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|

Likewise, a Catholic Legion of Temperance would have its total
abstinence, its partial abstinence, its temperance for all. It would
be a distinctive and Catholic salient in the war on intemperance,

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Daniel M. O’Connell, S.J.
University of Detroit.

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The Little Ones of Christ
Never infer that Our Lord considered that He was speaking only to
ignorant or credulous minds. As Wisdom Eternal, He was competent to
confound all wisdoms. Furthermore, do not believe that He was pleased
that some received Him while others rejected Him. As the Saviour of
men, He certainly wished that all would accept Him. This was His
idea. Humble hearts heard Him in a docile manner. The proud reviled
Him. Having seen this, He adored the eternal decress that permitted
this attitude, and which, I insist, only permitted it. Ought then God
have abandoned doing anything in this world unless men could understand why and how He was doing it? Ought God have refused to tnanifest His inward life, if creatures could not grasp why the activity of the
Infinite Being is what it is ? If that were so, then He ought not to have
revealed the Trinity to us and He should not have brought about the
Incarnation of the Word. If He wished to do these things, He had to
accept the fact that He would not even be listened to by those who pretend to admit nothing that their own reason cannot account for. Is it hard
for you to see which of these two alternatives the Infinite Goodness
should accept?

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1932), p. 33.

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The True Church

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The Catholic Church alone retains the true worship. This is the
fount of truth. This is the home of the faith. This is God’s temple
If a man does not enter it, or if he leaves it, he is separated from the
hope of life and from eternal salvation.

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—Lactantius, in his Divinae institutiones, Book IV, cap. 30.

I

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THE NOTE OF CATHOLICITY IN SCHOLASTIC
THEOLOGY
As it is presented and explained in the science of sacred theol­
ogy, the Church’s characteristic of catholicity has a definite and
highly important pedagogical value. The teacher of God’s re­
vealed truth can point to the real and manifest universality of
the Catholic Church as the evident accomplishment of the divine
promises to and the divine prophecies about the final and defin­
itive status of God's kingdom on earth. Furthermore, precisely
by reason of its visible catholic unity, the Church of God in this
world stands as a true and obvious miracle of the social order, as
an effect which God has produced in the world to be an authentic
divine signature, attesting the genuineness of that teaching pro­
posed by the Church as having been revealed by God. The tra­
ditional theology of the Catholic schools shows us the way to
formulate both of these proofs effectively, in defending the Church
and its doctrine against attackers, in instructing candidates for
admission into the true kingdom of God on earth, and in teaching
Our Lord’s disciples within His society.
Unfortunately, however, the most pretentious and the most
erudite among the modem treatises on the catholicity of the
Church, the chapter “La catholicité” in the dissertation Les notes
de l'église dans I'apologétique catholique depuis la Réforme, by
Dr. Gustave Thils, seems to take it for granted that the note of
catholicity, as presented by the theologians for the past few
centuries, has been tried and found wanting.1 Dr. Thils divides
his chapter into three “articles.” The first deals with the period
from 1529 until 1613, and includes studies of ecclesiologists
from Nicholas Herborn to Francis Suarez. According to Dr.
Thils, the writers of this period concentrated on what he calls
“quantitative catholicity."
This “quantitative catholicity”
took in the spread of the Church throughout the world, the tre­
mendous number of the faithful, a temporal catholicity, and, at
the end of the period at least, a sketchy concept of a catholicity
of doctrine. The second article of the chapter treats of the period
between 1617 and 1706, from the writings of Suarez to those of
1 La noies de l’église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la Réforme (Gembioux, Belgium: J. Duculot, Éditeur, 1937), pp. 212-54.
127

