Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

¹

We have shown that the true Church of Christ is denoted in the abstract by unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. In order, therefore, that it may be clear which in the concrete is the true Church of Christ, the four notes as set forth must be applied to the individual Christian bodies. That body to which the four notes belong is the true Church of Christ; those bodies, however, to which the four notes do not belong are spurious churches.

Of the Christian bodies existing today, Krose² and Zeller,³ the former a Catholic, the latter a Protestant, compiled this statistic:

Body	Krose	Zeller
Roman Catholics	264 505 922	254 500 000
Protestants	166 627 109	165 830 000
Greek Orthodox	109 147 272	106 480 000
Raskolniki	2 173 371	—
Eastern Schismatics	6 554 913	—
Others	—	8 130 000
Christians	549 008 587	534 940 000

Krose nevertheless notes that the number of Catholics is greater than the one indicated, since the statistical tables have been drawn up according to the standard of civil and ecclesiastical censuses that are partly altogether inadequate.⁴ In fact, a survey of the Catholic Church recently prepared by Karl Streit⁵ indicates about 300 million Catholics.

By Roman Catholics, or simply Catholics, are understood the faithful of the whole world who acknowledge the Bishop of the City as their primatial head. All those are called Protestants who in the sixteenth century in the West, and especially in England, Germany, and Switzerland, fell away from the Roman Catholic Church.⁶ By Greeks, or Orthodox,⁷ are designated all those who issued from the schism of Photius, or more properly of Caerularius, in the eleventh century, and who today are found not only in Greece but in many regions of the East, especially in Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, and in the whole Russian dominion as it was before the world war (1914-1919). By the name Raskolniki (i. e., schismatics, from the word raskol = schism) are called in Russia the various sects that in the course of the centuries departed from the Greco-Russian Church. The adherents of these sects themselves call themselves starowjerci = old-believers. Eastern schismatics are said of those non-Catholics of the East who do not belong to the Greco-Orthodox Church. They receive the name of schismatics especially from the Greco-Orthodox, because they do not associate with them; by Catholics they are rather called Eastern heretics, for the reason that they are the remnants of several heresies which already existed before the Photian schism, e. g., the Monophysites, the Nestorians.

Now the Raskolniki and the Eastern schismatics, considering the smallness of the individual sects of which they consist, are by that very fact deprived of the notes. The same must be said with all the more reason of the various other little churches, which scarcely creep over the smallest corner of the earth and are composed of but a few thousand men, such as the present-day Jansenists in Holland, the "Old Catholics" in Germany, Switzerland, etc. To apply the notes of the Church to these would be almost the act of a madman. Only three more notable confessions can be admitted to the contest of the notes, namely the Catholic, the Greco-Orthodox, and the Protestant. It is asked, therefore, which of these confessions is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and consequently the only true Church of Christ.

The Roman Church is one both in symbolical confession and in social communion.

1. Symbolical confession. Everywhere on earth the Roman Church professes the same dogmas. This is evident above all from the same creeds recited publicly and privately by all; from doctrinal books, such as the catechisms of the individual churches, approved books of prayers, received scholastic-theological compendia, liturgical books; from sacred worship, by which with varied rites the same mysteries of the faith, the same sacrifice, the same sacraments are celebrated;¹ from the daily magisterium, by which bishops and priests preach the same faith throughout the whole world; finally from the submission of the faithful, who without any disputation obey the magisterium of the Church in all things that pertain to revealed truth.

