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vast numbers for the Faith of Jesus Christ. Futhermore, if smaller
parishes were to put forth their best efforts to distribute pamphlets
in proportion to the number of their parishioners, they would
supplement the work of the large urban parishes and disseminate
the knowledge of the teachings of Christ into the small towns,
villages, and hamlets of the countryside.
If we are going to match the zeal and the determination of the
Seventh Day Adventists and of Jehovah’s Witnesses, we must
shake off the lethargy which rests upon so many of us today and
bestir ourselves with greater determination to leave no stone
unturned to win the vast unchurched millions of Americans for
Christ and His Church. This means in practice that we must make
more systematic use of the pamphlet rack as a supremely important
agency for the dissemination of the divine deposit of truth. It means
that we should establish a dozen such racks in our larger dty
churches and a proportionate number in the smaller parish
churches. This means that instead of being placed in a dark comer
and covered with neglect, the pamphlet rack will become the
focal point of the missionary zeal of priests and people in the
distribution of millions of printed messengers of the good tidings
of Christ and His Church to the people of America.
John A. O’Brien
The University of Notre Dame,
South Bend, Ind.
The Church Beginning from Jerusalem
Thus the company in the Upper Chamber on the day of Pentecost
constituted the Unity of the one Church. A few days later the Church
numbered some hundreds, and they were the whole Church, and the
entire world without was outside the Unity of that one Church. Grad­
ually the numbers grew to thousands, and today there are many tens
of millions. But it is not a question of numbers or extent The Church
has, indeed, both the mission and the power of existing at all times and
in every nation. In all probability her growth has been continuous
from the beginning. Loss in one direction has been more than compen­
sated by gain in another. But the existence of the one Church and of her
Unity are independent of time and place and numbers.
The Catholic holds that this conception of the Unity of the Church
is the necessary logical consequence of the Divine Founder's words.
—Cardinal Bourne, in his introduction to the English translation of the
encyclical Mortalium animos, in The Reunion of Christendom (New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1929), p. 4.

M&MfiûWB aiwjwiillfcTO fMlr WhatowA■K

THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH
Part I

The science of sacred theology considers the catholicity of
Our Lord’s Church from three points of view. First of all,
catholicity is a property of the Church, the property from which
God’s kingdom on earth has received its most frequently used
name. Secondly, it is a note of the Church, one of those signs
which mark the religious society subject to the Bishop of Rome
as the genuine and only company of Our Lord’s disciples. Finally,
it is one of those characteristics which, taken together, mark the
Church of the Roman communion as a miracle of the social order,
and thus as a divine signature attesting the authenticity of the
message which this society brings to men as a revelation from
God Himself.
Despite the manifest and paramount importance of the
matter, however, the Church has never been called upon to define
the meaning of its own catholicity in any solemn judgment.
Hence the only source from which we can gain a knowledge of
what the Church means when it describes itself as catholic is the
ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church itself, as ex­
pressed in the literary tradition of Christianity. The documents
best calculated to help us in this study are to be found in the
writings of the Fathers and the scholastic theologians.
Today a careful inquiry into those sources is badly needed.
Our own generation has seen some highly important criticism
of and divergence from the usual teaching about the Church’s
catholicity. Thus, in 1910, the distinguished French ecclesiologist, Fr. De Poulpiquet, O.P., proposed the notion of what he
called qualitative, rather than quantitative, catholicity as the
primary concept of this property of the Church.
Among the different communions which claim to belong to Christ,
the only one which can take the title of catholic is that which will be
free from all the human particularizing factors (les particularismes
humains) of which we have just now spoken [individualism, party
spirit, and nationalism], while keeping the religious universalism of the
kingdom, in itself or in its outward expansion.1

'La notion de catholicité (Paris: Bloud et Cie., 1910), pp. 34 f.
291

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Still another concept of the Church’s catholicity, a concept
somewhat different from that presented in the ordinary theo­
logical manual, has been formulated by Fr. Cougar. “Cath­
olicity,” he tells us, “is the universal capacity of unity, or again,
the dynamic universality of the Church’s principles of unity."1
This “capacity of unity” is the Church's power of drawing into
itself and consecrating to God all the human value in the world.
Art, national or racial culture, and language form a part of the
human value which the Church is competent to possess and to
consecrate. Thus the catholicity of the Church involves the
power to take in all the human value of, for instance, the Hindu
world, with all that is specific and proper to it, to become mys­
tically “as the flesh and the members of the New Adam.’’’
According to this teaching "Christ will not be complete until he
will thus have incorporated into Himself the whole man in each
one of us, and all the value of humanity scattered and multi­
plied throughout the world.”4
Another and a somewhat similar view of the Church's catholi­
city has been advanced by the English writer, Mr. Edward
Ingram Watkin.
No religion can claim to be universal, the one true religion, unless it
is Catholic, embracing the entire positive content of other religions, ex­
plaining their significance and harmonizing their respective insights in
a more comprehensive vision.5

As distinct from these teachings, we have the ordinary doctrine
of the theological manuals. According to one of the best of them,
that of the Jesuit Fr. Timothy Zapelena, catholicity or universal­
ity is ascribed to the Church in many different ways.
1. The Church is Catholic by reason of revealed doctrine, which
has all been entrusted to it, and which it guards diligently and
preaches infallibly.
2. It is Catholic by reason of the means of salvation, because it
possesses all the merits of Christ and all the graces He obtained
on the Cross. It is continually applying these to men.
3. It is Catholic by reason of the men whom it receives into
1 Esquisses du mystère de Γéglise (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1941), p. 121.
* Cf. ibid., p. 122.
*Λ«ί.
s The Catholic Centre (London: Sheed and Ward, 1943), p. 66.

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293

itself from every race and class, without making any distinctions.
4. It is Catholic by reason of its necessity, because to all men
it is necessary for salvation, with the necessity of means and of
precept.
5. It is Catholic in duration, since it will live for all time.
6. It is Catholic in point of place because, being independent
of any jurisdiction or national boundary, it must spread abroad
throughout the world.
Zapelena notes that this last is the “classical” meaning of the
Church’s catholicity, which he defines as “the wide diffusion of
one and the same Church throughout the world, with a great and
conspicuous multitude of believers.”*
One of the most important developments in modem ecclesiology has been Dr. Gustave Thils’ adverse criticism of this very
type of catholicity as a valid note of Our Lord’s tree Church.7
The distinguished Louvain professor holds that the via notarum
as a whole is devoid of any real and practical value in establishing
the identity of the Church of the Roman communion as the
genuine society of Our Lord’s disciples. Interestingly enough,
three of the most recent and competent manuals of ecclesiology
have taken explicit cognizance of Thils’ chief contentions.
*
Thils’ conclusion with reference to the note of catholicity in
modern scholastic theology is quite interesting.
Since the progressive isolation, of which the notion of spatial catho­
licity had been the object, had weakened its probative force, a number
of authors have had to annex another mark to it, or to bring it back to
the via primatus, or to transform it into a moral miracle, or finally, to
substitute qualitative catholicity [the notion of Fr. De Poulpiquet] for
,De Ecclesia Christi: Pars Apologetica (Rome: The Gregorian University,
19«), p. 397.
7 Ci. Les notes de l’église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la réforme
(Paris: Desclée, De Brouwer, 1937), pp. 212 ff.
•Cf. Zapelena, op. rit., pp. 469 fif. Parente, in his Theologia Fundamentalis
(Turin: Marietti, 1946), p. 123, completely approves of Zapelena’s opposition
to Thils. Vellico, in his De Ecclesia Christi (Rome: A. Amodo, 1940), devotes
a great deal of space to the teaching of the Louvain theologian, especially on
pp. 485 ff. Dr. Thils’ conclusion has been discussed in two articles in this
Ariete, “An Effective Demonstration from the Marks of the Church," in
The American Ecclesiastical Review CXI, 5 (Nov., 1944), 380-90, and "The
True Church and the Notes of the Church,” in A ER CXIV, 4 (April, 1946),
282-97.

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it, in order to make a positive note out of it The weakness of the proof
drawn from quantitative catholicity having been recognized, the effec­
tiveness of the via notarum finds itself rendered questionable once
again.9

The positions of Thils, De Poulpiquet, and Congar constitute
a very serious challenge to the generally accepted teaching about
the Church’s catholicity. If their contentions are justified, then
the explanations given in most of our theological manuals must
be sharply revised. Certainly our theologians have no right to
ignore their observations. It is definitely our duty to learn all
that we can about what the Catholic Church itself has always
recognized as its own proper catholicity and to see how, during
the ages, it has used this characteristic as evidence of the rightness
of its own claims.
In order to arrive at this appreciation, it will obviously be
necessary to investigate the writings of the Fathers and of the
theologians. The first step must involve an examination of the
patristic writings up until the middle of the third century.
During this period certain writings speak of the Catholic Church.
Others refer to the society of Our Lord’s disciples simply as the
Catholica. Many of them, however, make use of the term
καβοΧική to indicate realities other than the Church, its doctrine,
or its faith. All of these expressions will serve to throw light on
the basic and principal meaning of the Church's catholicity.
None of these writers contributed any explicit statement about
the meaning of catholicity itself. That function was reserved for
the later patristic writers and for the scholastic theologians. The
earlier Fathers, however, made frequent and highly revealing use
of the Church’s extension as evidence of the genuineness of its
own claims. Unfortunately, these very valuable patristic texts
have more or less been lost sight of during recent discussions of
the Church’s catholicity.
The remainder of this article will be devoted to a statement of
the second and early third-century patristic use of the term
“catholic.” The first part, printed in this issue, will consider only
the Ad Smyrnaeos of St. Ignatius of Antioch and the Martyrium
Polycarpi, the two writings in which the expression “Catholic
* Thils, op. ai., p. 2S4.