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Pierre Nicole. During these years the universality of place, as
distinct from the other factors in the Church’s catholicity, is
supposed to have assumed ever-growing proportions. The third
and final article deals with the theological teaching on the
Church’s catholicity from the time of Honoratus Tournely until
our own day. During this period the notion of “qualitative
catholicity” is said to have made its appearance in Catholic
letters. This "qualitative catholicity” was presented as a note
of the Church, according to Dr. Thils, because the progressive
impoverishment of the notion of "quantitative catholicity" had
rendered this latter concept unfit to demonstrate the position of
the Church as the true society of Christ. The impoverishment,
it seems, is supposed to consist in the tendency of theologians
to explain the catholicity of the Church in terms of its extension
throughout the world and of the multitude of its members, rather
than in terms of the completeness of its doctrine or of its antiq­
uity. Dr. Thils seems to believe that these two factors must
enter into any adequate concept of the Church’s catholicity?
Actually, of course, this contention is completely unfounded.
The Catholic Church holds and teaches the entire content of
divine public revelation, while various other religious organiza­
tions profess belief in individual statements that form a part of
this revealed message. Moreover, the Catholic Church is really
and manifestly the same society which Christ Our Lord founded
by organizing His disciples around Himself during the days of
His public life on earth. It is, furthermore, the kingdom of God
on earth, and thus a supernatural company which has existed
since the first days of the human race. Nevertheless, neither the
integrity of its faith and its teaching nor its own antiquity have
ever been the exact and formal reason why this society has been
properly designated as the Catholic Church. An argument for
the Catholic Church is one thing; an argument specifically from
the catholicity of this Church is quite another. The teachings
about the integrity and the doctrinal infallibility of the Church
and about its antiquity are truths about the Catholic Church.
Properly speaking, they are not explanations of its catholicity.
As a matter of fact, there has been remarkably little develop­
ment of the teaching about the catholicity of the true Church of

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’ Cf. op, dt, p. 214.

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NOTE OF CATHOLICITY

129

Jesus Christ during the scholastic period. - Thus the learned
Jesuit theologian Joseph De Guibert gives, in his De Christi
ecclesia, what is certainly as complete an explanation of the
Church’s catholicity as can be found in all of the literature of
scholastic theology. Nevertheless, there is scarcely an element in
his explanation which cannot be found already evolved in the
writings of St. Augustine. The chief contribution of the scholastic
writers in this field has been the formation of a technical lexicon
to designate the various aspects of catholicity, aspects which the
older authors considered and explained, however, with remark­
able thoroughness and exactness. We must remember also that
there is by no means a complete agreement among the modern
theologians upon the lexicon of catholicity.
Fr. De Guibert distinguishes between catholicity considered
materially and catholicity considered in its formal aspect. The
former is found in the unorganized group of men existent through­
out the world. The latter is recognizable in a truly formed society
existent in every part of the world. Furthermore, the formally
catholic society has the catholicity of aptitude if it is competent
to exist among all the nations of the earth. It possesses the
catholicity of right when it has the moral power to be diffused in
this way. It has the catholicity of fact when it is actually so
diffused throughout the world.3 Zapelena speaks of this catholicitas iuris as what some call qualitative catholicity.4
This de facto catholicity is said to be physical when the society
exists among literally all the peoples of the earth. It is a moral
catholicity when the society is not in existence among numerically
all of the peoples of the earth, but when it exists among enough
of them so that it can be said correctly to be everywhere on earth.
Men are perfectly justified in saying that a society exists among
all the nations of the earth, even though they have not ransacked
the latest treatises to see exactly how many nationes can actually
be found in the world, and even though there may be a few
peoples among whom this society has not yet been established.
De Guibert defines absolute catholicity or universality as one
recognizable as such even apart from any comparison with a less
extensive society. Relative catholicity, on the other hand, is the
*Cf. De Christi ecclesia (Rome: The Gregorian University, 1928), p. 93.
* Cf. De ecclesia Christi (Rome: The Gregorian University, 1946), I, 398.

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universality of a society which can be called world-wide only in
comparison with some more restricted organization. A society is
said to have simultaneous catholicity when it exists among all
nations at the same time. Successive catholicity, on the other
hand, is found where a society has at one time or another in the
course of its history existed in all or in most of the nations of
the world, even though it has not had world-wide diffusion at
any one time.
Catholicity, according to Fr. De Guibert, can be considered
according to a twofold element, positive and negative. The
negative element in catholicity is that which excludes all merely
national or particular characteristics from the society, so that it
is not restricted to any one race or nation or economic class. The
positive element is “the wide actual diffusion throughout the
world, together with a great and conspicuous multitude of
members” of this society. As a matter of fact, then, the negative
element is nothing more or less than what the author has already
defined as the catholicity of aptitude, while the positive element
is the note of catholicity itself.5
Fr. De Guibert discusses this terminology only in order that
he may bring out the traditional teaching of Catholic theology on
this note of the true Church of Jesus Christ. He teaches that
formal and actual catholicity is a constant property of the Church
of Jesus Christ by the will of the divine Founder of that Church.
He holds correctly that the catholicity of the true Church is a
teaching of divine faith, and that it is perfectly certain that actual
and perpetual universality is a property of the true ecdesia. He
holds that the simultaneous, rather than the successive, catholi­
city of the true Church is the common teaching of theologians
today, and that relative, rather than absolute, moral catholicity
is more probably the real note of the kingdom of God in this
world. It is interesting to note that Fr. Yves de la Briére uses
the term “relative catholicity” to express the same meaning that
De Guibert brings out in the expression “moral catholicity,” and
uses "physical catholicity” to'designate what De Guibert and
most other theologians mean by “absolute” universality.®
It seems, to this writer at least, that the very complexity of
De Guibert’s lexicon militates against the acceptability of his own
*Cf. op.cit., p.94.
•Cf. Dictionnaire apologétique de la. foi catholique, I, 1286. .

