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: