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Faith of the Church |
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Christian faith deeply involves the Church founded by Christ. This is so in several ways and for several reasons. By God’s will, the fullness of the faith is given through the instrumentality of the Church, which for this reason is appropriately spoken of as a mother (“Holy Mother the Church,” as the old expression puts it). Indeed, even those who, by no fault of their own, do not formally and explicitly enjoy membership in the Church are said to be saved through this same instrumentality, the Church, although in this case operating more hiddenly. Furthermore, belief itself is an ecclesial act, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church points out: “The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports, and nourishes our faith” (181). And the Catechism goes on to quote the third-century bishop of Carthage: “ ‘No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother’ (St. Cyprian, De unit. 6: PL 4, 519).” Inextricably linked with God’s Revelation concerning himself is God’s Revelation concerning the Church as Christ’s Body and his will that all men and women be saved through incorporation into this Body. Here people find all the means needed for salvation; here the communion of all in God already is begun in this present life. The Second Vatican Council teaches accordingly that God has “willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge and serve him in holiness” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 9). It adds that this People of God, this “messianic people,” has as its destiny “the kingdom of God which has been begun by God himself on earth and which must be further extended until it is brought to perfection by him at the end of time” (Lumen Gentium, 9). The Infallibility of the Church • Moreover, as the Council says, this holy People of God, the Church, shares in the priestly, kingly, and prophetic office of Christ himself. In reference to participation in the prophetic office, Vatican II recalls that, by divine protection, the members of the whole Church, “from the bishops to the last of the faithful” (St. Augustine), “cannot err in matters of belief [when] they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals” (Lumen Gentium, 12). This is the infallibility of the Church as a whole. The infallible belief of the Church, however, cannot be measured by sociological instruments such as public opinion polls. Christ sustains the infallibility of the Church by having endowed her pastors and official teachers with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. These “shepherds” of the Church – that is, the Pope and the bishops in communion with him – are called the Magisterium; and it is the task of this Magisterium, or teaching authority, “to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC 890). There is only one faith, the faith entrusted to Christ’s Church, professed and preached by her through the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and with the guarantee of the Magisterium (cf. CCC 172, 174). Those who have received the fullness of the faith have a strict obligation to profess and teach it, so as to prepare the way for others to receive this gift of God. “But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” (Rom 10:14). This is the work of evangelization and catechesis for which all are responsible.
See: Catechesis; Church, Nature, Origin, and Structure of; Creed; Divine Revelation; Evangelization; Infallibility; Magisterium. Suggested Readings: CCC 166-175. St. Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy, Pt. II. J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity. Lawrence A. Kutz |
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