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NOTE OF CATHOLICITY

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131

thesis. The fact of the matter is that he, like all the other tra­
ditional theologians of the Catholic Church, is trying to bring
out the fact that the true ecclesia of Jesus Christ Our Lord is,
according to the promises made by Our Lord and according to the
prophecies made and recounted in the Old Testament about His
society, an organization which is spread abroad over the entire
world to live among all nations. Neither the Old Testament
prophecies about the kingdom of God or the seed of Abraham nor
the New Testament descriptions of the society of Our Lord’s
disciples seem to stand out in sufficient clarity in an explanation
of the note of catholicity constructed principally along the lines of
this technical Latin terminology.
God’s kingdom on earth in the days of its final and Christian
covenant is described in Scripture as an organization which is at
the same time existent among all nations and subject to persecu­
tion from the outside. Ever since the days of St. Optatus and St.
Augustine, theologians have pointed to the fact that the visible
Catholic Church manifests these very characteristics. St. Optatus
listed the most important places where the true Church of Christ
was established in his own time. He limited himself quite re­
markably to provinces and regions of the Roman empire, listing
Africa, Spain, Gaul, Italy, Pannonia, Dacia, Moesia, Thracia,
Achaia, Macedonia, all Greece, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia, the three Syrias, the two Armenias,
Egypt, and Macedonia.7 Yet, with this listing, the African
Father taught that the true Church was termed Catholic “be­
cause it is rationabilis et ubique diffusa."* The basic argument in
St. Augustine’s works against the Donatists is the contention
that the Church is recognizable as the promised kingdom of God
in the new dispensation, even though there were as yet a great
many nations which had not received the apostolic preaching.
He insisted upon the actual prophecies about the ecclesia and the
actual promises made to this society and set down in Sacred
Scripture. His readers and hearers were given the opportunity
to see that the society which called itself, and which was uni­
versally designated as, the Catholic Church really corresponded
7Cf. Contra Parmenianum Donatistam, Lib. II, cap. I, CSEL, XXVI, 32f.
’CL op. tit., Lib. II, cap. 1, CSEL, XXVI, 33.

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to the picture of Abraham’s seed drawn in the inspired writings.’
The questionings about the actual significance of the various
terms employed in modern theology have done little to recapture
the effectiveness of this procedure of St. Augustine, a procedure
which is as effective in our day as it was in his. In any event, the
technical terminology employed by De Guibert and the other
modem scholastic theologians is intended only to bring out the
very truth about the Church of God which St. Augustine ex­
pressed in his writings and sermons.
The technical terminology of modern scholastic ecclesiology
in the matter of catholicity has, like the teaching of St. Augustine
himself, tended to bring out the existence of God’s kingdom on
earth among all nations, as the divine promises and prophecies
had signified. The theologians of our own day, however, like their
predecessors, have taken cognizance of other meanings which have
been attached to the catholicity of Our Lord’s true Church. Thus,
among recent writers, Fr. Reginald Schultes lists seven different
reasons on account of which the true Church can be designated as
catholic. It is catholic by reason of place, because it is spread
abroad over the entire world. It is catholic in time because it will
never fail. It is catholic because it is made up of members from
every tribe, and nation, and tongue. Again, it is called catholic
because it excludes no class of persons from its membership. The
fifth of these reasons or aspects that establish the Church as
catholic is the fact that it possesses the entire doctrine of Christ
without error. The Church is also said to be catholic because of
the universality of its means of salvation, since it contains rem­
edies against all the spiritual evils of all men, and because all of
Our Lord’s passion is effective within it. The seventh and final
aspect of the Church’s catholicity is that of its obligation and
necessity, in virtue of which the Church is said to be the way of
salvation necessary for all men.10
Schultes draws his list from the fifteenth-century Dominican
theologian, the Cardinal John de Turrecremata.11 Fr. Timothy
* CL the article “St. Augustine’s Use of the Note of Catholicity" in last
month's issue of The American Ecclesiastical Review.
" Cf. De ecdesia catholica (Paris: Lethielleux, 1931), p. 179.
"Turrecremata, in his Summa de ecdesia (Venice: 1560), Lib. I, cap. 13
gives four reasons to explain the designation of the orthodox faith as “cath
olic,’ and also brings out the reason why the Christian should properly b

