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

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