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295

Church” first appears in Christian literature, and by all means
the most important documents for this particular study.
"Catholic” is, of course, only the English rendering of the
Greek καθολικό!, a term which could be roughly synonymous
with ο’ικυμενικδί or with κοινός and δημόσιοί. It could be trans­
lated into English sometimes as “general” or “universal,” and
sometimes as “popular” or even “vulgar.” The word it self is
found neither in the Septuagint nor in the New Testament.
The adverbial καβόλου or καθ' δλον, however, occurs in the
Acts of the Apostles, where it is used with the negative particle
μη to signify universal exclusion.10
From the early part of the second century until the middle of
the third comparatively few of the patristic writings that have
come down to us use the term “Catholic Church” at all. None of
them contain any extended and explicit teaching on the meaning
of catholicity. Nevertheless, in order to understand the catholi­
city of the Church, it is imperative that we know how the men of
these first Christian generations used the term “catholic” and
how they applied it to God’s kingdom on earth. It was during
their period that the society of Our Lord’s disciples came to be
designated more and more frequently as the Catholic Church.
Hence the original meaning of this name can best be gathered
from a study of the ways in which they employed the term
“catholic.”
ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

Strikingly enough, the first time that the word “catholic”
appears in extant Christian literature, it forms a part of the name
of the true Church of God. In his letter to the Church of God in
Smyrna of Asia, St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “Wherever the
bishop appears, there let the congregation be; just as, where
Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”11
There are two distinct theories about the meaning of the term
“Catholic Church” in this, its first appearance in Christian liter­
ature. What used to be the more common opinion holds that
the term designates the universal and genuine society of Our
Lord’s disciples, as opposed to the various heretical and schismatic
r,Cf. Ads 4-18.
“Ad Smyrnaeos, VIII, 2. Cf. Funk, Die apostolischen Fater (Tubingen,

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groups which falsely claim the Christian name. The famous
American Jesuit scholar, Dr. James A. Kleist, is one of the few
who have championed this teaching publicly in recent times. Dr.
Kleist contends that, to St. Ignatius of Antioch, “the term
‘Catholic Church’ conveyed the same meaning as at the present
day.”11
What is by far the most prevalent opinion on the matter today
is the notion that St. Ignatius spoke of the “Catholic” Church as
the universal society of the faithful, to distinguish it from the
local Churches rather than from the dissident conventicles. The
Anglican scholar Dr. Lightfoot popularized this opinion in his
edition of the Apostolic Fathers.*13 Another Anglican, Dr. Arthur
James Mason, has supported it warmly.14* Three outstanding
Catholic scholars have supported this opinion in recent years.
Msgr. Batiffol interpreted St. Ignatius’ sentence to mean that
“the bishop makes the unity of the local Church, and Jesus
Christ makes the unity of all the local Churches scattered through­
out the world.”18 Dr. Gerald G. Walsh, S.J., teaches that “Later,
as in the Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, katholiké meant
both ‘universal’ and ‘orthodox.’ Here it would seem to mean
only ‘universal’.”13 The most complete statement of this teach­
ing and of its immediate implications can be found in the
writing of Dr. Gustave Bardy.
Here it is not a matter of opposing the Church universal to the dis­
sident conventicles, but rather of instituting a comparison between the
universal Church, directed by Christ, and the local Churches led by the
bishops. Over the former an invisible bishop presides. The visible
bishops who preside over the latter are only His representatives and
His delegates, to such an extent that the local communities possess
reality, life, and power only in so far as they form a part of the universal
Church.17

u The Epistles of St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch (West­
minster, Maryland: The Newman Bookshop, 1946), p. 142.
17 Cf. The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan and Co., 1885), II, 310 δ.
14 Cf. Essays on the Early History of the Church and the Ministry, edited by
H. B. Swete, D.D. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1921), p. 24.
ls L'église naissante et le catholicisme (Paris: Gabalda, 1927), p. 166.
14 The Apostolic Fathers (New York: Cima Publishing Co., Inc., 1947), p. 121.
17 La théologie de F église de saint Clément de Rome à saint Irénée (Paris: Les
éditions du Cerf, 1945), pp. 64 f.

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297

Dr. Bardy and the other two Catholic scholars who accept
this opinion are recognized authorities in the field of patristics.
Any explanation they present must be considered seriously.
Nevertheless, on this particular point, there is a striking amount
of evidence that militates against their interpretation of the
term "Catholic Church” in St. Ignatius’letter to the Christians
of Smyrna. The sentence in which the expression occurs, the
context of the letter to the Smyrneans, and the whole tenor of
the Ignatian writings, all combine to suggest that the great
martyr-Saint of Antioch had no intention whatsoever of insti­
tuting any sort of comparison “between the universal Church
directed by Christ and the local Churches led by the Bishops”
when he used the expression, “the Catholic Church.” Quite on
the contrary, all of the internal evidence points to the conclusion
that the term was meant to designate the one universal and
genuine brotherhood of Our Lord’s disciples as distinguished
from the various heretical and schismatic conventicles in existence
during the time of St. Ignatius.
The sentence in the Ad Smyrnaeos which mentions the Ca­
tholic Church offers no support whatsoever to Dr. Bardy’s con­
tention. If the sentence was meant to compare the universal
Church with the local community of the faithful, then it could
only mean that the bishop is to his own faithful what Our Lord
is to the world-wide society of His disciples, as Dr. Bardy ac­
knowledges. Now the bishop rules his own flock as the repre­
sentative of Christ. Our Lord, then, remains the ultimate though
still the invisible Ruler of the local Church, just as truly as He
is of the Church universal. The bishop is the visible father and
leader whom Our Lord has commissioned.
Thus any comparison between the local Church and the uni­
versal brotherhood of the faithful in terms of their respective
relations to the bishop and to Our Lord would necessarily be
meaningless, except on one of two suppositions, neither of
which is verified in this instance. It might be possible to
interpret this sentence in terms of such a comparison if the
sentence by itself or the context in which it is placed warned the
local community as a whole not to leave the unity of the Church
universal. Or, on the other hand, it might be possible to assert
that the sentence compared the Church throughout the world
to the local congregation if we were ready to believe that St.

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Ignatius of Antioch denied the existence of a Vicar of Christ who
ruled the universal Church as its visible superior.
The first of these suppositions is shown to be erroneous by an
examination of the sentence itself. The imperative mood is used
in order to command the faithful of this local Church not to
desert their Bishop, St. Polycarp. The entire chapter in which
the sentence in question is contained is aimed at precisely this
same object. There is no evidence whatsoever that St. Ignatius
intended, in this sentence, to warn the Christian community
of Smyrna as a whole to continue in communion with the rest of
the Church of God throughout the world.
The expressions St. Ignatius employed in his letter to the
Romans give ample evidence that the second supposition is
groundless. The man who described the Roman Church as
“presiding over the agapê"1* could hardly be considered as
denying or ignoring the existence of a visible ruler over all the
Church of God on earth. Yet, apparently, the sympathy of
scholars like Lightfoot and Mason for the theory that St. Ig­
natius meant the universal society of the faithful as distinct from
the individual local congregation by the term “Catholic Church"
is based in no small part on the consistency of this view with
their own ecclesiological theories. As Anglicans, both of these
men are convinced that a local Church is ruled by a bishop, and
that there is no man with truly episcopal authority over the
entire Church of God. They are obviously delighted with an
interpretation which represents St. Ignatius of Antioch as agree­
ing with their stand.
When we turn to the context of St. Ignatius’ pronouncement
about the Catholic Church, we find that there is actually over­
whelming evidence that he used the term to designate the true
Church as opposed to the various dissident conventicles then
existent. The expression ή καθολική ίκκλησία occurs in the
eighth chapter of the letter to the Smyrneans. This same epistle
devotes six earlier chapters to a warning against Docetic heretics.
Chapters II-V deal with the Christological errors of these dissi­
dents. Chapters VI and VII tell of their moral faults, and of their
avoidance of the Eucharist and of prayer. The faithful of Smyrna
are admonished to keep away from the men who hold these
15

Romanos, Int., cf. Funk, op cit., p. 94.

teachings and who are guilty of these faults and “not even to
speak about them in private or in public.”19
Another section of the letter begins with the last sentence in
the seventh chapter. The Smyrnean Christians are warned to
“avoid division as the beginning of evil.”20 The entire eighth
chapter is a development of this theme, and thus a part of the
conclusion to the first portion of the letter as a whole.
Now the “division” St. Ignatius seeks to avert in this passage
is evidently one within the local Church itself. He obviously
believes that the faithful of Smyrna are in the process of being
tempted to separate from and to oppose the rightful spiritual
leaders of their own community. He seems to imply that in the
city of Smyrna there are groups that administer baptism and hold
religious services apart from the congregation over which the
bishop presides with his presbyterium and his deacons. The eighth
chapter may be thus translated.
All of you must follow the bishop as Jesus Christ [follows] the
Father, and [all of you must follow] the presbyterium as the apostles.
Respect the deacons as [you do] the command of God. Let no one do
any of the things pertaining to the Church apart from the bishop. Let
that Eucharist be considered valid which is celebrated by the bishop or
one whom he appoints. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the
congregation be; just as, where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
Church. It is unlawful either to baptize or to make an agapé apart
from the bishop. But whatever he approves, this is also pleasing to
God, so that everything you do may be secure and valid.21

The main point of St. Ignatius’ argument is that separation
from the bishop involves separation from Our Lord Himself. The
Church that is with Christ is the Church or congregation united
to the bishop. Thus, if “Catholic Church” in this chapter were
taken to mean the Church universal precisely as distinct from
the local Christian community, much of the force of the argument
would be lost. It was the contention of St. Ignatius, not that
Our Lord is with the universal Church as distinct from the local
Church, but that He is with the true and universal Church as
opposed to the various dissident religious societies.
‘’Ad Smyrnaeos, VII, 2, cf. Funk, op. tit., p. 103.
wïbid.
* Ad Smyrnaeos, VIII. cf. Funk, op. tit., pp. 103 f.

I

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The reason why the term “Catholic Church” should be used to
designate the true society of Our Lord’s disciples stands out very
clearly in St. Ignatius’s writings. St. Ignatius himself was bishop
of Antioch in Syria. The Churches and the bishops of Rome and
of five cities in Asia received letters from him and were manifestly
in communion with him and with his Church at Antioch. The
local Christian communities over which the bishops presided were
thus manifestly members of a catholic or universal brotherhood.
This universal brotherhood, and each local community that be­
longed to it, could most fittingly be designated as the Catholic
Church.
There were, on the other hand, groups of people even in the
days of St. Ignatius, gathered together and organized to offer an
erroneous version of the Christian message, to administer bap­
tism, and to hold religious services apart from the bishop and
his congregation in a particular city. St. Ignatius considered
the propaganda of one of these groups as a definite and serious
menace to the true Christians of Smyrna. There can be no doubt
that these groups, because they held reunions, had some sort of
an organization.
Their conventicles claimed to be Christian. They might call
themselves “Churches.” They might claim to possess a high
degree of holiness. Yet there was one claim which they could not
put forward without making themselves openly ridiculous. They
could not say that they were in communion with the recognized
Churches throughout the world, which were manifestly in com­
munion with each other and with the Holy See. Hence the term
“Catholic” or “universal” was, even in the time of St. Ignatius,
a most effective and distinctive title for the true Church of God.
Parallel passages in St. Ignatius’ letters, moreover, give us
ample reason to believe that he used the expression ή καθολική
εκκλησία as a proper name of the true society of God’s faithful,
a name that set this company apart from any of the groups which
falsely claimed the name of Christian. Writing to the Christians
of Ephesus, he describes as “blessed” those persons “who are so
united with him [their bishop] as the Church is with Jesus Christ,
and as Jesus Christ is with the Father.”42 Certainly there is no
ground here for believing that St. Ignatius meant the Church
“ Ad Ephesios, V, I. cf. Funk, op. cii., p. 81.

