Letter VII: The Holy Catholic Church
Always remain united to the Holy Catholic Church, for it is the one true Church that Christ established and sustains until He comes again in glory.
The following is a real letter written from a Catholic father to his children as a sort of “spiritual life insurance.” It is being shared here in the hopes that that God will use this imperfect letter to communicate His perfect Fatherly love to you.
“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
— Matthew 16:18-19
My Dear Children,
I am writing this letter to tell you to always remain united to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and therefore to intentionally separate yourself from the Church is to separate yourself from Christ.
It is clear from reading the Gospels that one of the chief aspects of Christ’s mission was not just to accomplish our Redemption, but also to establish the means for us to receive the graces of the Redemption He won for us throughout time. After all, what good would it be to have a vault full of gold if you didn’t have the key? Just as our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed1, so also our redemption would have been no gain had we not been given a way to preserve and dispense the graces of that redemption through all generations.
So the question of foremost importance is how did Christ plan on preserving the unchanging truth of His teaching and dispensing the graces of the Redemption to future generations? The answer from the Gospels, the New Testament, and the Early Church Fathers is unambiguous: The Holy Catholic Church is the vessel that Christ established for preserving the Deposit of Faith and dispensing the graces of Redemption.
To illustrate this point, imagine a jar being filled with water. The jar is Christ’s Sacred Humanity, and the water is the Truth and Graces of Christ. While Christ was with us, we possessed all of this in Him. But how would the Faith be preserved for future generations after His Ascension? Water without a vessel is lost to the ground, and water poured into a leaky (fallible) vessel for any period of time is at least partially lost. To preserve the Faith in its entirety, Christ had to (1) create an infallible vessel to carry it after His Ascension and (2) there had to be continuity between Christ (who is infallible) and an infallible vessel or else some would be lost in the meantime. The vessel that He poured His Spirit into (beginning after His Resurrection and culminating at Pentecost) is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
This practical consideration brings a lot of clarity to the Gospels. There is no shortage of things that the Evangelists could have written (were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written, as St. John says), but they chose to spend a disproportionate amount of time emphasizing the fact that Christ appointed and trained Apostles and established a Church. All the information about the office of the Apostles would be superfluous and irrelevant if their roles did not extend beyond their generation.
I remember when I was Protestant I was very confused when Christ breathed on the Apostles and gave them the authority to forgive and retain sins. Was this authority just given to those twelve men and then lost? Why would He give that gift for one generation but not all? If He did pass it on to all generations of Apostles, then who has this power now? It can’t be everyone, because everyone does not have the ability to “retain” sins. The same questions go for “binding and loosing” in Heaven. These questions have no answers if you don’t know that Christ gave the Apostles a special office in the Church, which has continued in unbroken succession through the Bishops.
We don’t see Christ anywhere giving credence to the modern notion of Sola Scriptura, but we do see over and over again Christ appointing the Apostles and giving them special Authority to bind and loose, to forgive or retain sins, to heal and cast out demons, to proclaim the Gospel, to teach, and to baptize. Christ goes to great lengths to establish a Church because the Church is the means through which Christ chose to preserve His teaching and communicate the graces of His Redemption through all generations until He comes again. He poured His Spirit into His Church, and now anywhere that the Church is, there Christ is.
So now you know why Christ instituted a Church and her purpose on earth, and why we ought never to leave her. But how ought we to live as good children of our Mother and Teacher, the Church?
Obedience to the Church
He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.
—Luke 10:16
First of all, we ought to humbly obey the Church in all matters related to Faith and Morals. Obedience is better than sacrifice. We see this often in the lives and writings of the Saints. Many of them, like St. Teresa of Avila, begin their writings by saying that they are children of the Church, and if anything they write is erroneous of contrary to the teaching of the Church, then they humbly submit to the Church. The wisest and holiest among us leaned not on their own understanding, but trusted in the Lord. This makes perfect sense, since the Church is the infallible guardian of the Deposit of Faith. We are not really obeying flawed humans, but we are obeying the teaching of Christ as communicated by the Holy Spirit. We submit to the Church because we submit to Christ.
St. Ignatius gives us a good summary of the deference we ought to show to the Church in The Spiritual Exercises:
If we wish to proceed securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle: What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines. For I must be convinced that in Christ our Lord, the bridegroom, and in His spouse the Church, only one Spirit holds sway, which governs and rules for the salvation of souls. For it is by the same Spirit and Lord that gave the Ten Commandments that our Holy Mother Church is ruled and governed.
Christ sent His Spirit to guide the Church. The same Spirit that used fallible human authors to make infallible Scripture also uses imperfect humans to govern His Church and perfectly preserve her Sacraments and Doctrine from any stain of error. This is why we ought to obey the Church, even if what it teaches seems opposite to us: because when we hear the Church, we are really hearing Christ.