NOTE OF CATHOLICITY

133

Zapelena speaks of six different ways of designating the Church
as catholic or universal,12 and his enumeration bears a strong
resemblance to that set down in the De regimine christiano of the
fourteenth-century Augustinian bishop, James of Viterbo.1*
Hurter divides the content of catholicity under five headings,14*
of which Lepicier, Van Noort, and Lercher use only four.1* Yet,
in the final analysis, all of these theologians fall back directly or
indirectly upon the teaching contained in a passage from the
work De ecclesiasticis officiis by St. Isidore of Seville.
The Catholica is so-called because it is established throughout the
entire world, or because there exists within it the catholic, that is to
say, the general doctrine to instruct men about things visible and in­
visible, about things of heaven and things of earth, or because it draws
every class of men to itself unto the subjection of piety, drawing rulers
and those who are ruled, the learned and the simple, or because it
cures the sins of all men, whether committed by the body or by the
soul.1®

Schultes believes that when catholicity is considered as an
intrinsic property of the Church, all the seven aspects of its
universality which he has enumerated enter into it.17 In other
words, the catholicity of the Church is looked upon as a thing, a
kind of receptacle, within which the most diverse sorts of char­
acteristics are contained. This manner of teaching about the
Church’s universality is by no means confined to Fr. Schultes.
It has, however, very serious shortcomings which seem to render
it an ineffective way of presenting the truths of sacred theology.
From the points of view of scholarship and of clarity, it would
seem that, when we speak or write about the catholicity or the
called a Catholic. His teaching on the various ways in which the Church itself
is truly Catholic are to be found on p. 17r.
“ Zapelena, op. cit., I, 397.
*’ Cf. Part I, chapter 4, of the De regimine christiano in Arquillière’s Le plus
ancien traité de l'église (Paris: Beauchesne, 1926), pp. 122 ff.
“Cf. Theologiae dogmaticae compendium (Innsbruck, 1878), I, 253.
” Cf. Lepicier, Tractatus de ecclesia Christi (Rome, 1935), p. 157; Van
Noort, Tractatus de ecdesia Christi (Hilversum, Holland, 1932), p. 125; Lercher,
Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (Innsbruck, 1934), I, 451.
“Lib. I, cap. 1, MPL, LXXXIII, 740.
n Ci. op. cit., p. 179.

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universality of the Church, we ought to focus our attention on
that property by virtue of which this society has been called and
is called catholic or universal. As far as the evidence at our
disposition is concerned, the orthodox and true Church of Jesus
Christ has actually been called the Catholic Church since its
earliest days precisely because and only because it has been,
in contrast to the various conventicles which have falsely claimed
the Christian name, the brotherhood of world-wide or universal
fellowship. The so-called “catholicity of doctrine” and the
"catholicity of means of salvation” are truths about the true
Church of Jesus Christ which should be explained on their own
accord and in their own right.
There may have been a good reason in ancient times for crowd­
ing these various and distinct characteristics of the true Church
together under the general heading of catholicity. The common
grouping may have been an effective aid to the memories of
students in days long gone by. It is, however, a serious dis­
advantage to modern teaching about the true Church. The
present day student of the true faith is served considerably better
when he is told how the name of “Catholic” actually came to be
applied to the Church, rather than when he is reminded of the
various ways in which the name “universal” might properly be
applied to the company of Christ. For all practical purposes, of
course, that is the attitude the traditional theologians have
adopted. As a group, they have excluded the “catholicity of
doctrine” and the “catholicity of the means of salvation” from
consideration when they deal directly with the note of catholicity
itself.
It is well to remember also that crowding these other character­
istics along with the genuine catholicity of the Church under the
heading of “universality” has produced certain other difficulties
in the teaching of sacred theology. When, speaking along the line
suggested by the ordinary explanation of the “catholicity of
doctrine," we say that the Church has the entirety of the divine
public revelation and that the non-Catholic religious conventicles
contain and propose some percentage of this divine truth, we are
leaving the way open to a serious misinterpretation of the matter.
Actually it is quite misleading to compare the teaching of a non­
Catholic religious community to that of the Catholic Church by
saying that the sects propose some percentage of that doctrine