Those, however, who pertinaciously resist the magisterium of the Church and publicly profess errors against the faith, by that very fact cease to be members of the Church. The Roman Church tolerates no heresy and no heretics in her bosom. Hence all Catholics assent with a wonderful harmony of faith. For although controversies are also carried on among them concerning theological matters, never however about defined dogmas. Although some Catholics understand the faith more perfectly, others less perfectly, nevertheless with one voice all, learned and unlearned, clerics and laity, confess the same doctrine revealed and proposed by the Church. "This faith", as St. Irenaeus already wrote, "the Church, and indeed disseminated throughout the whole world, diligently guards, as if inhabiting one house... as if having one soul and one heart, and consonantly preaches and teaches and hands on these things, as if possessing one mouth."²

2. Social communion. That the Roman Church is one in law and in fact is evident. By law, namely, or by the essential constitution of this Church, the faithful of the individual parishes are subject to their own local clergy; the local clergy together with the faithful are subject to the diocesan bishop; the diocesan bishops are subject to the Roman pontiff. The Roman pontiff is after the manner of a head, the bishops and their clerical helpers after the manner of joints, all the faithful after the manner of members of an organic body. And in fact it is indeed well known how intimate and continuous a communion obtains between the individual parts of this body. The Roman pontiff exercises the governance of the whole Church continuously; the bishops, joined to and subject to the pope, give continuous care to their individual churches both immediately and mediately through the local clergy; the faithful themselves render obedience to the hierarchical authority and above all to the Roman pontiff in religious matters. And although this obedience is not always perfect; although some sometimes resist the hierarchy (just as they also resist God himself), nevertheless as long as they wish to remain Catholics, they do not resist contumaciously. If, however, any are contumacious and rebellious, by that very fact they are no longer Catholics, but are cast out from the Church like branches cut off from the tree. In the Roman Church, therefore, schismatics neither are nor can be. Hence the Roman Church is truly one flock, one sheepfold, one family, one house, one kingdom, one mystical body of Christ. Indeed, the unity of this Church shines so much that it is an object of admiration to many adversaries, an object of mockery to many.

1. The Greeks indeed from the beginning cultivated the unity of creedal confession in this sense, that, while preserving the other Catholic dogmas, they denied only the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (Filioque), as well as the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. But in rejecting the primacy they rejected the head of the magisterium instituted by Christ, and consequently the principle of the unity of faith. They proclaimed, to be sure, that ecumenical councils remain the supreme tribunals of orthodox faith. But ecumenical councils without the pope they could neither celebrate, nor did they ever attempt to celebrate them after their separation from the Roman Church. Hence in the course of so many centuries countless dissensions have invaded the orthodox communion. Today the more cultivated orthodox, and even the clergy itself, are more and more immersed in scepticism, rationalism, and nihilism; the people, however, are composed of a few believers, very many indifferentists, countless heretics, indeed atheists, whom the "official" Church can neither expel nor wishes to expel.¹ Those also who preserve the ancient confession, for the most part, do not know what they profess, since the orthodox Church labors under a gross ignorance of religious matters.

There is no need for us to speak of the unity of the orthodox social communion. Once the primatial head was lost, the truncated body gradually dissolved into many parts. Today there exist at least fifteen "autonomous" Churches, or, as the orthodox say, "autocephalous" Churches,² which are united among themselves by no bond. From these autocephalous Churches many little churches have again seceded, which, although not by right, are nevertheless in fact independent; thus e. g. in the Ruthenian or Russian Church before the year 1914 more than two hundred groups were independent of the "holy synod" of St. Petersburg. Once this caesaropapistic synod was suppressed by the Russian revolution, atomism dissolves the Ruthenian Church more and more from day to day.

2. Protestants neither have nor can have unity of confession. They do not have unity of confession. For not only do the greater Protestant groups, namely the Lutherans, the Reformed (i. e. the Zwinglians and the Calvinists), and the Anglicans, differ most widely in doctrine, but each of these groups abounds in an excessive variety of religious profession; indeed, of the members of all Protestant sects it holds: "As many heads, so many minds." Nay, they even glory in the multiplicity of doctrines and of sects daily springing up, and even boast that the intimate essence of Protestantism consists in this, that it simultaneously cherishes diverse and opposed Christian confessions, or even mixes the Christian religion with the Jewish.³ Nor can they have unity of confession. For, as will be shown in another place,⁴ the supreme Protestant principle of faith is this, that each one may, according to his own pleasure, build up or destroy the faith. Protestants, to be sure, keep repeating that sacred Scripture is the sole norm and rule of believing for all the faithful; but in fact each one interprets and tears apart Scripture itself according to his own judgment. The discord of faith born from this they have indeed tried to dissimulate by publishing many symbolical books or even by employing political force; but these symbolical books and the ordinances of civil governments were diverse according to the diversity of regions, and moreover they were unable to win any authority for themselves. Nay, Protestants, having entirely rejected all religious authority, boast of a bare atomism and subjectivism. Hence it is no wonder that they, imperceptibly, have continually varied and diminished the faith and at length have arrived more and more at pure rationalism or even nihilism.