It’s okay if we find certain teachings difficult—so did the Apostles! Seek understanding, but submit to the Church’s teaching. Lean not on your own understanding, but trust in the Lord. After all, we would rightly be suspicious if everything we were taught by an infinitely wise God was perfectly easy for us flawed, sinful humans to understand right away.
No matter how difficult you find a certain teaching to be, what your liturgical or other preferences may be, or what scandals or failings arise in the hierarchy or the laity: the fullness of truth resides in the Holy Catholic Church. Do not separate yourself from Her.
One last note on this: we are not obliged to blindly obey any priest in every matter. When I tell you to obey the Church, I am speaking here broadly about the authentic teaching of the Church, not about the musings of this or that particular priest. Any given priest or even Bishop can become a heretic or give bad advice (just ask Judas), but in the end we owe our obedience to the Church. Nevertheless, we ought to do our best to obey even “bad” Bishops and priests, provided that they are not asking us to do anything contrary to the faith and the salvation of souls. We ought especially to pray for them.
Attitude Within the Church
…that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
—1 Cor 4:6-7
Being in the Church should make you humble, not proud. There are no small number of people in the Church who consider that their membership in the Church makes them better than others. It is true that they have been given, at this moment in time, objectively greater benefits than those outside the Church, but that is different than being better than others. To those who are given much, much is required.
They may not explicitly say that they are better than others, but it is evident by their actions. If you mock and treat contemptuously those who are not Catholic, or act as if they are foolish for not accepting the doctrines you know to be true, then you are betraying the arrogant belief that you have earned your place in the Church, and are therefore better than them, otherwise you would not have reason to act thus. This, however, is contrary to what our Lord teaches:
Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
—John 6:43-44
We are acting foolish if we grumble among ourselves about what we perceive to be the lack of faith in others, since we know that faith is a gift from God that we cannot earn. As Paul and the Holy Spirit put it above, what makes you any better than others? What do you have that you have not received? If then you have received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
Those who consider themselves better than others due to their knowledge of the Truth fall prey to an ironic fate . By their pride they risk their salvation and thus renounce the benefits of the very thing they boasted of. Remember that the Pharisee’s fasted, gave tithes of all they had, prayed several times a day and often studied the scriptures. Are these not the very things we strive for when trying to be “holy?” Yet for their pride, they were excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven, while the very sinners whom they judged were welcomed in for their humility.
I will write for you a separate letter on humility and judging others, but for our purposes here, it is enough to remember that your membership in the Church and knowledge of the Truth is a gift from God, and also a responsibility. Freely you have received, freely you must give. Perhaps God gave you this gift first because you are less important than those you are sent to share the Gospel with, and He wanted you to serve them? Perhaps He is saving the best for last? How embarrassing it would be to see in hindsight that a person whom we judged and mocked was actually a great Saint in the making, while we ourselves made it into Heaven by the skin of our teeth!
If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
—1 Cor 8:2-3
Give thanks to God for the extraordinary gift of giving you the fullness of the Truth and making you a child of the Church. There is nothing on earth that compares to this gift. Only do not lose it by pride, or being puffed up thinking you are better than others because of what you “know.” The same Lord who commands us to repent and believe in the Gospel also commands us do not judge.
Scandals in the Church
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’
—Matthew 13:24-30
Once there was a business man who wanted to become Catholic, but before he was to be received into the Church, he had some business to attend to in Rome. The priest who was bringing him into the Church begged him to be received before his trip to Rome, because he feared that if the man saw all the corruption that was going on among the hierarchy in Rome he would change his mind about becoming Catholic! Nevertheless, the man insisted on his business trip first, and so the priest went away despondent, sure that the business man would not convert when he returned.
After his trip, the business man promptly found the priest and told him he was ready to be received into the Church. The priest was surprised, and asked him: “But… didn’t you see the corruption and scandals of the prelates and cardinals? After all that, you still want to be Catholic?” The man replied, “I am a business man, and I know first hand that any organization that corrupt could never last 10 years, much less 2,000 years! For the Church to have survived this long, it must be preserved by God.”
This somewhat silly (and fictional) account touches on a very important truth. The more scandals there are in the Church, the more they testify to the Divine guidance of the Holy Spirit. If the Church were a merely human institution, she would have altered the truth of her unchanging doctrine or collapsed centuries ago. Yet the Gates of Hell have never yet, nor never will prevail against Her, just as Christ promised. Despite the many flaws of her members, She remains perfect in her Doctrine and Her Sacraments.