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135

which is taught in its entirety by the Church. Actually, of course,
the teaching of any individual sect, like the teaching of the Church
itself, must stand or fall as a unit. The teaching of any sect is
proposed for belief on the authority of divine faith, and this
message, as a unit, is a fabrication. The fact that it has been
altered only in a comparatively few particulars does not prevent
it from being classified, as a unit, as a counterfeit divine message.
Thus, speaking formally, acceptance of the teaching of any
sect with the idea that it is a communication from God does not
objectively and directly pertain to the virtue of divine faith,
which, according to the Vatican Council, is “the supernatural
virtue by which, with the grace of God inspiring and assisting us,
we believe those things which He has revealed to be true, not
because of the intrinsic truth of these things manifested to the
natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God
Himself who has revealed them, who can neither be deceived nor
Himself deceive.”18 Taken as a unit, a non-Catholic creed has
not been revealed by God. Hence it cannot be accepted rightly
and objectively on divine faith as a message or communication
from Him. It is spurious as a whole, and the fact that it may
contain certain sentences borrowed from the true Catholic creed
does not change its intrinsic character.
We should, however, distinguish very sedulously between that
somewhat questionable teaching which holds that the Church
itself is designated as Catholic because it contains the totality
of divine faith and the other very valuable doctrine which ex­
plains the catholicity of the faith itself. St. Vincent of Lerins
has expounded the reason why the true faith itself is called
“catholic” in his Commonitorium.
Within the Catholic Church we must take pains to hold that which
has been believed everywhere, always and by all men: for that is truly
catholic, as the very force and nature of the term declare, which takes
in all things in almost a universal manner. We shall do this if we
follow universality, antiquity, and agreement.19

Furthermore, the so-called “catholicity of means of salvation”
is inclined to be confusing. There is sometimes a tendency to
interpret this formula by saying that the Catholic Church has
"Sessio III, cap. 3, DB, 17S9.
"Cap. 2, MPL. L, 639.

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more means of salvation than other religious bodies, and at least
implying that these non-Catholic communions have true means
of salvation to a certain extent independent of the Catholic
Church. The acceptance of this viewpoint involves a complete
misunderstanding of the nature of the ecdesia itself.
The true Church of Jesus Christ is essentially the family of the
Redeemer, the Body of Christ which is itself the unique vehicle
of salvation. It is the company into which men must enter to
escape from the family of the old Adam, turned away from God
by the process of original sin. The family of the old Adam is the
"perverse generation” which men can leave only by entering the
kingdom of God which is the true ecdesia of Jesus Christ Our
Lord.
Those who speak so glibly of means of salvation outside the
Church seem to forget the basic teaching of St. Augustine on this
portion of the divine doctrine. "Whatever,” he tells us, “men
hold outside of the Church of the things that belong to the
Church, is of no value unto salvation.” The true Church is the
company of God. It is the fellowship within which alone Our
Lord dwells. It is the one agency through which Our Lord does
the will of His Father on earth. The religious societies outside of
it belong in one way or another to the host which is in some way
subject to the “prince of this world,” the enemy of Christ.
The truth we have just enuntiated is a perfectly certain part
of the divine revelation. Strangely enough, the heresy of the first
Reformers did not involve any rejection of this fact. They were
just as insistent upon it as were the champions of the Catholic
truth themselves. The one point at issue between the Catholic
teachers and their heretical adversaries was brought out in the
Augustinian statement set down by the brilliant John Driedo,
the Louvain theologian. “This,” he said, “is the controversy
between us. Where is the Church of Christ? Is it in your company
or in ours?” The heretical claim, consistent though incorrect,
was that the unorganized mass of the just or of tire predestined
constituted the vera ecdesia Christi. The Catholic truth, so ably
propounded and defended by’ Driedo and his associates, was that
the visible Catholic Church, with its good members and its bad
members, actually constitutes this ecdesia. This truth is the final
aspect of the great mystery of God’s dispensation for men. Be­
cause this visible and truly organized society actually is the