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301

throughout the world in contradistinction to the local community
o( true Christians. In another parallel passage, this time from
the Epistle to the Philadelphians, the Saint teaches that ‘ ‘as many
as belong to God and Jesus Christ, these are with the bishop.”23
St. Ignatius continually insisted upon the presence of Our Lord
in the true Church. Furthermore, he taught very clearly that
separation from the communion of the bishop involved the loss of
fellowship with Christ. Thus it would seem that, in using the
name of the Catholic Church, he was indicating the true congre­
gation of the faithful, as opposed to the various heretical or
schismatic groups existing in his own time. The Church’s Ca­
tholicity appears here with the function of a note.
THE MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP

The Martyrium Polycarpi, written shortly after the Saint was
put to death in 156, uses the term “Catholic Church four times.
The letter is addressed from “the Church of God which is in pil­
grimage in Smyrna, to the Church of God which is in pilgrimage
in Philomelium, and to all the sojournings of the holy Catholic
Church in every place."24 It tells of the glorious triumph of
“Polycarp, who in our times was an apostolic and prophetic
didaskalos, bishop of the Catholic Church in Smyrna.25 In the
course of his narration, the author writes that St. Polycarp prayed
for “the entire Catholic Church throughout the world,26 and
speaks of Our Lord as “the shepherd of the Catholic Church
throughout the world."22
The strongest of these texts, the one which speaks of St.
Polycarp as bishop of the Catholic Church in Smyrna, is some­
what questionable. The bulk of the Greek manuscripts speak of
the “Catholic Church,” as does Eusebius, who quotes this docu­
ment in his Ecclesiastical History.
**
The old Latin translation,
however, and one important Greek manuscript, that of Moscow,
speak of the “holy Church.” Lightfoot preferred the latter read“Ai Philadelphienses, HI, 2, cf. Funk, op. cit., p. 98.
“Int., cf. Funk, op. cit., p. 115.
“XVI, 2. cf. Funk, op. cit., p. 121.
“V, 1. cf. Funk, op. cit., p. 117.
”XIX, 2. cf. Funk, op. cit., p. 123.
“Book IV, chap. 15.

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ing, but Funk and Kirsopp Lake used “Catholic.” In any event,
the testimony of the other three passages is quite sufficient to
show that the author of the Martyrium Polycarpi used the ex­
pression “Catholic Church” to designate the society of the
disciples precisely as the true Church of Jesus Christ.

Had the author of the Martyrium Polycarpi used the term
“Catholic Church” to indicate the universal society of the dis­
ciples as distinct from the local congregation, such expressions as
“all the sojoumings (or the pilgrimages) of the Catholic Church
in every place” and "the Catholic Church throughout the world”
would have been sheer redundancies. A fault of this sort might be
expected to occur in the work of some man aping a stylistic
elegance beyond his powers. There is, however, no trace of any
such situation in the Martyrium Polycarpi. Hence it is only
logical to conclude that the words are found in this document in
the only way in which they can be understood properly, as
designating the true and only company of Jesus Christ precisely
in so far as this company is differentiated and separated from
false religious groups.
Thus, in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch as well as in
the Martyrium Polycarpi, there is no trace whatever of certain
meanings which were later hitched on to the term “Catholic.”
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that, in designating the
Church as Catholic, either St. Ignatius or the writer of the
Martyrium had even the slightest intention of teaching that this
company of disciples incorporated all of the positive content of
all the world’s religions into its own doctrine. The great An tiocbean
martyr manifested himself as completely out of sympathy with
every movement and effort towards non-Catholic religious
instruction. Polycarp’s devotion to Christian orthodoxy was
proverbial. Neither was there any concern to emphasize the true
Church’s superiority to human limitations or particularities. The
Catholic Church was pre-eminently the Church of Our Lord’s
own communion, the widespread and populous brotherhood
within which the disciples of Christ recognized one another. As
such it was recognizable as the true ecclesia.
Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

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Answers to Questions
FORMULA FOR THE APPLICATION OF MASS

Question: Is there any approved formula that can be recited
before Mass directing the application of it, for instance, pro
populo?

I

Answer: The only liturgical prayers of the direction of intention
before Mass are the two forms found in the preparation forMass
in the fore part of the Missal. These are: Declaratio intentionis
ante Missam and Oratio ad Sanctum in cujus honorem Missa
celebratur. However, both of these indulgenced prayers refer to
the intention of consecrating and not to that of the definite
application of the fruits of the Holy Sacrifice. No special form of
words is provided for the direction of this latter intention. The
definite application may be made vocal by a private prayer of
the celebrant but there is no obligation that he do so. An act of
the will directing the intention, pro populo or for individuals, is
quite sufficient. It may be noted, in this connection, that while
the intention to consecrate must be actual or at least virtual, a
habitual intention suffices for the application of the special fruit
of the Mass. It is naturally highly recommended and more satis­
factory for the peace of mind of the priest that he, whether
vocally or merely mentally, formally direct the application of the
Mass before he begins the celebration of it (Cf. Sabetti-Barrett,
706). While there is nothing official about them, certain sug­
gestions for formulating in a prayer this definite intention may
be found in the Schneider-Lehmkuhl Manuale sacerdotum,
published in Cologne, 1900. The formulas of which we speak
appear on pp. 104, 105, and 106.

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OBLIGATORY PROCESSIONS

Question: Are the processions of obligation on Candlemas Day
and Palm Sunday? Our church is so small and the aisles, except
the middle one, so narrow, that processions are practically im­
possible. I have been told, however, that if you do not have the
procession, you cannot have the ceremony at all but that the
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preach and baptize, instruct converts, catechize the children,
visit the lax and fallen-away.
He would return to the seminary, surely, with a much keener
appreciation of the principles that up until then had been a matter
of theory. He would take up his final year of theology with a much
clearer grasp of the issues involved. The reports of the pastors
under whom these men had served would be of invaluable aid to
the seminary administrators in the final polishing-off process. Or
is the whole idea utopian?
Again, how can we bridge the gap between the personal
guidance of one’s seminary spiritual director, and the casual,
impersonal-ferverino type of confession that awaits us as soon as
we are ordained. It seems to me that if there could be one skilled,
full-time priests’ director attached to each religious house in a
diocese, and that fact were made known to the diocesan clergy,
the appointment books of such directors would be quickly filled.
Suggestions such as these may be the vapid vaporings of an
impractical mind. No one knows better than a pastor how good
things can look on paper, and how unworkable they can prove on
application. Perhaps sacerdotal training has reached perfection.
Perhaps our losses—and I do not mean actual losses in personnel,
but the more subtle overall losses due to inferior fervor—perhaps
such losses have reached an irreducible minimum. I only know
that in my pastoral work I never dare say, “I am doing my best;
there is nothing more I can do to save souls.” I never dare say,
“I am preaching the true doctrine to them; let them look to it.” I
doubt very much whether those charged with the training of
priests would hazard such boasts either.
Leo J. Trese
Carleion, Michigan
Priestly Zeal
There is a supernatural strength in the priestly zeal which defies the
strongest opposition. It is as firm as a rock when there is question of an
absolute duty. The zealous priest will shrink from no danger when die
law of God and the rights of the Church have to be upheld; unbending
like the oak, he will weather the severest storm, without surrendering a
single principle.
—Bishop William Stang, in Pastoral Theology (New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1897), p. 214.

THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH
Part II

After the middle of the third century, the true Church of
Jesus Christ was ordinarily and regularly designated as the
Catholic society. Hence, as far as a theological study of the
Church’s catholicity is concerned, the authors who wrote after
that period are chiefly valuable for the explanations of this
property of the Church, and for the various ways in which they
made use of it to support the claims of Christianity. The writers
who composed their books between the middle of the second
century and the middle of the third, however, throw light upon
the subject only by the ways in which they employ the word
Catholic, either with reference to the Church itself, or with
reference to some reality distinct from the society of the disciples.
Among the authors who are considered here, none gave any
detailed explanation either of the Church’s own Catholicism or of
the basic significance of the term "catholic” itself. All of them,
however, used either the term or one of its derivatives in such a
way as to aid us in understanding the basic meaning of what came
to be the most prominent among the notes of the Church. An
investigation of their teaching shows that they understood the
term “catholic” as St. Ignatius of Antioch and the author of the
Martyrium Polycarpi understood it. The Catholic Church was the
general or universal and genuine company of Our Lord’s followers,
as opposed to the various conventicles which falsely claimed the
Christian name for themselves.
THE GREEK APOLOGISTS AND ST. IRENAEUS

None of the second-century Greek apologists used the ex­
pression "Catholic Church” in any of the works that have come
down to us. The word “catholic,” however, appears on their
pages. In his Dialogue with Trypho St. Justin Martyr speaks of
the catholic resurrection and judgment,1 and of the catholic, as
distinct from the particular, judgment.2 In both instances the
1 Cf. c. 81, n. 3; Migne’s Pairotogia graeca (MPG), VI, 669. The text speaks
of the "catholic, and, in one word, eternal resurrection and judgment of al),
altogether at once.” ■
..........
!Cf. c. 102, n. 3; MPG, VI, 713. The καθολικοί are here distinguished from
titeppucai, “partial,” or “divided,” or “particular," or “individual.”
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word could be translated as either “general” or “universal." The
De monarchia, which was erroneously included among the genuine
works of St. Justin, but which Bardenhewer believes may well
come from the second century, makes mention of “the Catholic
teaching (τής καθολικής δόξης)."3 This “Catholic teaching”
was the belief in the unity of God, forgotten among the pagans
because of the superstitions of their ancestors. Athenagoras uses
the adverbial form καθολικώχ4 to mean “entirely” or “ex­
clusively.” Theophilus of Antioch, however, speaks of "the
Catholic resurrection of all men,”5 as something God is able to
effect.