After all, we shouldn’t be surprised to find flawed and sinful people in the Church. If I am a part of the Church, then I know with certainty that there is at least one imperfect person in it! Don’t be scandalized by scandals. Christ promises us they will come in the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, among other places. Come what may, our faith is in Him. He is the one to keep your eyes on.
It is, of course, a great cross and cause of suffering to see those who should be the best among us doing some of the worst things. I don’t deny that it is worth weeping over, offering prayers and sacrifices for, and doing what we can in our state of life to improve things. But my point in this is to remind you that no matter how terrible the sins of the members of the Church, you have to separate the sinful acts of individuals from the promise of Christ to preserve His Church’s doctrine and graces.
Noah’s Ark, which prefigured the Church (the “barque of Peter”), was no doubt smelly from all the animals and full of sea-sick people. Nevertheless, no temptation of the devil should convince anyone to jump overboard—it’s far more preferable to be in the Ark than destroyed in the flood.
If you are ever troubled by scandals, simply commit them to prayer, and spend more time focusing on Christ in the Gospels and the Sacraments.
A Word on Church Politics
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
—Psalm 131:1
The verse above accounts the psalmist righteous for humbly sticking with what concerns himself. His eyes are not raised too high, and he does not occupy himself with things too great, nor marvels beyond him. I would encourage you to do the same: busy yourself with matters that you have control over, not politics that the Lord has given you little to no impact in due to your state in life. I know of many people who spend a lot of time, anxiety, and mental energy worrying about what Cardinal got appointed where, and what rumors or controversies are going around the Vatican.
If you’re ever confused lean on the age old teaching of the Church and example of the Saints (especially the Doctors of the Church), read the Gospels, and focus on loving God and being a Saint in your daily life. Who the next Cardinal is has almost no bearing on your salvation, whereas how patient you are with your annoying co-worker, your sick child, or your distracted spouse is of the utmost importance.
Christ has promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church, and that should be enough for us. Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Whenever you hear of some controversy or confusing political issue within the Church, remind yourself of the verse from the Psalm with which I began, and then hear Christ gently say to you: What is that to thee? Follow thou me.
Conclusion
We know, by the certitude of Faith, that Christ established a Church as His chosen means for communicating Himself to all generations until He comes again, and so no matter what difficulties the devil assails us with to try to get us to leave, we must stand firm and weather the storms of this life in “the barque of Peter.”
When many of the disciples were going away because Jesus’ teachings were difficult, Jesus asked the Apostles, “Do you want to go away as well?” Peter replied on behalf of all the Apostles: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life…” If ever we are tempted to leave the Catholic Church, we ought to remember that to leave the Church intentionally is to leave Christ, and we ought to make St. Peter’s words our own: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
Never, ever, leave the Church. It is the presence of Christ in the world, and you cannot separate yourself from Her without separating yourself from Him. It is true that, for those who never knew better, there may be a way for them to be invisibly united to the Church and so be saved. But for you who are raised in a faithful household, who “are children of the Church, affectionately sustained by her with the milk of doctrine and sacraments, and that, after having heard the voice of their Mother, they cannot then be excused of culpable ignorance. Let them understand that to them the following principle applies without restriction: Submission to the Catholic Church and to the Sovereign Pontiff is necessary for salvation.2”
I love you, and as long as you are united to the Church, we are united, for we make but one Body and cannot be separated, neither on earth nor in Heaven. As long as you do not separate yourself from the Church by mortal sin, you are never alone. And if you ever do, God forbid, separate yourself by mortal sin then Christ stands at the door of your heart and knocks. Go right away to receive the grace of forgiveness through the sacrament of confession and be reconciled to God and to His Church.
With all my love in Christ,
Dad
Don’t forget to check out these posts:
From the “Exultet” at the Easter Vigil.
Library : Letter from the Holy Office concerning fr. Leonard Feeney. Catholic Culture. (n.d.). https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=1467
Kind of very late to the party, but I really like this concept!
As someone who had to navigate through the wild west of Christian apologetics to find Catholicism mostly on his own, I think this can be a great resource.
Earned a subscription. May God bless your work.
Great article, I especially liked this paragraph:
"One last note on this: we are not obliged to blindly obey any priest in every matter. When I tell you to obey the Church, I am speaking here broadly about the authentic teaching of the Church, not about the musings of this or that particular priest. Any given priest or even Bishop can become a heretic or give bad advice (just ask Judas), but in the end we owe our obedience to the Church. Nevertheless, we ought to do our best to obey even “bad” Bishops and priests, provided that they are not asking us to do anything contrary to the faith and the salvation of souls. We ought especially to pray for them."
Too many Catholics have left the faith because of "one bad apple."