NOTE OF CATHOLICITY

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137

εκκλησία τον θεού in this world, the means of salvation belong
to it and have no utility to salvation away from it.
Thus it should be perfectly clear that there is no proper analogy
between the relative positions of true Church and the various
heretical conventicles on the question of Christian truth or on
the matter of the means of salvation and their mutual relations
with regard to geographical extension. The various sects, heret­
ical or schismatic, have real extension, even though it is in no
case world-wide, as is the case with the true ecdesia Christi.
They have not, however, even a partial real possession of Chris­
tian truth or of the Christian means of salvation. Consequently,
even from this aspect, the inclusion of these factors among the
elements of the Church’s catholicity can be quite misleading for
the student of sacred theology.
The inclusion of these truths, however, as elements in the
catholicity of the Church, has still another and a more important
disadvantage. The sevenfold “catholicity" of Turrecremata and
Schultes and the sixfold “catholicity” of Zapelena can only serve
to distract and confuse the consideration of the true note of
catholicity, so ably presented in Catholic theology since the days
of St. Augustine. For all practical purposes, the traditional
theologians have almost always limited themselves to the exist­
ence of the Church throughout the world, and among all the
peoples of the world, when they have come to explain that the
visible Church of which the Roman Pontiff is the visible leader
as Christ’s vicar on earth is actually the ecclesia promissionum.
They have been able to show that this visible Church manifestly
corresponds to the description of God’s kingdom on earth set
down in the promises and the prophecies of Holy Scripture, and
that the fact of this correspondence is the very element which
has earned for the true Church its title as the Catholica. Their
explanation is only muddled by the inclusion of absolutely foreign
elements in this catholicity'.
It is also interesting to note that even with reference to«the
function of catholicity in manifesting the Church as a miracle of
the social order there has been very little theological advance in
scholastic history'. The Vatican Council declared that the Church
is, among other reasons, "because of its catholic unity,” manifest
as “a great and perpetual motive of credibility and as an unwavering witness of its own character as the bearer of a divine

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message.”20 The letter to Diognetus, one of the earliest apologies
of Christianity in all Catholic literature, brings out this same
truth very clearly. The section of the pertinent passage which
has survived (the teaching in question is found after one of the
principal lacunae in the text), claims that it is a miracle or a
manifestation of the power of God that the Church has gained
a tremendous number of members not . only in spite of, but
actually through the persecution by its enemies. “They [the
Christians] are thrown to wild beasts,” the letter informs the
mysterious Diognetus, "to make them deny the Lord. They are
not conquered. Do you not realize that, the more of them there
are persecuted, the more the rest multiply? These things seem
not to be the works of man, but the power (δύναμκ) of God.
These are the signs of His parousfa.”21
In the light of the traditional teaching on the Church’s catholi­
city, and especially on the use of this characteristic as a note or
mark of God’s kingdom on earth, the modem tendency to reject
the old notion and to replace it with a concept of “qualitative”
catholicity appears unfortunate in the extreme. The vaguely
defined “qualitative” catholicity can consistently be identified
only with what the traditional theologians have termed the
catholicity of right or of aptitude. When we say that the true
Church has the catholicity of right or of aptitude, we mean only
that it is commissioned by God Himself to exist throughout the
world, and that, by its very nature, it is competent to spread
itself abroad in this way. Strictly speaking, the catholicity of
right could not possibly be a note of the Church at all. The notes
of the Church, as a group, are those characteristics which serve
to designate one particular society as God’s kingdom on earth,
and hence precisely as the society which has the commission from
God to establish itself throughout the nations and the peoples of
the world. In other words, the concept of the catholicitas iuris
belongs in the conclusion of that proof that is meant to be built
up out of the notes of the Church.
The catholicity of aptitude, on the other hand, is an active
potency or competence within a society. Like any other potency,
it is observable ultimately in terms of its act. The Church is
” Sessio ΠΙ, cap. 3, DB, 1794.
tt Cap. 7, Funk, Patres aposMici (Tubingen, 1901), I, 404.