That the communion of Protestants has no unity is evident. Already from the beginning the Lutherans, the Zwinglians, the Calvinists, and the Anglicans existed utterly torn apart and separated from one another. Soon each of these groups broke up into several sects. Today the Protestant little churches, which hold together by no bond, can scarcely be numbered; e. g. in England, which nevertheless, having still preserved the episcopate and the priesthood, to some extent retains a certain social bond, at the beginning of this century more than three hundred sects were publicly enumerated. And although the disparate sects have entered into certain covenants, e. g. the "Prussian territorial church", these covenants are not religious but political, since they were effected and are held together only by civil force.

Hence, with the covenant standing, the individual sects, e. g. the orthodox and the liberals, fight most fiercely among themselves.

All non-Catholic groups are united only by hatred of the pope. And for that reason they are deservedly and necessarily disunited in all things, because they repudiate the principle and center of all ecclesiastical unity.

The Roman Church shines both with sanctity taken simply and with sanctity spoken emphatically.

1. With sanctity taken simply: of doctrine, of the means, and of the members.

Sanctity of doctrine. By solemn magisterium and daily preaching, by public worship and private pastoral care, the Church unceasingly inculcates in her faithful that saying of Jesus Christ: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect."¹ She promulgates the natural law of virtue inviolately, urges the positive divine precepts, commends the evangelical counsels, exalts good works, and neglects nothing of those things that can promote internal sanctity. Compare the books of moral, pastoral, ascetical, and mystical theology written by Catholic authors.²

Sanctity of the means. The Catholic Church aids the faithful in attaining sanctity with the most abundant and most efficacious helps. The principal ones are: the seven sacraments, by which all the stages and states of life are hedged about with a wonderful order of graces; the sacrifice of the Mass, by which the fruits of the Lord's passion are daily applied to men and a clean offering is presented to God; prayer, by which the faithful several times a day honor God and experience divine help in the midst of the temptations and hardships of life; the sacred liturgy, by which men are raised to heavenly things at least on each Sunday and feast day; disciplinary laws, by which men are instructed and exercised in virtue; think of the precepts concerning hearing Mass and festal rest, concerning annual confession and paschal communion, concerning fasting and abstinence, etc.; pious institutes, by which the Church strives to promote her sons to charity and Christian perfection; think of sacred retreats, religious societies adapted to each state of the faithful, confraternities, mission institutes, seminaries, and celibacy for sanctifying the clergy, and above all religious orders and congregations.

Sanctity of the members. Although very many Catholics do not cultivate even common sanctity of life, nevertheless an infinite number of them strives after virtue with a continuous and serious struggle. Very many of the faithful either carefully keep themselves from every blemish of graver sin and pant after God with all their strength, or, if they have committed sins, being now already contrite and confessed, they bring forth worthy fruits of penance and stand as an example of every virtue. Countless Catholic families lead a truly evangelical life, eminent in the spirit of prayer, in zeal for the divine glory, in love of neighbor, in patience in adversity, in chastity, in temperance, and in every kind of virtue. Especially, however, countless clerics and religious, even with vows pronounced, observe perfectly not only the precepts but also the evangelical counsels. How many young men and virgins renounce the world, riches, pleasures, and their own will, so that in the state of perpetual obedience, poverty, and chastity they may either serve God alone in cloisters, or even spend their whole life in relieving the poor, in educating children, in caring for the sick, in converting the heathen!³ This indeed is a sign not only of common sanctity, but even already of nearly eminent sanctity.