The Latin translator of St. Irenaeus’ five books Adversus
haereses did not use the adjective “catholica" at all. It is inter­
esting to note, however, that in one place where we have the
Greek original, we find that the translator rendered τίσσαρα
καθολικά Όίύματα as quatuor principales spiritus? There is also
a suggestion in the Latin translation that the original Greek text
may have spoken of members of the true Church as Catholics.
The famous Anglican scholar, W. Wigan Harvey, who produced
what is still the standard edition of St. Irenaeus’ Adversus
haereses, suggested that the term Catholic might possibly have
come into general use first as a derisive epithet applied to the
true Church and to its members by some of the dissident Gnostics.
The Latin translation of the Adversus haereses tells us that the
Valentinian heretics were accustomed to ridicule the members of
the true Church as “communes et Ecclesiasticos.” Harvey suggests
that “communes" is simply the Latin rendering of καθολικούς,
and that thus the Gnostics were accustomed to designate the
members of the true Church as “Catholics,” in the sense of the
“common,” or the “vulgar,” while they thought of themselves
* CL c. 1 ; MPG, VI, 313. The term as used here has no reference whatsoever
to any comparison between the true Christian teaching and some heretical
perversion of this doctrine. It only implies that the teaching about the existence
of one God had been unchallenged in the world until the pagan mind had been
misled by superstition.
* Plea for the Christians, c. 27; MPG, VI, 952.
* Ad Autolycum, I, 13; MPG, VI,1044.
•Lib. Ill, cap. 11, n. 11; Harvey, Sancti Irenaei Episcopi Lugdunensis
Libros quinque adeersus haereses (Cambridge, England, 1857), II, 47. St.
Irenaeus speaks in this text of the four winds.

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as an elite and intellectual minority. He suggests that perhaps
“the name of Catholic may have been applied first to the Church
of Christ by the Gnostic party, as a contemptuous term for the
οΐ τολλοί.”7 There is no inherent improbability in this sug­
gestion, since it would seem that even the designation of Christian
was first given to the Church and to its members as a term of
opprobrium and reproach.8
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

In that portion of his works which has survived until our own
time, Clement of Alexandria uses the expression “Catholic
Church" twice. Both appearances of this term occur in a single
chapter of the Stromata. This work tells us that one of the reasons
why the heretics’ position is untenable is that “the human
assemblies (awr/Xuueis) which they formed were more recent
than the Catholic Church,” and that “according to essence,
according to idea, according to origin, and according to excellence,
we say that the ancient and Catholic Church is alone, in the unity
of one faith which belongs to its own covenants, or rather from a
covenant which is one, but which has different ages.”9 The
assemblies of the heretics are “human” rather than Catholic,
according to Clement. Actually he frequently employed the term
“Catholic” in such a way as to bring out a distinction from human
or individual things in the meaning of the term itself.
Using the word “Catholic” in its classical philosophical sense,
Clement spoke of “catholic ideas,” that is, universal ideas,
expressions of intelligible reality.10 Clement was convinced that
the individual, as such, could not be understood. He speaks of the
χαβολικά as opposed to the μερικά, the order of intelligible as
distinct from the order of partial, or individual or corporeal
rCf. Lib. ΙΠ, cap. 15, n. 1; Harvey, op. cit., II, 79.
*Cf. Batiffol, L’église naissante et le catholicisme (Paris: Gabalda, 1927), pp.
“Of.; and F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, The Beginnings of Christiunity. Part I, The Acts of the Apostles (London, 1933), V, 385.
’Both these uses of the term “Catholic Church” occur in the Stromata,
VII, 17. The text will be found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria,
edited in the Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jakrhunderte
ICCS), published at Leipzig (1905 ff), III, 75.
“Cf. Stromata, VIII, 6; GCS, III, 91.

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reality.11 “Inall questions,’’wearetold, “these universals (καθολικά
ταυτα) are to be found, a subject and a person.”12 The genuine
Christian doctrine is true because it has truth itself as a subject
and as a person. He writes, moreover, about “catholic” elements,11
and “catholic” axioms.14
Clement quotes the Gnostic Heracleon as saying that there is
such a thing as a partial ομολογία as opposed to a catholic or
universal profession of faith.15 Another Gnostic, Theodotus,
is cited as describing Our Lord as the "catholic,” that is, the
universal demiurge.16
Clement himself speaks of God’s “catholic” providence17 and
of a “catholic” change and movement in creation.18 There is a
“catholic” calling or vocation for all men,19 as distinct from and
opposed to a particular calling of the Israelites or the philosophers.
The true faith is the “catholic” or general salvation of humanity.”
Finally the letter written by the apostolic college at the Council
of Jerusalem is the "catholic” epistle of all the apostles.21

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ORIGEN

In that part of Origen’s works which have come down to us
in the original Greek, we find no use of the term “catholic” as a
qualification of the Church itself. The old Latin translations of
his scriptural commentaries have, however, two examples of this
terminology. The translation speaks of the “faith of the Catholic
Church,”22 and identifies the author as one of “us who are of
« Cf. ibid., VI, 7; GCS, II, 460.
« Cf. ibid., VI, 15; GCS, II, 493.
13 Cf. ibid., VIII, 8; GCS, III, 94. The expression occurs twice in this test.
« Cf. ibid., I, 3; and VI, 8; GCS, II, 16; and II, 465.

13 Cf. ibid., IV, 9; GCS II, 280. Heracleon is also represented tn this same
passage as using the adverb καθολικός to mean “generally” or “universally.”
13 Cf. Excerpt, ex Theod., n. 46; GCS, III, 121.
» Cf. Stromata, VI, 16; GCS, II, 503.
«Cf. ibid., VI, 6; GCS, II, 455.
«Cf. ibid., VI, 17; GCS, II, 514.
“Cf. Paed. I, 6; GCS, I, 108.
» Cf. Stromata, IV, 15; GCS, II, 291.
” Cf. In Cant. Cantic., Lib. Ill; In the GCS edition of Origen (1899 ff.),
■.. VIII, 234....."

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379

the Catholic Church.”23 In another section of his writing which
has come down to our times only in a Latin translation, Origen
speaks of the person who has both the belief of faith and the
profession of the Name as “a Christian and a Catholic.”24 The
man who works against such a person “adversum ecclesiasticum,
adversum catholicum, litigat. ”2S
Quite frequently in his works Origen uses the term
Ιχκλησιαστικόε where we would employ “Catholic.”23 The same
tendency can be noted in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius.27
“Catholic” itself appears as a designation of those epistles which
were not directed primarily to any one Church. Thus we have
the catholic epistle of John28 (once merely the “catholic” of
John),29 of Peter,30 and of Barnabas.31 Then too, an order or
commandment which everyone is bound to obey,52 a general
rule for judging conduct,33 the benefits which God offers to all
men,34 and those universal truths themselves,33 are all called
“catholic.” He ridicules Celsus, who has excoriated the Jews in a
previous book of his, for giving these same people “catholic”
praise in a subsequent portion of the same work.56 In prayer we
sCf. In Lib. Jesu Nave, Hom. IX, cap. 8; GCS, VII, 353.
“Cf. In Lenitic., Hom. XIV, cap. 2; GCS, VI, 480.
“Cf.M.
■ Cf. Batiffol, op. tit., p. 385.
“Cf. The Ecclesiastical History, I, I; HI, 3.
De Orat., XXI, 2; GCS, II, 347; Hom. in Jerem., IX, 4; GCS, III, 70;
Comm, in Ioan., I, 22; II, 23; GCS, IV, 23, 80.
“Cf. De Orat., XXII, 4; GCS, II, 349.
"Cf. Comm, in Ioan., VI, 35; GCS, IV, 144.
“Cf. Contra Celsum, I, 63; GCS, I, 115.
“Cf. De Orat., XI; GCS, II, 323.
“Cf. Contra Celsum, I, 71; GCS, I, 124.
“Cf. Hom. in Jerem., Ill, I; GCS, III, 20. The expression occurs twice in
this text
“Cf. Contra Celsum, IV, 84; GCS, I, 355; Comm, in Ioan., II, 15; XIII, 47;
XX, 22; GCS IV, 71, 274, 354; Frag. XIX, in Cat. de Prophet.; GCS III, 207.
For a brief account of the philosophical and classical use of καθολική, see
Batiffol, op. tit., p. 166; Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, (London, 1885),
H, 310 L; and especially Kattenbusch, in Das apostolische Symbol (Leipzig,
1900), pp. 920 ff.
"Cf. Contra Celsum, V, 26; GCS, II, 27.

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beg of God, according to Origen, “catholic” or universal benefits.57
Two passages which speak of the “Catholic” faith38 and of the
“Catholic” doctrine39 appear only in the Latin translation. Our
Lord’s presence (επιδημία) on earth is designated as “catholic,”40
and the word is also used to signify “complete” or “entire.”41
The Greek dialogue usually called by the Latin title De recta
in Deum fide was formerly ascribed to Origen, and printed among
his works. In the course of this document the Marcionite op­
ponent of the true Church is represented as trying to make a point
for his own side out of the fact that the true Church was ordinarily
called καθολική.
*
2 The proponent of orthodoxy had charged
that the very name of “Marcionite” was evidence that the
assembly so designated was not the true Church of God, since
the true Church takes its name from Christ. The Marcionite
answered that his opponent’s confreres spoke of themselves as
belonging to the καθολική and that, for this reason, the argument
alleged against him had no force. The reply of the orthodox
debater insists upon the truths that the "Catholica" is a proper
name of the true Christian Church, and that any congregation
which takes its title from a person other than Our Lord is mani­
festly not the genuine society of His disciples.
TERTULLIAN AND THE LATIN USAGE

So intimately did the meaning of the Greek word καθολική
enter into the mentality of Christ’s true Church that the Latin
Christians contented themselves with taking the term over
bodily into their own language. There was never any serious
effort to replace catholica by such properly Latin terms as uni·
versalis or communis. Thus, just as the Greek word εκκλησία,
Latinized as ecclesia, remained for the Latin Church the ordinary
and the most important designation of Our Lord’s true society,
17 Π. De Oral., XXXIII, 1; GCS, II, 401.
»»Cf. In Num., XXVII, 2; GCS, VII, 258. In the Comm, in Cant. Cantu.,
Ill; GCS, VIII, the translator speaks of “catholic” teachers.
« Cf. In Num., IX, 1 ; GCS, VII, 55.
«Cf. Hom. in Jerem., IX, 1; GCS, III, 63.
« Cf. Contra Celsum, V, 7; GCS, II, 7; De Orat., XXIX, 3; XXXI, 4; GCS,
II, 383, 398.
41 Adamantins, I, 8; in the GCS edition of Adamantins, p. 17.