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shown to have the catholicity of aptitude by the fact that it
possesses what these modern writers call quantitative catholicity.
It is manifest as the kind of society which is fitted to live among
all nations by the fact that it actually does live among them.
Basically, we appeal to the catholicity of the true Church of
Jesus Christ as a note of the Church in order to show those persons
who accept or who profess to accept the promises and the proph­
ecies about God’s kingdom contained in Holy Scripture that the
living religious society subject to the Bishop of Rome manifests
in itself the realization of these promises and prophecies. The
descriptions of God’s kingdom in Holy Scripture pictures it as a
society actually preaching the Gospel of Christ to every creature
and teaching all nations. The Church began that missionary
activity on the first Christian Pentecost. It will continue that
missionary activity until the end of the world. When its mission­
ary career has been finished, the end will come. Or, to put the
same truth in another way, the Church is, by its very nature, an
institution which must always strive to bring the message and
the grace of God to those outside its own ranks. The only force
which will be competent to stop this activity will be the end of
the world itself. And, in order to teach all nations, it must exist
throughout the world. The quality which makes it visible as the
Church of the promises is its actual extension, not its aptitude
or its commission.
Much of the dissatisfaction which writers like Thils have ex­
pressed on the subject of the Church’s quantitative catholicity
seems to come from a misunderstanding of the function of a note
of the Church as such. These writers seem to expect that a note
of the Church ought to be the foundation of an argument which
would convince any non-Catholic, willingly or unwillingly, that
the Catholic Church is the true Church. Actually, of course, the
note of the Church is not intended to produce any such magically
effective proof. It contains valid evidence, but evidence that is
meaningful only to the person who knows the basic teaching
about the kingdom of God in the dispensation of the New Testa­
ment. Furthermore, it is not the sort of evidence which, like
that of mathematics, compels the attention of the person to whom
it is addressed. The evidence in mathematics, or at least in the
ampler forms of mathematics, is such that no sane man can deny
it The truth of the notes of the Church, on the other hand, is

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such that men who are unwilling to believe in Christ or to accept
His Church can always find some sort of excuse for their attitude.
St. Robert Bellarmine has taught this particular truth about
the notes of the Church very accurately In his Controversies.
Therefore we say that the notes of the Church that we bring forward
do not produce absolutely the evidence of truth, since otherwise it would
not be an article of faith that this Church is the true Church, nor would
there be found anyone to deny this, just as no one is found to deny
the statements which mathematicians demonstrate. Still, however, they
produce the evidence of credibility, according to the words of the
Psalm, 92: “Thy testimonies are become exceedingly credible." But
for those who admit the divine Scriptures, and the histories and the
writings of the ancient Fathers, they [the notes of the Church] also
produce the evidence of truth.22

Actually, we would be greatly mistaken about the teaching on
the Church’s catholicity were we to imagine that it belongs only
in the field of controversy or in the instructions to be given to
catechumens. The note of catholicity, like all of the other notes
of the true Church of Jesus Christ, is one of the visible properties
which manifest this society as the fulfillment of the divinely in­
spired proclamations about God’s kingdom on earth. Through
the use of the note of catholicity, it is possible to help our own
people to understand more clearly the basic notion of the Church
itself as God’s kingdom on earth and as the Body of Christ. This
non-polemical use of the note of catholicity is of itself more im­
portant and more general than its controversial function. It is
of particular value and interest in our own time when the forces
of the world seem combined to prevent Catholics from realizing
the nature and the dignity of their own communion as the one
supernatural kingdom of God on earth.
The kingdom of God for which we are commanded to pray by
Our Lord Himself is the Catholic Church. The earlier Christians
considered it in their Eucharistic prayer precisely in terms of its
catholic character. Long ago the author of the Didache wrote that
the Church of his time prayed in the Eucharistic sacrifice “that
Thy Church may be gathered together from the ends of the earth
a Prima controversia generalis, De Conciliis, et ecclesia militante. Lib. IV,
De notis ecdesiae, cap, 3, in De controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius
temporis haereticos (Cologne, 1619), II, 167.

NOTE OF CATHOLICITY

141

into Thy kingdom.”28 This was a petition to God that the
Church triumphant might be the fruition of a Church militant
which would have actually fulfilled the prophecies of the Scrip­
ture, and actually have attained to the uttermost bounds of the
earth. It was, in other words, a petition to God that the essential­
ly missionary function of the Church might be successful until
the end of time. The Sacramentary of Sarapion, written down in
the fourth century, takes up this same prayer to God, in this
petition the Church begs God to “gather Thy holy Church out
of every nation and every country and every city and house, and
make one living Catholic Church."24
The true kingdom of God is looked upon in these, its own pe­
titions to Our Lord, as a society always being formed and con­
served in being by the Creator. The priest, and the plebs Dei
whose petitions are expressed in the words of the priest, beg God
that this kingdom may be established actually and perfectly
throughout the world. This complete and physical catholicity is
the end towards which the Church of God strives in the world,
while it manifests in itself an actual moral and formal catholicity.
That charity which is the motivating force of the Catholic
Church’s activity and which is expressed in its Eucharistic sacri­
fice necessarily works towards the accomplishment of this end.
The disciple of Christ who truly loves God’s kingdom on earth
and who is devoted to its divine teaching actually deserves the
title of Catholic. Such is the truth most accurately and perfectly
expressed by St. Vincent of Lerins.
Consequently, he is a true and genuine Catholic who loves God’s
truth, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, and who
sets nothing before the divine Religion, the Catholic faith; not the
authority nor the love nor the genius nor the philosophy of any man
whatsoever; but [he is the true and genuine and true Catholic who]
sets all these things at nought, and makes up his mind to hold and
believe only what he knows the Catholic Church to have held from
ages past25
“ Cap. 10, Funk, op. cit., p. 24.
“Cf. Kidd, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church, London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1938), II, 39,
“Cap. 20. ifPL, L, 665.

