CATHOLIC
451
CATHOLIC
Adam to the present day, or who shall exist in the
profession of the true faith to the end of time, all of
whom are founded and raised upon the one corner-
stone, Christ, who made both one, and announced
peace to them that are near, and to them that are
afar. She is also called universal, because all who
desire eternal salvation must cling to and embrace
her, like those who entered the ark to escape perishing
in the flood. This, therefore, is to be taught as a
most just criterion to distinguish the true from a false
church."
This multiplex and somewhat confused present- ment of the note of Catholicity undoubtedly finds its warrant in the equally wide interpretation of some of the early Fathers. Thus, for example, St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: "The Church is called Catholic be- cause she is diffused throughout the whole world [i. e. the habitable world, oiVou/i^tjs] from one end of the earth to the other, and because she teaches univer- sally and without curtailment all the truths of faith which ought to be known to men whether they con- cern visible or invisible things, heavenly things or the things of earth; further because she brings under the yoke of God's true service all races of men, the mighty and the lowly, the learned and the simple; and finally because she tends ar.d heals every kind of sin com- mitted by body or soul and because there is no form of virtue, whether in word or deed or in spiritual gifts of any kind whatever, which she does not possess as her own" (Cateches., xviii, 23; P. G., XXXIII, 1043). In similar terms speaks St. Isidore (De Offic, Bk. I), among the Fathers of the West, and a variety of other i xplanations might also, no doubt, be appealed to.
But of all these various interpretations, which, after all, are not inconsistent with one another, and which are probably only characteristic of a fashion of exegesis which delighted in multiplicity, one concep- tion of Catholicity is almost invariably made prom- inent. This is the idea of the actual local diffusion of the Church, and this is also the aspect which, thanks no doubt to the influence of Protestant controversy, has been most insisted upon by the theologians of the last three centuries. Some heretical and schismat- ical teachers have practically refused to recognize Catholicity as an essential attribute of Christ's Church, and in the Lutheran version of the Apostles' Creed, for example, the word Catholic ("I believe in the holy Catholic Church") is replaced by Christian. But in the majority of the Protestant professions of faith the wording of the original has been retained, and the representatives of these various shades of opinion have been at pains to find an interpretation of the phrase which is in any way consistent with geo- graphical and historical facts. (For these see Chris- tendom.) The majority, including most of the older Anglican divines (e. g. Pearson on the Creed), have contented themselves with laying stress in some shape or form upon the design of the Founder of the Church that His Gospel should be preached through- out the world. This diffusion de jure serves its pur- pose sufficiently as a justification for the retention of the word Catholic in the Creed, but the supporters of this view are of necessity led to admit that Catholicity so understood cannot serve as a visible criterion by which the true Church is to be distinguished from schismatical sects. Those Protestant bodies who do not altogether reject the idea of "notes" distinctive of the true Church consequently fall back for the most part upon the honest preaching of God's word ami the regular administration of the sacraments as the only criteria. (See the "Confession of Augsburg", Art. 7, etc.) But such notes as these, which may be claimed by many different religious bodies with apparently equal right, are practically inoperative, and. as Cath- olic controversialists have commonly pointed out, the question only resolves itself into the discussion of the nature of the Unity of the Church under another
form. The same must be said of that very large
class of Protestant teachers who look upon all sincere
Christian communions as branches of the one Catholic
Church with Christ for its invisible head. Taken
collectively, these various branches lay claim to world-
wide diffusion de facto as well as de jure. But clearly,
here again the question primarily involved is that con-
cerning the nature of the Unity of the Church, and it
is to the articles Church and Unity, that the reader
who wishes to pursue the matter further must be
referred.
As against these and other interpretations which have prevailed among Protestants from the Refor- mation until quite recent times, the scholastic theo- logians of the last three centuries have been wont to put forward the conception of the note of Catholicity in various formal propositions, of which the most es- sential elements are the following. The true Church of Christ, as it is revealed to us in prophecy, in the New Testament, and in the writings of the Fathers of the first six centuries, is a body which possesses the prerogative of Catholicity, i. e. of general diffu- sion, not only as a matter of right, but in actual fact. Moreover, this diffusion is not only successive — i. e. so that one part of the world after another should in course of ages be brought in contact with the Gospel — but it is such that the Church may be permanently described as spread throughout the world. Further, as this general diffusion is a property to which no other Christian association can justly lay claim, we are entitled to say that Catholicity is a distinctive mark of the true Church of Christ.
It will be seen from this that the point upon which stress is laid is that of actual local diffusion, and it can hardly be denied that both the Scriptural and Patristic arguments adduced by Bellarmine, Thom- assin. Alexander Natalis, Nicole, and others, to take but a few prominent names, afford strong justifica- tion for the claim. The Scriptural argument seems first to have been developed by St. Optatus of Mileve against the Donatists, and it was equally employed by St. Augustine when he took up the same contro- versy a few years later. Adducing a large number of passages in the Psalms (e. g. Pss. ii and lxxi), with Daniel (eh. ii), Isaiah (e. g. liv, 3), and other pro- phetic writers, t lie Fathers and modern theologians alike draw attention to the picture which is there af- forded of the Kingdom of Christ the Messiah as some- thing gloriously and conspicuously spread through- out the world, e. g. " I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession", "He shall rule from sea to sea", "All the nations shall serve Him", etc., etc. More- over, in combination with these we have to notice our Lord's instructions and promises: "Go ye there- fore and teach all nations", "You shall be witnesses unto me . . . even to the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts, i, 8), or St. Paul's words quoting Psalm xviii, "Yes, verily, their sound went out over all the earth and their words unto the ends of the whole world" (Rom., x, 18), etc. But the real strength of the argument lies in the patristic evidence, for such words of Scripture as those just quoted are cited and interpreted, not by one or two only, but by a large number of different Fathers, both of the East and of the West, and nearly always in such terms as are consistent only with the actual diffusion over regions which to them represented, morally speaking, the whole world. It is indeed particularly important to note that in many of these patristic passages the writer, while insisting upon the local extension of the Church, distinctly implies that this diffusion is rela- tive and not absolute, that it is to be general indeed, but in a moral, not in a physical or mathematical sense. Thus St. Augustine (Epist. excix; P. L., XXXIII, 922, 923) explains that nations which formed no part of the Roman Empire had already