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381

the Greek καθολική, Latinized as catholica, was fated to become
the primary qualification of the Church. Most of the races of the
world were destined to know God’s kingdom on earth by some
form or derivation of its Greek title of η καθολική ίκκλησία.
Strangely enough, the first time that the term Catholica is
used with reference to the true Church in Latin theological
literature, it appears alone, as a substantive rather than as an
adjective. In his De praescriptione haereticorum, Tertullian
speaks simply of the Catholica instead of the ecclesia catholica.
He tells us that Marcion and Valentinus, the heretics, “first
believed in the doctrine of the Catholica in the Roman Church,
under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherius.”43 This Catholica
was the true Church, as opposed to the discidium of each sepa­
rate heretical group.
The precise meaning Tertullian ascribed to this term can be
seen from the various ways in which he employed it and its
derivatives. Thus, in the same book De praescriptione haere­
ticorum, he denies that the apostles, when speaking among
themselves or with their most intimate associates, ever brought
in a rule of faith other than “quam catholice in medium pro­
ferebant.”1* What the apostles had taught “in a Catholic way,"
or “in a Catholic manner” was the doctrine they had commonly
and ordinarily given the brotherhood of Christians. According
to the heretical Gnostics, whom Tertullian had chiefly in view,
the apostolic teaching given catholice was quite distinct from and
inferior to certain esoteric secrets entrusted to an elite. Tertullian
sets himself against this crude form of spiritual snobbery with
his insistence that the teaching given catholice to the general run
of the disciples was the very same doctrine the apostles taught to
their closest friends. Catholice evidently means “according to the
manner of the true Church of Jesus Christ.”
In his books Adversus Marcionem Tertullian employs the
adjective “catholic” several times. He speaks of “the catholic
and supreme goodness” of God,4S and, in interpreting a passage
from the prophecy of Isaias, he describes Our Lord Himself as
"the Catholic temple of God in which God is worshipped.”4’
“Cap. 30; Migne’s Patrologia latina (MPL) II, 42.
“Cap. 26; MPL, II, 38. Migne’s text reads "Catholicae."
“Π, 17; MPL, II, 304.
“Ill, 21; MPL, 11,351.

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The Cross is “the sign on our foreheads in the true Catholic
Jerusalem,"47 in other words, in the genuine city of God. Our
Lord is “the Catholic Priest of the Father.”48 In his Defuga in
persecutione, he uses the word catholice in the sense of “in general,”
with no reference to the Church or to any of its usual meanings.4’
In the De monogamia, he mentions the catholica traditio, as distinct
from doctrinal novelties.80
Contemporary with Tertullian is the document known as the
Fragmentum Muratorianum. The unknown author of the
Fragmentum teaches that St. Paul’s letters to Philemon, to Titus,
and to Timothy are held in honor in “the Catholic Church,” and
that the various apocryphal writings ascribed to the Apostle
“cannot be received in the Catholic Church.” The Epistle of
Jude and two of John’s “are accepted in the Catholica."Λ
The Fragmentum has come down to our times in only one manu­
script. This manuscript itself dates from the eighth century. The
original document was apparently written in Greek towards the
end of the second century. The Latin translation, of which our
only existing manuscript is a copy, seems to have been made
shortly after the production of the original document. Thus it
serves to indicate that, by the beginning of the third century at
least, the Christians of Rome and of Africa ordinarily used the
expressions “Catholic Church” or the “Catholica" to designate
the true company of Our Lord’s disciples. This conclusion is
further strengthened by the fact that the anti-Pope, Hippolytus,
rather pitifully complains that the adherents of Callistus, the
true Bishop of Rome (obviously a much more numerous company
than the followers of Hippolytus himself) have the effrontery “to
call themselves a Catholic Church.”52
ST. CYPRIAN

In the writings of St. Cyprian the term “ecclesia Catholica”
K HI, 22; MPL, II, 353.
«IV, 9; MPL, II, 376.
« Cap. 3; MPL, II, 106.
“ Cap. 2; MPL, II, 931.
S1 Cf. Rauschen, Monumenta Minora Saeculi Secundi, in Florilegium patristicum (Bonn, 1914), III, 32 f.
“ Refutatio omnium haeresium, in the GCS edition of Hippolyte’s works
(1916), III, 250.

appears firmly established as the ordinary and usual designation
of Our Lord’s true Church on earth. It appears no less than
forty-seven times in the works of St. Cyprian.53 It occurs not only
in books and letters of which St. Cyprian himself was the author,
but in documents written by Pope St. Cornelius,34 and by the
somewhat obstreperous Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia.53
The reports of the Seventh Council of Carthage show that it was
used as the ordinary name for the true society of Our Lord’s
disciples by the bishops of Africa.58
Once St. Cyprian, like Tertullian before him, spoke of the true
Church merely as the “Catholica.”57 He also used the designation
of “catholic” to indicate the faith,58 the rule,59 and the unity60 of
the Church. Ordinarily, however, the term applies directly to the
Church in his writings. On his pages the name obviously means
exactly the same thing as it signifies today. Hence there is no
reason whatsoever to seek in Latin theological literature a
development of the term over and above that which it has reached
in the books of the great Carthaginian martyr.
Later patristic writers were to explain and to comment upon
the meaning of the term. None, however, were destined to employ
it in any way other than that in which St. Cyprian had used it.
The “Catholic” Church is the body of Christ, which the dissidents
try to divide but which they can never destroy. It is the society
within which the sacrament of baptism belongs. He insists upon
its unity and its charity. And, as Pope St. Cornelius taught, the
unity of the Catholic Church itself postulated the rule of one

a D’Alès has listed most of the passages from St. Cyprian’s works in which
the term "catholica" appears in his La théologie de Saint Cyprien (Parisi
Beauchesne, 1922), pp. 156 if.
“Cf.Ep. XLIX, 2; in the Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum
(CSEL), III, 611.
“Cf. Ep. LXXV, 6. 15, 16, 22; CSEL, III, 813, 819, 821, 824.
“Cf. Sententiae episcoporum numero LXXXVII de haereticis baptizandis;
CSEL, 435 ff.
” Cf. Ep. LXVI, 8; CSEL, III, 733. The Church, which is the one Catholica,
“is neither tom nor divided.”
“Cf. Ep. XXV; CSEL, III, 538.
“Cf.Ep.LXX, 1; CSEL, III, 767.
“Cf. Ep. XLV, 1; XLVI, 1; LV, 7; CSEL, III, 600, 604, 628.

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bishop in the local congregation: for “there ought to be one bishop
in the Catholica.”61
The term “Catholica,” used alone, had a long and glorious
history in Latin theological literature. It first appears, in extant
documents, in the writings of Tertullian and in the Muratorian
Fragment. It was in general use after the beginning of the third
century. Dom Odilo Rottmanner reports that it occurs about 240
times in the writings of St. Augustine, never referring to the
Catholic faith or to the Catholic religion, but always, as in the
earlier documents, directly and immediately to the Catholic
Church.62 It was, however, no longer in common use after the
seventh century, although Rottmanner refers to its appearance
on one occasion in the letters of St. Bernard.63
The Acts of the Seventh Council of Carthage, held in 256, are
printed among the works of St. Cyprian, under the title Sententiae
episcoporum numero LXXX VII de haereticis baptizandis. Several
of the bishops whose statements are recorded mentioned the
Catholic Church or the Catholica. Nemesianus of Thubunus
spoke of the “ecclesia catholica quae est una.”6* Crescens of Cirta
described the heretics and schismatics who wished to come “ad
catholicam ecclesiam.”66 Quietus of Buruc also used the name
“Catholic Church,’’66 as did his confreres, Pelagianus of Luperciana,62 Iader of Midili,68 Felix of Marazana,6’ and Peter of
Hippo.20 Pusillus of Lambasca referred to the true Church both
as the “ecclesia catholica” and simply as the “Catholica.”71
Writing from Caesarea in Cappadocia, Firmilian also spoke of
the “ecclesia catholica.”’16 In every case it is used to designate the
true and genuine society of Our Lord’s disciples, as opposed to
the various assemblies of the heretics and the schismatics. It
is the community to which the members of these outside organ­
izations must come if they are to enjoy the fellowship of Christ

■
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° Cf. Ep. XLIX, 2; CSEL, 611.
° Cf. the article “Catholica,” in the Revue Bénédictine (1900), p. 1.
“Cf. St. Bernard, In Canticum Canticorum, serai. LXIV, 8; MPI,
CLXXXIII, 1086.
·* Cf. Sententiae episcoporum, etc., 5; CSEL, III, 440.
•»Cf. ibid., 8; CSEL, III, 441.
»’ Cf. ibid., 46; CSEL, III, 452.
« Cf. Aid., 27; CSEL, III, 447.
« Cf. ibid., 72; CSEL, III, 457.
B Cf. ibid., 44; CSEL, III, 452.
« Cf. ibid., 75; CSEL, III, 458.
·» Cf. ibid., 45; CSEL, III, 452.
n Cf. Ep. LXXV; CSEL, III, 810 fl.

THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART II

385

Due to the influence Tertullian and especially St. Cyprian
exercised upon later Latin patristic thought and terminology,
the glorious fortune of the name “Catholic Church” as the
ordinary designation of Our Lord’s true society had been defi­
nitively won by the middle of the third century. Subsequent
Fathers of the Church and theologians were to give and then to
codify their explanations of the Church’s inherent and essential
Catholicism. Future generations of Christians were to grow so
accustomed to the expression that some of them were prone to
forget its original meaning. Yet the true catholicity of God’s
Church has always been and ever will have been that charac­
teristic which the faithful and the bishops of the early centuries
recognized in that Church, and which they indicated when they
named it the Catholica.