In truth the Roman Church has many sons who: 2. shine with sanctity spoken emphatically. For since the Catholic Church alone, as we shall see, is apostolic, hers are those innumerable martyrs who in the first three Christian centuries and thereafter down to our own times poured out their blood for Christ; hers are all the holy fathers and doctors who sustained the Church of Christ by word, by writing, and by example; hers, finally, are so many other holy confessors and virgins of all ages, nations, and conditions, whose life and glorious deeds profane and sacred history narrates. How many saints the Roman Church has produced, and with how eminent sanctity adorned, is proved above all by the Acts of the Martyrs edited by Ruinart and Assemani, by the Acta Sanctorum collected by Bolland and his companions and successors, as well as by the Acts of the processes of beatification and canonization drawn up in the Roman Church from at least the tenth century.

From this very century, indeed, the Roman pontiffs reserved to themselves the right of solemn beatification and canonization. But no servant of God is solemnly numbered among the blessed or the saints, unless an extremely careful process concerning his heroic virtues and the miracles worked has first been held.⁴ The Roman Church, to be sure, does not rest content with uprightness however conspicuous, even if it is attested by miracles, but requires heroic virtue in her sons, whom she makes partakers of the honor of the altars. Indeed, if the heroic virtue of anyone is not evidently established, the Church neither attends to nor investigates his miracles, but immediately breaks off the process. Yet it is not enough to have proved heroic sanctity by human means, unless God has also approved it by miracles. For from the times of Urban VIII (1625), excepting martyrs, no one is beatified unless it is established that at least two miracles were wrought through his intercession; no one is canonized unless it is established that at least two miracles were obtained anew (after beatification) through his intercession. Moreover, the inquiry into the heroicity of the virtue and the truth of the miracles is conducted with such severity that, on the admission of the unbelievers themselves, no scientific tribunal employs it.⁵ And since the Roman Church has nevertheless down to our own age beatified and canonized a sufficiently great number of her sons, she truly is the holy Church, indeed the Church of saints.

1. The Greeks, having abandoned the Catholic Church, have indeed for the most part preserved the sanctifying doctrine and the means of sanctity. Yet the Orthodox Church itself neither incites nor obliges its priests and monks, much less the laity, to true interior sanctity. It has likewise deformed the helps of sanctity, especially worship and the sacraments, into a dead ritualism lacking all effective authority.¹ Whence, although among the Orthodox many members are found who stand out by a certain more distinguished uprightness and piety, yet a religious decay has invaded the greater part of the people. The clergy and the cloisters, however, flourish with almost no zeal for the holy life; rather, they for the most part teem with drunkenness, idleness, ignorance, and other vices.² A fortiori the Orthodox are wholly wanting in that eminent sanctity which is necessarily and exclusively proper to the Church of Christ. The Eastern regions, once the nurseries of all sanctity, after the schism once arisen produced no further saint who shone with heroic virtue and at whose intercession God worked miracles.³ The saints who are venerated by the Orthodox were either sons of the Catholic mother Church or are painted with the legendary varnish of sanctity and charisms. Much less:

2. The Protestants enjoy the mark of sanctity. For Protestantism professes doctrines directly opposed to sound morality, e.g. that faith alone justifies and that the virtues are by no means required;⁴ that good works are useless and to be despised;⁵ nay, that all the actions of man, however holy, are sins;⁶ that God, taking absolutely no account of the lives of men, predestined some to beatitude, others to damnation;⁷ that man is deprived of free will.⁸

