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

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