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THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. PIONIUS

While the writings of St. Cyprian and of Pope St. Cornelius
show that, by the middle of the third century, the Latins had
come to use the term “Catholic Church” as the ordinary name
for Our Lord’s society, the document known as the Martyrdom
of Si. Pionius gives the same evidence for the Church of Smyrna.
This document informs us that on the natalis of St. Polycarp,
during the persecution of Decius, “the priest Pionius, and Sabina,
a woman devoted to the true piety, and Asclepiades, and Mace­
donia, and Linus [another manuscript says Leninus], a priest of
the Catholic Church, were taken.”73 After ascertaining that St.
Pionius was a Christian, Polemon, the judge who presided at his
first interrogatio, asked him to what Church he belonged. The
Samt answered: “To the Catholic. For there is no other with
Christ."74 The account of the trial adds that St. Sabina, too,
was questioned about her Church, and that she professed herself
a member of the “Catholic” society.75
At the final trial, Quintilianus the proconsul asked St. Pionius
towhat form of worship or persuasion he belonged. “That of the
Catholics,” was the Saint’s response. When asked what he meant
by the “Catholics,” St. Pionius simply answered that he was “a
‘‘Ada sanctorum, Feb., Tom. I, (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1863), pp. 40, 42.
« I&H., p. 44.
.....
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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

presbyter of the Catholic Church.”76 Thus the name “Catholic,"
first expressed in extant Christian literature in a letter of St.
Ignatius to the Christians of Smyrna is shown to have been in
common use in that local Church during the middle of the second
century, as the Martyrdom of Polycarp shows, and to have
remained the usual form for distinguishing the true Christian
body from the various sects which falsely claimed the name of
Christ in the middle of the third century, as witness the Martyrdom
of Pionius. For this reason the Catholic name is and always will
be associated with Smyrna, just as the Christian name itself is
associated with Antioch, where “the disciples were first named
Christians.”77
Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.
’· Ibid., p. 46.
cis, 11:26.

The Evil of Slander
You may expiate the crime of hatred, by loving your enemy; that
of ambition, in renouncing the pomps and vanities of the age; that of
injustice, by restoring what you have taken from your brethren; the
crime even of impiety and libertinism, by a public and religious respect
for the worship of your fathers ; but with what remedy, what virtue,
can you repair the crime of slander?
—In Selections from the Works of Jean Baptiste Massillon (London,
1826), pp. 246 f.

The First Cause

of

Unbelief

The first cause of incredulity is voluntary ignorance. Faith can, no
more than science, be acquired without a certain application of mind.
When the mind is not applied, it is inert, it ceases to be a power; it is,
as regards the object before it, as if it were not
—From Thoughts and Teachings of Lacordaire (New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1902), p. 200.

Answers to Questions
THE SOLEMN REVALIDATION OF A MARRIAGE

Question: If a Catholic couple have attempted marriage before
a minister or a civil magistrate, and subsequently wish to have
their union validated, may they be married at a nuptial Mass?
Could a pastor forbid this?
Answer: There is no law of the Church forbidding marriage at
a nuptial Mass to those who have entered a union that is invalid
because of lack of the prescribed form. Indeed, per se such a
method of convalidation is commendable, because the special
blessing of the bride, which the Church desires to impart to every
Catholic woman on her entrance into the married state, can
ordinarily be given only at Mass. This holds true, even though
many years have passed since the couple entered their unlawful
and invalid union. Of course, those who have sinned so grievously
generally desire to have the validation as private as possible, and
the priest should acquiesce to this wish. Sometimes, too, circumstances may be present which would render a public ceremony at
Mass inadvisable, if not positively wrong—especially the grave
danger of scandal. However, apart from this contingency, the
couple have the right to be married at a nuptial Mass, and a
pastor’s authority does not include the power to forbid it. A
bishop, however, by virtue of Canon 2291, §6, could impose asa
vindicative penalty the deprivation of the nuptial blessing. In
some dioceses this penalty is the object of general legislation for
cases such as we are considering.

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A PROBLEM IN SCANDAL
Question: What decision should priests give in regard to certain
spectacles, quite common nowadays in America, wherein the
attention of the spectators is deliberately drawn to the physical
charms of scantily clad girls? The example to which I refer
particularly are the “bathing beauty contest” and the "majorette”
who marches before a band. Many priests seem to regard such
procedures as perfectly lawful. At any rate, they do not explicitly
condemn girls who take part. And certainly, if we can judge by
names, many of the bathing beauty contestants are Catholics.
387

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THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH
Part III

One very interesting passage from second-century Christian
literature uses the adverb καϋόΧου to designate the universal
and orthodox Church where other writers preferred to use the
common adjectival form καβοΧικη. It occurs in a letter written
by an unnamed anti-Montanist controversialist to a certain
Aberdus Marcellus, a letter which Eusebius of Caesarea quoted
at some length in his Ecclesiastical History. The author informs
Aberdus Marcellus that the schismatic heresy of the Montanists
began in the village of Ardabav in Phrygian Mysia “when Gratus
was proconsul of Asia.” Montanus, the heresiarch, began to utter
prophedes quite out of harmony with the traditional teaching of
the Church. Although the greater number of his hearers seem to
have rejected his teachings from the beginning, he soon attracted
a following and occasioned a highly serious inquiry among the
Christians of that region. The definitive excommunication of
Montanus and his group, however, came about only after the
spirit which possessed them was discovered teaching them “to
blaspheme the universal and entire Church under heaven (τήν
Sè καθόΧου καί πάσαν την υπό τον ουρανόν έκκΧησίαν).”1 The
blasphemy was motivated by the fact that the Asian Christians
had gathered together many times and in many sections of the
province, had investigated the teachings of Montanus, and had
rejected them. Rejection by the Catholic Churches of Asia
was thus considered as equivalent to repudiation by the entire
Church throughout the world. Those not in communion with the
Catholics of Asia were cut off from the Catholic fraternity.
THE REASON FOR THE CATHOLIC NAME

The ecclesiastical documents which have come down to us from
the second and from the first half of the third century give
abundant evidence that, since the early part of the second century
itself, the true kingdom of God in this world was commonly known
and referred to by its own members as the Catholic Church.
1 ZSe Ecclesiastical History, V, 16. Cf. the works of Eusebius in the Grieckischen Christlidien Sckriftsteller (GCS), II, 464, and Migne’s Patrologia graeca
(MPG), XX, 468.
452

,
CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART III

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453

Hippolytus confirms this use of the term when he states that the
followers of Callistus, the true Bishop of Rome, "attempt to call
themselves a Catholic Church.”i2 That was precisely the name
they gave themselves and they had every right to it. Hippolytus
must have protested against giving this title to the true Church,
but, like many another objector since his day,3 his warnings were
of little avail.
The name of Catholic would seem to have been a title more in
use by the common run of the Christians than by the intellectuals
among them. The absence of the expression “Catholic Church”
in the writings of the Greek apologists, its doubtful use by Origen,
and its infrequent appearance in Clement of Alexandria point in
this direction. Its ecclesiastical meaning stands out best in popular writings like the two accounts of martyrdoms, and in the
letters of the sternly .^practical St. Ignatius, Tertullian, and
St. Cyprian.
None of these early writers gave any explicit or extended ex­
planation of the term’s meaning. That task was reserved for the
later patristic writers. Yet the meaning of the word “Catholic”
is clear enough in the documents themselves;
Like ourselves, the early Christians lived as members of local
Churches. In each fully organized local Christian community,
the faithful lived and worshipped God under the paternal rule of
their bishop, who was surrounded and aided in his apostolic labors
by his own presbyterium, his deacons, and the rest of his clergy,
Each local Church, however, and each one of the faithful within
the local Church, were supremely conscious of the bonds of unity
that joined them to the other local Churches “in pilgrimage” in
the various cities of the world and to the members of these other
local Churches. As a matter of fact, the status of the local Church
and of its members as properly Christian was dependent upon
their union with and their position in the world-wide society of
the faithful.
In other words, a group or organization of people who claimed
to be followers of Our Lord was not considered as a real Christian
community or local Church of God when it did not form a part

I

i
’ The Refutation of AU Heresies, IX, 12; in the GCS edition of Hippolytus'
i ' Wits, III, 250.
3 ·.■ ■ ■
I
’Fowler may be taken as typical of these modern objectors. Cf. his Modem
English Osage (Oxford University Press, 1926), pp. 70 f.

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of the universal congregation of Christ’s faithful. Furthermore
an individual who had been expelled.from his local Church there­
by automatically lost his place in the entire universal society.
Thus communication with the world-wide brotherhood of Jesus
Christ was a visible hnd effective norm for determining the status
of a man or of an individual community in the true discipleship.
Now the world-wide community of true Christians was the
Catholic Church (ή καθολική έκκλησϊα). There was, of course,
a valid and clearly ascertainable reason why the true Church
should be properly universal. The true doctrine of Christ had to
exist and had to be preached before heretics could misinterpret it.
The apostolic collegium, continued in the brotherhood of the
Christian bishops, held the faithful attached to it in the true
divine teaching. The various misstatements of this doctrine, pro­
posed and adopted by the heresiarchs and the people attached to
them, were utterly repudiated by the apostolic collegium, and thus
by the true kingdom of God on earth. The men who professed
these heretical teachings were refused membership and com­
munion with the universal society of the true faithful. And, since
the errors were subsequent to the true Christian teaching, and
because they were many where the true teaching, was perfectly
one, the community which professed the truth of Christ was
manifestly universal or catholic in comparison with the various
groups that accepted heresy.
While the reasons for the catholicity of the true Church of
Christ were plain enough and certain enough also, the fact of that
catholicity was glaringly evident to all. The society to which
St. Ignatius, and St. Polycarp, and St. Irenaeus, and St. Pionius
belonged was obviously and connaturally a world-wide brother­
hood. The men of this brotherhood received and were expected
to receive hospitality and aid from one another. More than that,
they stood together as members of a holy priesthood, and to­
gether offered the Eucharistic sacrifice to God. As members of
the divine household or family, they sat down together at the
Eucharistic table to partake of their divine nourishment. A
bishop, or a priest, or one of the faithful from one city was per­
fectly welcome and quite at home at the liturgy of another local
Church. So enthusiastic were these older Christians for the idea
of the universal brotherhood within the visible Church of Christ
that the bishop of one city would send consecrated Hosts from his

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART III

455

own Eucharistic sacrifice to his brothers in the episcopate, to be
consumed in the Eucharistic sacrifice of another local Church as
the most striking manifestation of their union in Christ.
Thus the title of Catholic constituted a visibly inalienable desig­
nation of the true Church. Heretics and schismatics might shout
that their organizations possessed a certain appearance of holiness.
They might weave legends and attribute great antiquity or even
apostolic origins to their own groups. They could never make
even a specious claim to the sort of catholicity which the true
Church so manifestly enjoyed. Hence, when the true company
of Christ was called the Catholic Church, it was given a title
which indicated it clearly for what it actually was.
I

[

CATHOLICITY AND THE ROMAN SEE

Even in the second century, however, the catholicity of the
true Church had a definite and visible connection with the pri­
macy of Peter’s See. During that period the imperial roads and
sea-lanes were thronged with Christian pilgrims like Abercius of
Hierapolis4 on their way to Rome to visit the first of all the
Churches of God. Likewise there came to Rome during that same
century a tremendous number of teachers, interested in gaining
the approval of the Roman Church for their doctrines. To quote
an eminent Protestant historian who jumbles the unorthodox
along with the faithful Christian doctors, “To Rome then jour­
neyed Polycarp from Smyrna; Valentinus from Egypt; Cerdo
from Syria; Marcion from Sinope; Justin from Samaria; Tatian
from Assyria; Hegesippus from Jerusalem; Justin's pupils Euelpestus from Cappadocia and Hierax from Phrygia; Rhodon,
Irenaeus, and Florinus from Asia; Proclus and other Montanists
from Phrygia; and Praxeas, their adversary, from the same
region.”5
The essential point is that all of these men could be perfectly
confident of being received and acknowledged as true Christians
by the Church throughout the world once they were assured of
the Roman See’s approval of themselves and their teachings.

*Cf. the Epitaphium Abercii ία the Florilegum pairisticum of Rausches
(Bonn: Hanstein, 1914), III, 37 ff.
5 Kidd, The History of the Church (Oxford University Press, 1922), I, US;
cf. Jalland, The Church and the Papacy (London: S.P.C.K., 1944}. p. 103;
Turner, Studies in Early Church History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912,p. 167.

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Manifestly no other local Church occupied such a position. So
powerful was this second-century conviction that the Roman
Church exercised a completely unique influence in determining
the status of a man or a doctrine within the universal kingdom of
God on earth that heretics like Marcion and Valentinus set up
their own schools in the Eternal City after they had been re­
jected by the Roman Church itself. By so doing they hoped to
acquire for their own teachings some little portion or imitation of
the Roman Church’s prestige. St. Optatus of Milevis noted and
ridiculed the same tactic of the Donatists more than two centu­
ries later.6
The most striking evidence of the Roman See’s uniquely power­
ful influence in determining and decreeing who were actually
members of the real or Catholic company of Christ is to be found
in the account of Pope St. Victor’s move or threat to cut all the
Asiatic Churches off from the fellowship of Our Lord’s genuine
disciples. In describing the second-century controversy among
the Christians about the proper date for the Easter liturgy,
Eusebius of Caesarea records the fact that Pope St. Victor formed
the project of excommunicating the Asiatics because the Churches
of this particular region refused to conform with the otherwiæ
universal custom of fixing the date for the Feast of Our Lord’s
resurrection.7 Eusebius informs us that several regional councils
of bishops were held to decide this point. The letters sent by
some of these councils were extant in Eusebius’ own time. The
Ecclesiastical History mentions the letter of a council of the Pales­
tinian bishops, who met under the leadership of Theophilus of
Caesarea and Narcissus of Jerusalem; the report of a Roman
synod, under Pope St. Victor ; the epistle of a snyod of the bishops
of Pontus, under Palmas, the eldest among them ; and the findings
of the Churches in Osrhoene and Corinth.
*
All of these synodal letters agreed in condemning the quartodeciman position of the Asiatic Christians. The bishops of Asia,
however, under the leadership of Polycrates of Ephesus, held fast
to their own tradition. In refusing to abide by the decision of the
rest of the Christian Church, they had evidently chosen to tread
•Cf. De schismate donatistarum, II, 4, in the Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasti­
corum latinorum (CSEL) XXVI, 37 ff.
7 Cf. Eusebius, op. tit., V, 24; GCS, II, 494; MPG, XX, 497.
*Cf.op.tit„ V, 23,GCS, II, 488 ff; MPG, XX, 489, ff.

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART III

457

on dangerous ground. Significantly enough, the only report from
which Eusebius makes any explicit citation is the letter of
Polycrates to Pope St. Victor.’ In this letter Polycrates mani­
festly gives the impression that the Roman Bishop had issued a
command on this matter, and that, in refusing to obey this com­
mand, the Asiatics and their sympathizers were laying them­
selves open to rather severe penalties. In other words, he makes
no effort to say that St. Victor had no right to issue orders to his
fellow bishops. As a matter of fact, the whole tenor of his letter
makes it quite apparent that he believed that this power actually
belonged to the Roman Pontiff. Urged on by a confusion between
what later ages were to call divine apostolic tradition and merely
apostolic tradition, Polycrates refused to obey any order that in­
volved doing things in a manner different from that which had
been sanctioned by his predecessors. If he had had the least sus­
picion that the Roman Pontiff had no real authority over his
fellow Christians and his fellow bishops; if he had thought for a
moment that a man could remain within the genuine brotherhood
of Christ’s disciples while out of communion with the successor
of St. Peter in Rome, then his attitude towards Pope St. Victor
could not possibly have been what it actually was.
Eusebius tells us that, upon receipt of Polycrates’ letter, Pope
St. Victor set out to excommunicate the dioceses of Asia, along
with the adjoining Churches, or, as Eusebius puts it, "to cut them
off, as heterodox, from the common unity (άποτίμναν, as &v
έτίροδοξούσας, της κοινής èvàaeas) .”l° He wrote decrees de­
claring these obstinate brethren "cut off from the common fellow­
ship (ακοινώνητους).”11 Now the common fellowship of the vari­
ous local Churches and the Christians who belonged to these
local Churches is precisely the property which the ancient writers
stressed when they indicated God’s kingdom on earth as the
Catholic society. Thus it was manifestly the belief of Pope St.
Victor that he was empowered to exclude whole communities
from this Catholic fellowship. In other words, he looked upon
the Catholic or common and genuine society of the Christians as
an organization within which men had to be united in communion
with him. Obviously no other bishop and no other member within
• Cf. op. cil., V, 24, GCS, Π, 490 ff; MPG, XX, 4W ff.
»· Op. cil., V, 24, GCS, 11,494; MPG, XX, 497.

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the Church could have a similar prerogative, according to Pope
St. Victor’s views. Otherwise his procedure would have been
utterly meaningless. . Had he been convinced that some other
person or group of persons within the Church could reintegrate
these Asiatic bishops and their flocks into the common and Cath­
olic fellowship of Our Lord’s true disciples, he could never have
taken the steps he did. His entire course of activity was based
on the belief that communion with him was absolutely requisite
for membership in Our Lord’s society.
Eusebius adds that this stem conduct of Pope St. Victor was
eminently displeasing to a great many bishops who had sided
with him in the Paschal Controversy itself. We are told that
these bishops “immediately exhorted him, on the contrary, to
contemplate that course which was calculated to promote peace,
unity, and love to one another.”12 Eusebius states that the senti­
ments many of these bishops expressed to Victor were still extant
in his own time. He chooses, however, to cite directly only the
words which St. Irenaeus wrote on this occasion. Now St. Irena­
eus, the outstanding defender of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, strongly
and it would seem successfully urged upon the Roman Pontiff the
desirability of leaving these Asiatic Christians in communion with
the Church. He mentioned the fact that the question had come
up before, during the conversations of St. Polycarp with Pope
St. Anicetus in Rome, and recounted how the previous Pope had
allowed St. Polycarp to retain the ancient customs of his own
local Church.12
Yet, never for one moment does this champion of the faith in­
sinuate that the assumption upon which St. Victor had based his
activity, the belief that communion with him was requisite for
membership in the Catholic society itself, was other than per­
fectly true and justified. Had he suspected for one moment that
the common or Catholic fellowship of the company of the disciples
could be possessed by a man not in communion with the Roman
See, the whole tone of his letter to St. Victor would necessarily
have been quite different. The man who wrote so powerfully
against the heresies of his day would never have condoned a
teaching contrary to or not in accord with Christ’s own doctrine
in the Church. The man who was so anxious for peace within
the society of the disciples would never have wasted his energies
“Ibid.

“Cf. ibid.

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART III

459

in begging a man who did not have the full and supreme command
of the catholic fellowship not to exercise that authority. One
perfectly certain fact stands revealed in St. Irenaeus’ letter. He
was firmly convinced that the man to whom he wrote had the
power from God definitively to exclude any person or any com­
munity from the κοινή 'ίνωσις, the common unity or Catholic
fellowship.
ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

From the middle of the fourth century onwards patristic liter­
ature abounds in oratorical expositions of the Church’s cathol­
icity. Where earlier writers had been content to speak of the
Catholic Church in such a way as to make it clear that they
meant the world-wide and consequently the genuine company of
Our Lord’s disciples, the more sophisticated later authors strove
to embellish and to embroider this property of the Church. They
attached to the Church’s catholicity all of the prerogatives by
which this society could be said to possess universal perfection.
The first explanation of this kind is found in the writings of St.
Cyril of Jerusalem.
It [the Church] is called Catholic, then, because it extends over all
the world, from one end of the earth to the other ; and because it teaches
universally and completely one and all of the doctrines concerning things
both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly, which ought to come to
the knowledge of men; and because it brings into subjection unto godli­
ness the entire race of mankind, those who rule and those who are ruled,
the learned and the unlearned; and because it universally treats and
heals every class of sins which are committed by soul or body; and
possesses in itself every form of virtue which is named, both in deeds
and words, and in every sort of spiritual gift.1*

St. Cyril mentioned five different aspects of the Church’s cath­
olicity. The extension of Our Lord’s society "over all the world”
was properly put in first place, since the characteristic of local
universality had always been the reality primarily designated
when the Church was called Catholic. Obviously there is no
trace in this passage of any intention on St. Cyril’s part to teach
that the Church could be found operative in absolutely every
portion of the world.
The other four aspects of the Church’s catholicity' were simply
• « The Catechetical Instructions, ΧΥ1Π, 23, MPG, ΧΧΧ1Π. 1M4.

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subsidiary to the primary characteristic of local extension. The
name “Catholic Church” had apparently never been actually ap­
plied to God’s kingdom on earth because this company possessed
all the means of grace, or because it had all the remedies against
sin, or because people of every class were to be found within its
membership. Neither did the Church actually receive its title as
Catholic because it taught the entire content of Christian revela­
tion. In mentioning these four prerogatives of the Church, St.
Cyril was doing nothing more or less than adducing extra reasons
to show that the title Catholic was an eminently proper designa­
tion for the true Church of God. The basic theological and his­
torical reason for the Catholic name, however, was always to be
found in the fact that the Church throughout the world was the
genuine company of Christ.
ST. PACIANUS OF BARCELONA

The explanation of the Church's catholicity given by St.
Pacianus of Barcelona towards the end of the fourth century has
a real theological value. The Spanish Saint gave an outstandingly
powerful and accurate description of the relation existing between
the name "Catholic” and the name “Christian,” as they applied
to a member of the Church.
Christian is my name, and Catholic my surname. The former qualifies
me, the latter manifests me for what I am. The latter demonstrates
what the former signifies. And, if finally I must explain the word Cath­
olic and translate it from Greek into the Roman idiom ; Catholic means
“one everywhere,” or, as the more learned think, “obedience to all the
commandments of God."16

With the rather loose and oratorical notion of a proof from
Scripture prevalent in his time, St. Pacianus attempts to justify
his definitions by citing texts from both the Old and the New
Testaments. He notes the words of St. Paul’s Second Epistle to
the Corinthians which state that the Apostle of the Gentiles
desired to know that his Corinthian Christians were “in all things
obedient.”14 He likewise appeals to the Epistle to the Romans,
where St. Paul teaches that "as by the disobedience of one man,
aEp. I, ad Sympronianum, C. 4, in Migne’s Patrologia latina (IfPL)
ΧΠΙ, 1055.
"II Cor., 2:9.

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CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART III

461

many were made sinners: so also by the obedience of one, many
shall be made just.”17 St. Pacianus reasons that the Catholic is
obedient and that the body of the Catholics are those rendered
just through the obedience of Our Lord. “The one who obeys,"
he tells us, "is the Christian; and so the Catholic is the Christian.
Hence our company is distinguished from the ‘heretical name' by
this designation, when it is called Catholic.” An ingenious in­
terpretation of the Old Testament text: "The queen stood on thy
right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety,"1* forms
the “proof from Scripture” that the Church’s catholicity involves
being “one everywhere” or “one in all.”
Both St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Pacianus employed some
rather far-fetched reasons to explain why the true Church of
Jesus Christ was known in their day (in exactly the same way it
is known in ours) as the Catholic Church. Nevertheless the
strangeness and the weakness of some of their explanations in no
way detracted from the singularly manifest evidence of the fact
they set out to explain. The religious society to which they be­
longed and for which they worked was obviously, universally,
and properly called the Catholic Church. Those who fought and
wrote against this Church were at least hard-headed and realistic
enough to understand that any attempt to foist this designation
on any one of the organizations they favored would have served
only to render themselves and their societies ridiculous.
In our own time, however, the situation is oddly reversed.
Many of the heretical communions of our time profess adherence
to the Apostles’ Creed (which they received, of course, from the
real Catholic Church), and are plagued by the fact that the
Catholic Church itself is presented as an object of belief in this
formula. The greater number of dissident writers are content to
shy away from the expression and to limit themselves to a few
innocuous generalities in this matter. A highly articulate, though
numerically insignificant fraction of the Anglican communion,
however, insists on speaking of its own society as Catholic and on
designating the true Church of Jesus Christ always as Roman
Catholic. Some of the writers of this group heatedly deny that
their own communion can in any way be called Protestant, on
the obviously realistic grounds that the two terms “Catholic”
and “Protestant” are, formally considered, mutually incompat17Rom.t 5:19.

>«Px., 44:10.

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ible. Others, less exacting from the scientific point of view, are
quite willing to accept both designations. All of them are ex­
tremely touchy about giving the Catholic Church its ordinary
and universally recognized title.
One of the most amusing manifestations of this attitude is to
be found in the book Modern English Usage, by the famed lexi­
cographer, H. W. Fowler. In explaining the word “Catholic”
the author writes that “It is open to Roman-Catholics to use C.
by itself in a sense that excludes all but themselves; but it is not
open to a Protestant to use it instead of Roman-Catholic without
implying that his own Church has no right to the name of C.
Neither the desire of brevity . . . nor the instinct of courtesy ...
should induce anyone who is not Roman-C. to omit theRoman-.”19
Mr. Fowler might have added that those who take him seriously
on this point should not let the interests of historical accuracy or
the normal and ordinary and general use of the word stand in
their way, either.
In itself, of course, this Protestant misuse of and cavil about
the word “Catholic” is a matter of profound unimportance. After
all, we have no right to complain if some people choose to use
common English words in a sense directly contrary to their tra­
ditional and commonly accepted significance. If people wish to
use the word “lion” to designate a field mouse, or to use the term
“Catholic” to designate a religious society which is manifestly
not in communion with the world-wide and genuine Church of
Christ; that is their affair.
Indirectly, however, this procedure has a most unfortunate
effect. There is a certain obvious artificiality and falsity about it.
Those who, like the scholarly writers in the recently published
Anglican symposium The Apostolic Ministry are most scrupulous­
ly careful to speak of the Catholic Church as Roman Catholic,
and to speak of their own communion as Catholic in what
may be called their professional preoccupations quickly slip
into ordinary English when they are dealing with reality. This
book refers without quibble to the “Catholic Emancipation” of
1829.M The people emancipated through the efforts of Daniel
O’Connell were real Catholics, universally recognized and desig­
nated as such. The Anglican communion, which called itself
’· Fowler, op. cit., pp. 70 f.
*· The Apostolic Ministry (New York: Morehouse-Gorham Co., 1946), p. 447.

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH: PART III

463

“The Church of England,” and “The Church by Law Estab­
lished”21 was precisely the agency which set itself against the
efforts of the Liberator. The glorious martyrs whose names are
recorded on the pages of Bishop Chailoner’s Memoirs of Mission­
ary Priests^2 suffered as Catholics at the hands of members of the
Anglican communion. Hence, any attempt on the part of an
Anglican minority at a late date to qualify their own communion
as Catholic must inevitably seem a mere twisting of words, and
will unfortunately serve to cast an otherwise undeserved aura of
unreality upon the real products of their scholarship.
The catholicity of the true Church of Jesus Christ is a quality
or characteristic which men have seen and recognized in this
society since the days of St. Ignatius of Antioch. The Catholic
Church is essentially that universal brotherhood which is made
up of the individual families of Christ, the local Churches scat­
tered throughout the world. The Church of God that is in pil­
grimage at Rome, and at Corinth, and at Smyrna, and at Philo­
melium: the Church of God that is in pilgrimage wherever the
preaching of Christ is possible on earth ; this is the Catholic
Church. To predicate catholicity of an invisible society is, of
course, absolutely erroneous. But to predicate Catholicity, as
these Anglican writers do, of a congeries of regional religious
societies divided in faith and hostile to one another in the bargain
is not only erroneous but a contradiction in terms.
There is, of course, nothing objectively faulty about the ex­
pression “Roman Catholic.” Taken by itself and properly under­
stood, it is a perfectly proper name for the true Church of Jesus
Christ. That society is truly and manifestly Catholic. Further­
more it is a brotherhood in actual and necessary communion with
the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, and as such, the
Vicar of Christ on earth. Any person or any community un­
fortunate enough to sever ecclesiastical communion with the
Bishop of Rome falls thereby from the membership of the Cath­
olic Church of God.
The Vatican Council designated the true society of Our Lord’s
disciples as the “Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church.” The
° William Cobbett, in his classical History of tie Reformation (Baltimore:
John Murphy Co.); p. xiv ff. adverts to the fact that the Anglicans habitually
referred to their communion as the “Established Church."
a London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, Ltd., 1924.

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formula which had appeared in the original schema of the Coun­
cil’s Constitution Dei Filius had employed the formula “the Holy
Roman Catholic Church.” The change was made as a result of
observations' made in the Council by Bishops Ullathome and
Clifford, although the Fathers of the Council did not follow the
suggestions of either prelate completely.2’
Bishops Ullathorne and Clifford protested against the original
formula on the grounds that it might seem to encourage the
“branch theory,” advocated by certain Anglicans of their day.
The Council rewrote the phrase in order that there might be
absolutely no possibility of twisting their words into an implied
acceptance or tolerance of this error. The catholicity of Christ’s
true Church is the catholicity of an undivided society. Apart
from this real and living unity, the concept of catholicity has no
meaning.
Joseph Clifford Fenton
The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.
aCf. Granderath and Kirch, Historié du concile du Vatican (Brussels,
1911), II, Part 2, 70 ff.

The Preaching

of the

Word

Preaching the Gospel is simply a continuation of the divine mission
of Christ Preachers, therefore, should imitate the great Master whom
they represent ... Consequently, preachers should be living examples
of devotion and virtue, especially humility, obedience and charity. Like­
wise, they should avoid as a plague anything that savors of vanity and
ambition, and they should never show any signs of seeking the pulpits
of large churches. They should be willing to go to the poorest parishes
and the smallest, as well as to the wealthiest... churches in order to
walk in the footsteps of the Divine Master who said : “He hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor,” and one of the proofs of the
divinity of His mission was: “The poor have the gospel preached to
them.”

—St John Eudes, in The Priest : His Dignity and Obligations, translated
from die French by Reverend W. Leo Murphy (New York: P. J. Kenedy
and Sons, 1947), p. 81.

Answers to Questions
PRELATES STAND, OTHERS KNEEL
Question: Is it a privilege or a custom that prelates, bishops,
and monsignori stand during the prayers at the foot of the altar
at Solemn Mass while the rest of the clergy kneel? Should the
chaplains of such prelates stand at such times instead of kneeling?
Answer: It is neither a privilege nor a custom for prelates to
stand, while the others in choro kneel during the prayers at the
foot of the altar, but a provision of the rubrics of the Missal {Ruhr.
Gen. Miss. XVII, 5.). Prelates remain standing also for the bless­
ing at the end of Mass (S. R. C., 2049, 8; 3459). As to the chap­
lains of the prelates in question, they follow the order to be ob­
served by the rest of the clergy unless they too happen to be pre­
lates. In this connection, we might observe, that despite a rather
widespread practice in this country, visiting bishops and a fortiori
domestic prelates are not entitled to be flanked by “chaplains,"
such attendance being restricted to the reigning bishop of the
diocese and only when he is presiding on the throne, dressed in
cappa or vested in cope and mitre.

THE STOLE AND THE PARISH PRIEST
Question: I understand that a parish priest cannot wear a stole
as the mark of his office unless he is actually officiating as the
celebrant of some liturgical function but I seem to remember that
there is at least one occasion on which a parish priest is properly
vested in stole even when he is not the chief officiant.

Answer: The parish priests of a century ago regarded the stole
as the mark of their jurisdiction and often wore it while assisting
in the sanctuary at Solemn Mass. This practice is contrary to the
decree of Sept. 7,1816, of theSacred Congregation of Rites. Only
the Holy Father may wear the stole outside of times when he is
not performing liturgical functions. The one exception to which
our correspondent refers is probably that of parish priests in pro­
cession (and then only) at a diocesan synod, who may wear the
stole if it is the custom to do so (cf. Wapelhorst, 37, g; Nabuco,
Expositio, III, 174).
465