With the whole foundation of morality thus rooted out, the Reformers and their followers removed also very many of the means of sanctity. They abhor the sacrifice of the Mass; they neglect all the sacraments except baptism,⁹ nay, very many do not even retain baptism; they despise the evangelical counsels, etc. Whence even the fruits of sanctity among the members of the Protestant communities miserably withered. With history as witness and by the concession of the Reformers themselves, we know that the "pure" gospel soon became a hotbed of all vices and produced the worst effects everywhere.¹⁰ Indeed, very many Protestants have striven and strive after supernatural virtue and especially after a certain natural honesty and humanity; Protestantism, however, set over against the Christian life in itself that "modern" life intent only upon cares and worldly things.¹¹

Whatever you may in the end say of the morals of the Protestants, certainly among them you will find no example of heroic sanctity confirmed by miracles. Nay rather, they mock the saints and the invocation of the saints, and affirm that miracles cannot even come to pass.¹²

Nay, not even the fathers of the pseudo-reformation themselves flourished in sanctity. Luther was notable for voluptuousness, gluttony, pride, wrath, and other vices; Zwingli was lustful, fraudulent, mendacious, and haughty; Calvin was a man of immense pride, slanderous arrogance, and savage cruelty; Henry VIII was a tyrant as libidinous as he was atrocious.¹³ Wherefore not only later and recent Protestantism lacks sanctity, but already at its beginning it was destitute of the sanctity of its authors and origins.

The Roman Church is distinguished by catholicity both of right and of fact.

1. Catholicity of right. The Roman Church abhors the boundaries of dominions and nations. For essentially, that is, considered in its doctrine and character, it has a universal character. It is destined for all nations and territories, as its very adversaries themselves admit, who so often and by so many means instigated Catholics to form purely national churches, and who continually spurn the catholic Church by calling it the "black international". Truly it is international in this sense, that it adapts itself to all; not, however, in this sense, that it is opposed to some nationality.

Virtually also the Roman Church tends to this, that it be propagated everywhere on earth. That it earnestly strove, already in the first Christian centuries, for the conversion of the nations is well known. In the Middle Ages it not only strove with all its might to bring the gospel to the new peoples invading Europe, but it sent missionaries to the vastest regions of Asia, Africa, and America. And since from the sixteenth century onward the pseudo-reformation tore very many sons away from mother Church, countless catholic missionaries, both of the old religious orders and of the new congregations, attempted and still attempt to announce the christian religion to the most distant peoples. With how great labor, however, with how many hardships, with how immense zeal they sweated at this work of evangelization, the history of missions and the acts of the martyrs of all centuries relate. With what success, however, the Roman Church has labored for its own propagation, the following shows:

2. Catholicity of fact. In the first three centuries, although for the most part destitute of all human means and harassed by persecutions of every kind, it permeated almost the whole world then known. From the end of the fourth century up to the fourteenth it won for Christ almost all the Germans and Slavs and very many of the Tatars and other peoples, so that before the pseudo-reformation it numbered more than 100 million faithful. The damage finally suffered from the reformation it made good with so great gain, that today it has almost tripled the number of its followers and increases it day by day.

And indeed, if you except certain parts of inner Africa and Australia, the Roman Church is found everywhere on earth, is made known in all territories, is known by all peoples. Hence it shines with a simultaneous moral catholicity; nay, it already almost glows with a successive physical catholicity, such as the true Church of Christ ought to have at least before the last judgment.¹

But why say more? The Church, over which the Roman Pontiff presides, is proved catholic by its very name. For the Church, which throughout the course of all centuries and by the consent of all men is called catholic, and by this name is distinguished from the sects, cannot but be catholic. And in truth, although heretics have often tried to snatch for themselves the name of catholicity, nevertheless the Roman Church alone is called catholic in the whole world. Even in our age the splendid words of St. Augustine hold: "Finally, the very name of catholic holds [me in the bosom of the catholic Church], which not without cause, amid so many heresies, this Church alone has so obtained, that while all heretics wish to be called catholics, yet to any stranger asking where the catholic Church may be found, none of the heretics dares to show either his own basilica or his house ... For whether they will or not, the heretics themselves and the children of schisms, when they speak not with their own people but with strangers, call the catholic Church nothing else than catholic. For they cannot be understood, unless they distinguish her by this name, by which she is named by the whole world ... From which it is given to be understood, with arbiters judging whom no favour hinders, to whom the catholic name, which all covet, is to be ascribed."² In truth:

