Catholic Church: both human and divine

By Fr. Vincent Hawkswell

This Sunday's First Reading tells us that when Paul and Barnabas disagreed with "certain individuals" who were insisting that new Christians be circumcised, they went up to Jerusalem "to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders." We also hear how, after the discussion, the apostles and the elders gave their decision in a letter beginning with the words: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us...."

These words would represent the utmost lengths to which human arrogance could go, were they not backed up by the promise of Christ recounted in this Sunday's Gospel Reading: "I have said these things to you while I am still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you."

That is why the Church interprets St. John's vision of the new Jerusalem, described in the Second Reading, as a vision of the Church: it has "12 foundations, and on them are the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb."

The Catholic Church is a human institution, racked by the problems and scandals of every human institution. Nevertheless, the Church is also a divine institution, because it was founded by the Son of God and maintained by His Spirit. That is why it "has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal."

Pope Benedict XVI is the successor of St. Peter, to whom Christ entrusted the "keys of the kingdom of heaven." Archbishop Raymond Roussin is a successor of one of the other apostles, to whom Christ said, "He who hears you, hears Me."

Church remained firm

In the book Surprised by Truth 11 converts give "the biblical and historical reasons for becoming Catholic." In the foreword, Scott Hahn says that each one "describes the surprise discovery that the truth of Christ, in Scripture, history, and logic, lies in the Catholic Church."

(There is also a follow-up book called Surprised by Truth 2.)

One convert said that in the Church's history, some people have seen only "Church councils bickering over petty jealousies, Popes amassing wealth, bishops fathering children, [and] monks living in dissipation." However, for him, Church history confirmed "the sovereignty of grace" as well as "the universality of sin."

All the Protestant denominations "have succumbed to the spirit of the age on one critical issue after another," he said, but "the Catholic Church has remained firm: on the sanctity of life, on the nature of sexuality, on the supernatural foundations of faith, on the essence of God, and on the identity of Christ."

Another convert, a former Protestant pastor, said, "Every Sunday I would stand in my pulpit and interpret Scripture for my flock, knowing that within a 15-mile radius of my church there were dozens of other Protestant pastors all of whom believed that the Bible alone is the sole authority for doctrine and practice, each teaching something different."

As he "grappled with the doctrinal confusion and procedural chaos within Protestantism," he said, he came to understand "that the single most important issue was authority ... the teaching authority of the Church in the magisterium centred around the seat of Peter; if I could accept this doctrine, I knew I could trust the Church on everything else."

Another convert said that many Protestants "simply ignore or attempt to explain away the Lord's promises regarding the perpetuity and doctrinal integrity of His Church," like "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church" and the passage about the Holy Spirit in this Sunday's Gospel Reading.

Trust Christ's promises

"Either Christ let us down and deceived us by teaching that there would be one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, and one Church, which would endure until the end of the world," she said, or her interpretation of Scripture and history was unscriptural.

"The essential question was, `Did Christ leave behind a fallible Church, capable of teaching error?'" she asked. "If so, we were left as orphans, insecure and fighting among ourselves without protection. But that option contradicts Jesus's expressed promise when He said, `I will not leave you orphans.'"

Now, she said, when her Protestant friends ask her why she became a Catholic, she answers, "Because it is the truth, the fullness of the Christian faith, and because in it I can receive the Sacraments, Christ's means of imparting grace through the ministry of His Church."

As a young girl, she said, she adopted Psalm 27:4 as her motto: "One thing have I asked of the Lord, and this will I seek after: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to pray in His tabernacle." Now, as a Catholic, she said, "I dwell in the House of the Lord: His Church, His family. Each time I attend Mass, there in His house, `I behold His loveliness and pray in His tabernacle.'"

This Sunday, let us praise and thank God for His one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. May we never take it for granted.