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To this end: to the formation of the true Catholic in the king­
dom of God, the teaching on the Church’s note of catholicity is
manifestly effective.
The Catholic himself is so situated that he, better than anyone
else, can appreciate and profit from the teaching about the uni­
versality of his own Church. He accepts the Scripture as the
inspired word of God. Hence he is in a position to realize the full
import of the scriptural teaching about the catholicity of God s
kingdom on earth. He cannot fail to appreciate his Church more
perfectly when he is brought to meditate upon the fact that the
catholicity of that Church results from the salvific will of God
Himself. The visible Church of Jesus Christ is a world-wide
society precisely because it is the house of Abraham’s seed, in
which God wills that all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
It is Catholic because Our Lord, who died for the sins of all men,
has truly commissioned it to carry His truth and His salvation
to every creature. It seeks always to extend itself even more
among the children of men for no other reason than because it is
the company and the Body of Christ, enlightened by His teaching
and motivated by His love.
There has been no more unfortunate tendency in modern theo­
logical literature than that which has resulted in the division of
the tractatus de ecclesia into a pars apologetica and a pars dog­
matica. This division has brought with it the implication that
the so-called “apologetical” portion of ecclesiology was merely or
at least chiefly a source of arguments that could be utilized to
overthrow attacks against Our Lord’s company. Actually this
section, with its teaching about the foundation and the notes of
the true Church, contains the basic revealed teaching about the
kingdom of God in this world. The teaching on the catholicity
of the Church belongs to this section. And, like the rest of the
divinely revealed doctrine about Christ’s kingdom, it is im­
mensely and primarily profitable to the disciples of Christ.
Indeed, it seems impossible that there could be an adequate
theology of Catholic Action without definite and profound treat­
ment of catholicity itself.
Joseph Cufford Fenton

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

Answers to Questions
DISPENSATION FROM THE EUCHARISTIC FAST
Question: Do women in a maternity ward come under the
heading of "the sick” in the matter of dispensation from the
eucharistie fast?
Answer: If a woman awaiting the birth of a child is in danger
of death, either because of her present condition or because it is
anticipated that the delivery will involve grave risk to her life,
she can receive the Holy Eucharist as Viaticum, without fasting.
However, in the latter case—when she is hic et nunc not in danger
of death from an actual bodily condition, but will be in such
danger in a short time, with the beginning of labor—she could
not now be anointed, though she could be given the Viaticum.
For there is a probable danger of imminent death, justifying the
reception of Holy Viaticum, but since it is not yet present in
the form of an affliction of the body, she could not validly receive
Extreme Unction. Her case is similar to that of the soldier
going into a dangerous combat. (Cf. Kilker, Extreme Unction
[St. Louis: Herder, 1927], p. 173.)
However, the questioner is doubtless concerned with the case
of a woman who is not in danger of death, but is in the hospital,
either shortly before or shortly after the birth of a child. Can
she be considered sick, if she is enduring only the normal pains
and inconvenience of childbirth? There were some theologians
who held that even when she is actually in danger of death from
parturition a woman cannot be anointed, because we may not
regard this condition as a sickness. But a suffident number of
authorities can be quoted for the opposite opinion to render it
fully probable that the conditions accompanying childbirth are
pathological, so that even at the time of a normal delivery the
woman can be regarded as sick (cf. Kilker, op cit., p. 175). Hence,
she can take advantage of the dispensations from the eucharistie
fast granted to the sick. In the first place, she could use the
privilege granted by the Code (Can. 858, § 2) of receiving Holy
Communion once or twice a week (with the prudent advice of a
confessor) after taking medicine or liquid nourishment, if she
has been confined to bed (even though able to rise for a few
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