1. The Greeks, or Eastern schismatics, as the very name indicates, are found in the East alone. Hence they lack catholicity in fact. But neither are they Catholics by right. For no church can be diffused over the whole world unless it has a governance which extends itself over the whole world. But, once the primacy is denied, such governance does not belong to the Greek churches. Therefore their constitution essentially excludes catholicity. Moreover, the Greek communities do not even virtually strive for the conversion of the pagans. Just as they owe their origin to a mere defection from the Catholic Church, so afterwards, down to our own times, they have devoted themselves solely to the perversion of Catholics. The Eastern churches themselves have entirely died out.¹

2. Protestants are deprived of the note of catholicity a fortiori. In fact they inhabit chiefly the German lands, England, and North America; in the other territories there are few or no followers of the pseudo-reformation. But even by right they are debarred from catholicity. The Protestant sects are essentially national, since the prince or the civil government of the individual regions is wont to be the head of the individual sects. Whence by their constitution and character they are confined within regional limits. For this reason, too, Protestants have virtually done no work for the conversion of the pagans from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. They called missionaries "false prophets".² They were wholly intent upon perverting Catholics, so that the saying of Tertullian applies to them: "But what shall I say about the administration of the word, since this is their business: not to convert the pagans, but to overthrow our people. They seek this glory the more, if they bring ruin upon the standing, not if they bring elevation upon the prostrate; because even their work itself comes not from their own building, but from the destruction of the truth. They undermine our foundations, that they may build their own."³ At length, in the last century, Protestants, having founded missionary societies, began to bring their religion to the pagans, with enormous sums of money indeed, but with the scantiest fruit.⁴

But even if the Greek or Protestant communities had material diffusion over the whole world, they would nevertheless be destitute of formal catholicity, since unity is lacking to them. Indeed, that which St. Augustine wrote concerning the sects of his own time applies to them: "Not all heretics are over the whole face of the earth, but nevertheless heretics are over the whole face of the earth. Some here, some there, yet nowhere are they wanting: they do not know themselves. One sect in Africa, another heresy in the East, another in Egypt, another in Mesopotamia, for example. In different places they are different; but one mother, pride, begot them all, just as one mother, our Catholic Church, begot all faithful Christians, diffused throughout the whole world. It is not surprising, then, if pride brings forth division, charity unity. That one [the Catholic Church] is like a vine diffused everywhere by growing; those [the heretics] are like useless branches, cut off by the farmer's sickle for the merit of their barrenness, so that the vine might be pruned, not cut away. Those branches, then, where they were cut off, there they remained. But the vine, growing through all things, knows both its own branches, which have remained in it, and, beside itself, those which have been cut off from it."⁵

The Roman Church is apostolic both as regards origin and as regards succession.

1. The apostolicity of origin of the Roman Church is already evident. For on the one hand we have proved that that Church is apostolic in origin, whose head and centre are the see and the successor of Peter; on the other hand, however, we have shown that the Roman see is the see of Peter and that the Roman bishop is the successor of the prince of the apostles. Hence all particular churches, although recently founded, are mediately apostolic, provided that they are in communion with the Roman see, which is immediately apostolic.

2. The apostolicity of succession of the Roman Church is manifest with the same evidence. For we have also proved this: that the criterion of the apostolic succession of the pastors of individual churches is union with the successor of Peter, i. e. with the Roman pontiff. As many pastors of the whole world as remain united with the Roman pontiff have succeeded the apostles in an unbroken series and by a legitimate mission.

Therefore the Roman Catholic Church, although separated from the apostles by nineteen centuries and scattered throughout the whole world, is nevertheless wholly apostolic both as regards origin and as regards succession. On the contrary: