over his disappointment that the definition had not been deferred, and to surmount his fears that its publication would be a setback to his efforts to win the Orthodox Slavs to Catholic unity. He delayed the promulgation of the Decree in his own Archdiocese for almost two years, finally promulgating it in 1872. And from that moment he surpassed all the other Bishops in his enthusiastic insistence on the dogma.

The Vatican Council did not make the Pope infallible. It merely defined that he is infallible according to the will of God. The means by which the Pope is infallible is not by any natural or human agency, but by the assistance of the Holy Ghost. As the Apostles at Jerusalem justified their decision by declaring that so "it has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us," Acts, XV, 28, so the Vatican Council defined that that same assistance of the Holy Ghost safeguards the Pope against error in his official decisions on matters of faith and morals.

No human being, even the Pope, could be infallible by any of his own merely natural and human powers. But God Himself, by His divine power, can if He thinks fit to do so render a human being infallible for any given purposes of His own. If, as you say, you believe absolutely in the Bible then you must admit that the writers of the various books in the Bible were preserved from the possibility of error; and that means that they received from God the gift of infallibility at least for that purpose. Yet they were "only human." One may reasonably ask for proof of the Catholic doctrine of Papal Infallibility; but no argument against it can be drawn from the fact that the Pope is "only human," any more than one who believes in the Bible can argue that the writers of its various books could not have been infallible because they, too, were "only human."

Not at all. The Cardinals merely elect him as Pope. The office to which he is elected carries with it divine protection against error in the Pope's official definitions of doctrine in matters of faith and morals. It is the protection of the Pope on such occasions, not the person of the Pope, that is divine. The infallibility of the writers of Holy Scripture, in recording the Word of God for us, did not make them quasi-divine. You yourself would admit that it was the infallibility conferred on them by God for the work entrusted to them which is to be regarded as divine, not the writers themselves.

Religion - Yes or No

The Christian Church

"This Shall Be the Sign"

Dogmatic Authority of the Church

The Power-Complex Illusion

Life-Or-Death Social Problems

Those Exclusive Claims

Religious Liberty

Are Only Catholics Saved

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

Religion - Yes or No

The Christian Church

"This Shall Be the Sign"

Dogmatic Authority of the Church

The Power-Complex Illusion

Life-Or-Death Social Problems

Those Exclusive Claims

Religious Liberty

Are Only Catholics Saved

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 4

201. This is but one more proof that your religion breeds more criminals than any other.

202. Do you say that an "underprivileged environment" accounts even for the Catholic criminals in the United States?

203. A Communist paper in Melbourne, "The Guardian,99 said that the Pope sent a special blessing to the criminal Oswald Pohl in Germany, after he had been condemned to death for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials.

204. The Pope's action was certainly open to misinterpretation.

205. Arnold Lunn once said that the tenderness of the Catholic Church towards gangsters and gunmen at the hour of death is a proof of her greatness!

206. Such an open admission of the importance of belief rather than of righteous living is very revealing to us Protestants.

207. When political boss Charles Binaggio was murdered by gangsters in Kansas City in 1950 he was given an immense Catholic funeral.

208. Not only wickedness, but the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church gives the lie to its claim to be a holy Church.

209. Why are you always engaged in such money-grabbing tactics?

210. Why does your Church want so much money?

211. It is this commercialism that alienates people from your Church.

213. Does it not look as though the Church is a commercial body first, and that charity comes very late afterwards?

215. Can you disprove such accusations?

216. Millions of dollars are held up by the Vatican as valuable purchasing power that would bridge the gap between supply and demand for many thousands of your own Catholic people.

217. Why should the Pope and the Bishops of your Church have such beautiful and costly robes to wear on their official occasions?

218. Christ humbled Himself, and never sought outward splendor.

219. Christ had no home and no possessions. He did not live in a gorgeous palace and have a staff of servants to went on Him.

220. The wealth of the clergy of the established Church in Spain is proverbial.

221. If Christ had lived in this 20th century, would He have ridden in motor cars wherever He went?

222. In all your explanations you defend the holiness of your Church by saying that Catholics who do evil are not living up to her teachings. Do you mean to say that it is impossible for the Catholic Church as a whole, i.e., as an institution, to be guilty of wrongdoing?

223. You have said that if a Catholic lives up to the teachings of the Catholic religion he will be good. But surely if a Protestant lives up to the teachings of his particular Protestant Church he, too, will be good.

224. Have you not you yourself known good Protestants?

225. Then if the goodness of Catholics who live up to their religion proves the Catholic religion true, why does not the goodness of Protestants prove the truth of the Protestant religion?

226. You explained good and bad Catholics by the parable of Christ about the wheat and the tares growing side by side in the same field. Would not that explain good and bad Protestants?

227. If it is a question of the holy ideals of the Catholic religion, I feel that your claims must be granted. But I do fear for myself the chasm between theory and application.

228. I have observed a certain inability even in Catholics to adjust their lives to the teachings of their religion.

229. Catholics seem always to be struggling with themselves.

230. You constantly speak of Catholics and of the Catholic Church9 but Christ gave no name to His Church.

231. You cannot quote any saying of Christ that His Church was to be the Catholic Church.

232. The word "catholic" means universal. But the Church as Christ founded it was not universal. We must say, therefore, that He founded the Christian Church, but not the Catholic Church.

233. The term "Catholic Church" cannot of its very nature he identified with one particular Church!

234. The Holy Catholic Church today simply means the Church which belongs to God.

235. The Catholic Church is a body in Christ made up of those who are born of God, not of the will of the flesh, but of the will of the Father.

236. There are many flocks, but one fold; many congregations, but one Church; many sheep, but one shepherd.

237. No Church can be at once Catholic yet intolerant and exclusive.

238. We object to any part of the divided Church today claiming for itself alone the title Catholic.

239. On the last day Jesus Christ will not single out one particular Church, hut those whose names are written in the Book of Life.

240. The Church, to be Catholic, must be above the nations, and welcome all races with their treasures of faith, truth and beauty.

241. You frequently speak of Roman Catholic Bishops being successors of the Apostles, but is there any real reason at all to believe that the apostolic powers were to continue in their successors?

241. When Pope Marcellinus died in 304 A.D. the Chair of Peter was vacant for over three years. Where is your unbroken line of Popes from Peter to Pius XII?

242. You claim that there has never been a break in the continuity of the line of Popes from Peter to the present day.

243. If a thread is broken even in one place it must be considered a broken thread.

245. A Protestant paper of Toronto, Canada, said once that a new list of Popes was published in the (iAnnuario Pontificio," official Vatican annual, in 1947.

246. This paper, "The Evangelical Christian", said that the present Pope was not even sure whether he is number 256, 257, 258, 259, or 260 in your unbroken chain.

247. When you yourself became a Catholic, what impressed you most as evidence of the truth of the Catholic Church?

248. Is it right to call your Church the Catholic Church as you constantly do?

249. Would the "Roman Church" be right?

250. If it is "Catholic" and "Roman" why do you refuse to call it the "Roman Catholic Church"?

251. When you speak of the "Catholic Church" you never say which one you mean.

252. Is there such a person as a "Roman Catholic"?

253. How did the term "Roman Catholic" arise?

254. You say your Church repudiates the expression, but the Creed of Pope Pius IV gives the title as "Sancta Catholica et Apostolica Romana Ecclesia".

255. In his Encyclical on Education, Dec. 1929, Pope Pius XI officially uses the term "Roman Catholic".

256. In England at least have not the authorities of your Church often used the term "Roman Catholic" of themselves?

257. One Protestant friend of mine told me that Protestants are taught at school to call themselves Catholics.3

258. Protestants recite the Apostles' Creed, saying, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church".

260. If one joins the Catholic Church, is he not obliged to accept the authoritative declarations of that Church as to what he must believe?

261. No one can be sure of anything. Everyone has to confess that at best he would like to be certain of the truth?

262. I do not believe the Creed of any Church I know.

263. My own mind is my Church.