FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 50, 16 December 1925, Page 51

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

(By the Right Reveeend Monsignob Powbb, V.F., for the N.Z. Tablet.}

(23) THE CATHOLIC CHURCH In every age the Catholic Church has, been able to point to her marvellous unity in proof .that she is the true Church of God. Read , the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul, and mark the unity of the Church in the Apostolic age: all Catholics had one mind and one heart in the Lord; they were all one in Christ Jesus, Who could not be divided; they had the mind of Christ Jesus, which, was unity; in one Spirit were they all baptised into one body; and they kept the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, within the one household of faith. And so was it in the later ages. To St. Cyprian truth was one as light was one, and the Catholic Church in his day was light and truth. That she was one body and one soul was his favorite witness against the sects: "Tear the ray from the sun's substance, unity will not admit this division of light; break the branch from the tree, it will not bud when broken; cut off the channel from the spring, it will dry up. Thus the Church, flooded with the light of the Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole world, yet with one light which is spread upon all places, whilst the unity of the body is not infringed. She stretches forth her branches over the universal earth, in the riches of plenty, and pours abroad her bountiful and onward •streams; yet there is one head, one source, one mother abundant in the result of her X fruitfulness." V Similar is the testimony of St. Trenaeus: "Though spread over the world the Church preserves the Apostolic faith with the utmost zeal as if she dwelt in one house; she believes it as if she had but one mind and one heart; and with admirable accord she professes and teaches as if she had but one tongue. The languages of the world may differ but the faith is everywhere the same." Everywhere, always, and by all the same deed is professed, the same Sacrifice is offered, the same Sacraments are received, the same ruling Pastors are obeyed. The Church has a principle which necessarily preserves this unity, an essential dogma of faith, not created by her but received from he-- Founder, which binds all her children to i ccept her teaching under penalty of excom-r;unif.at-on. On account of this principle no one will be permitted to remain in the Church who denies the Virgin-Birth, the Resurrection, the Divinity of Christ, or any other of her dogmas. That form of scandal has never been found in the Church. She has never ceased to teach a single dogma that - is found in the Apostolic writings, she has never allowed a contradictory doctrine to obtain a footing within her fold. The progress that is rightly found in her teaching is h-hut an unfolding of what is at least implicitly \. contained in the deposit. As she defines her articles, she is careful to show that each one was taught by the Apostles. When at the Council of Nieea in 325 she defined the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ against the

HAS THE MARK OF UNITY. Arians, she created nothing new, but proved and declared that this was an essential point of Apostolic teaching. So was it in the case of the three separate definitions, in three different Councils, that in Christ there are one Person, two Natures, and two Wills. These three are but logical developments of the one established fact that Jesus Christ at one and the same time is true God and true Man. This unity of faith is preserved by the other unity of ministry and government. The fact of the Church's one, coherent government is writ large in the history of Europe. The faithful in their parishes are united to their pastor, and never call his jurisdiction into question; the faithful and their pastors are united to their Bishops and are subject to them; and faithful, pastors, and Bishops are all united to the Pope, from whom all jurisdictional powers come. This marvellous coherence is again secured by a dogma made known by Christ: Who heals the Church hears Christ, who despises it despises Christ and Him Who sent Him, and such a one is as the heathen and the publican. It is objected that at the time of what is incorrectly called the great Schism of the West, there were rival Popes and rival obediences. Let me summarise the answer given by De Vivier, in his Christian Apologetics, vol. 2, pages 42-47. In 1306, a time' when France had deserved well of the Church, a French Pope, Clement V, fixed his seat' at Avignon. His successors imitated him, to the displeasure of a considerable part of Christendom. Soon two parties were formed and two Popes were elected, Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII at Avignon. Urban was acknowledged by all the Catholic Churches of the world. The Oxford theologians came to the conclusion that he was the lawful Pope, giving five reasons that have not been refuted to this day. Urban's successors therefore were the legitimate Popes, by almost universal consent. In 1417 concord was restored, two rival claimants of Rome resigned and Benedict XIII of Avignon was deposed. Then on November 11 Martin V was elected and recognised by all Christendom as the lawful successor of St. Peter and Vicar of Christ. From this it evidently appears that the series of legitimate Pontiffs was not interrupted, and that neither the unity of authority nor that of government ceased to exist, even during the period of dissension. There was never a division of judgment regarding, the dogma of the Primacy of St. Peter and the unity of the Apostolic See; all believed in one visible head of the Church; the division was upon a matter of fact, not upon a fundamental point of law and doctrine. This error of fact, not of principle, so far from proving the discontinuity of government, proves on the contrary the deeply rooted spirit of unity which animated the members of the whole Church. Never did the Church appear more admirable than dur-

ing that fearful tempest; never did she more splendidly show that none but a divine hand was at the helm. Had she been a purely human institution, she must have fallen at a" juncture when all the resources of geniits, the powers, the united endeavors of learned doctors, the combined authority of Christian princes, and even the efforts of the very Saints were powerless to abate the raging storm. An uncompromising opponent of the Papacy, Gregorovius, was candid enough to acknowledge that "any secular kingdom would have perished; yet so marvellous was the organisation of this spiritual destiny, and so indestructible the idea of the Papacy, that the schism only served to demonstrate its indivisibility." The one, divinely appointed government of the Church abides, the Papacy still lives, despite the prophecies of false prophets and the machinations of the world. When the Vatican Council will re-open, it will find a thousand bishops gathered together from every part of the world—from Cape Horn to Greenland's Icy Mountains, from Calcutta round the great circle to the Yellow Sea. These bishops will be of every race and tribe and color and tongue; every language will find its echo within the Vatican's Majestic Halls. Oh, what tales will not the bishops tell in these languages, what changes, what upheavals will they not report.! In the short span of fifty years since the first sessions'of that Council were held, the world has been turned>side out. What a shaking down of thrones, what a rearrangement of principalities and powers, what a tossing about of even the most distant islands! The Bishops of Mesopotamia, and Jerusalem, and of the sunny isles of the Pacific will bring their strange tales, but not so strange as those which the Bishops of Cracow and Posen and Moscow will tell; and the Bishops of Alsace and of the sections of the Austria that will outrival their brethren; and the Irish'bishops will tell their thrilling tale. But the Holy Father, unastonished, will smile at them all; he lias been looking at the world's shifting .scene for two thousand years from a rock" built Throne, and he knows that the rule of it all is change and decay. He gives the sign, and the procession moves under St Peter's mighty dome, emblem of undecayj and lo! there is no change, but one unbroken unity. The same creed springs from a thousand voices, the same Mass as of old is offered on the altar, the same Sacraments arc upheld, and a thousand voices in one great chord make one profession of submission and loyalty to the one Supreme Pontiff That profession is wider than their voices. It is the voice of the priests who have been legitimately ordained by them; it is the voiced the people who have been baptised by this legitimate priesthood, and who have been fitly compacted and joined with priests bishops, and Pontiff to form the one, undivided, indivisible Mystic Body of the one Christ. The world will turn from its Babel to admire the enduring miracle of the Church's unity.

Charity is the bond of brotherhood, . the foundation of peace, the link and strength of unity: it is greater than both hop© and faith. —St Cyprian.