The Catholic World Volume I Part 99

With those same words Vanish'd the cherub, and the room was dark, Save where the moonbeams made uncertain light, And where remain'd those blossoms and that fruit, For from each leaf and stem there stream'd a ray As of the morning.

Down upon his couch Theophilus sank p.r.o.ne, with awe oppress'd; {669} But for a moment. Starting wildly up, He cried, "My love, my Dorothea, list!

If thou canst hear me in those starry halls Where now thou dwellest, I accept thy gift.

Do thou take mine, for I do give myself Up to the service of thy Lord; thy faith Shall from this hour be mine, for I believe!"

Translated from Der Katholik.

THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.

[Second Article.]

I. THE PROBLEM.

"Neither," says Jesus Christ, "do they put new wine into old bottles; otherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out." The parable teaches that the new spirit of Christianity requires a new form, corresponding to its essence. The essence and the form of Christianity are, therefore, intimately connected.

What is thus generally enunciated in regard to the essential connection of the spirit of Christianity with the forms of its expression, is equally true of the mutual relations subsisting between the substance and the manifestation of the Church. Christianity and the Church are virtually identical. The former, considered as a source of union and brotherhood, const.i.tutes the Church, In a former article we have recognized Catholicism as the type of the Church Founded by Christ. Hence the interdependence of the essence with the form of Christianity in general is not more thorough than that of the spirit of the Church with the historical development of Catholicism.

These remarks will be found to designate the object of the present essay. An inquiry into the fundamental principle of Catholicism must address itself to the elucidation of the cause of the necessary connection between the spirit and the outer shape of the Church just mentioned. The direction in which the light is to be sought appears by the parable cited above.

The new wine requires new bottles, because they only correspond with its nature. By the same induction it is affirmed that if the true Church is realized only in the form of Catholicism, the reason is to be found in the inmost nature of the Church, in the catholicity of her spirit.

This idea of the inherent catholicity of the Church, as well as the foregoing a.s.sertion of a necessary inter-dependence of the essence with the image of Catholicism, is to be established on scriptural authority by the following disquisition.

II. THE KINGDOM OF G.o.d ON EARTH.

The shape and form in which Catholicism appears in history has its root in the papacy. It is certainly deserving of attention, that precisely in the inst.i.tution of the papacy the Church is designated by a name which affords an insight into her inmost nature.

On that occasion the Church--meaning the Church as apparent in history--is called the kingdom of heaven. [Footnote 146] The Lord says to Peter, "I will give {670} unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" a promise substantially the same with that given in the same breath to the same apostle, though under a different metaphor, when Jesus calls him the rock upon which he will build his Church. The primate is the subject of both predictions. The apostle Peter is to be the foundation of the Church, and he is to receive the keys of the same edifice, that is to say, he is to be the master of the house.

[Footnote 146: Matt. xvi. 18, 19. ]

That the epithet of "kingdom of heaven" expresses the essential character of the Church, is easily shown by a glance at the pa.s.sages of Scripture in which the Church is mentioned. Such is always the case where the kingdom of G.o.d or of heaven is represented as in course of realization on earth. In this respect the parables of Jesus are especially significant. They address themselves princ.i.p.ally to the spirit, the organization, and the most essential peculiarities of the new order of things which Jesus Christ had come into the world to establish. In these discourses the new foundation is constantly brought forward as the kingdom of G.o.d or of heaven. Thus we cannot but recognize in this expression a designation of the inner essence of the inst.i.tution of Jesus.

At a time when his destined kingdom had not yet become historically manifest, Jesus might still say, in the same acceptation of the term, that it was already present, and palpable to all who sought to grasp it. This actual presence of the kingdom is deduced by the Lord from the efficacy of his miracles. In them the vital principle of Catholicism was already at work. It had entered the world at the same instant with the person of the Son of Man. But not until after Christ was exalted did it a.s.sume a historical palpability. No less does the declaration of Jesus, that from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, display Catholicism as a power even before it came to figure in history. For this very forwardness with which even then the violent took it by force, was a product of the Christ-like power which had entered humanity simultaneously with the person of the Messiah. And where the Jews are called sons of the kingdom, it is likewise in reference to this elementary principle of Catholicism. It had been planted in the first instance on the historical soil of Judaism, thence, of course, to spread its benign influence over the earth, and thus to make historically manifest the vital substance of the Church in its only adequate expression. "Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom." On the other hand, the kingdom shall be taken from the Jews, because they have made it unfruitful.

No Christian sermon should omit to give this inner view of Catholicism, or of the advent of the kingdom. Therein lies its peculiar force. The preacher of the gospel has no more effective word of consolation for the pious souls who give him a ready hearing, than the a.s.surance that the kingdom of G.o.d has come nigh unto them. In this word, also, the apostle of Christ has his most potent weapon against the a.s.sailants of the Church. If they receive you not, says the Lord unto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same city, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of G.o.d is at hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of its principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so at the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself the kingdom of G.o.d.

But how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The word of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. According to the quality of the hearers of the word, the growing grain is fruitful or empty, the members genuine or spurious. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like to a net, cast into the sea, and gathering together all kind of fishes. The kingdom of the Son of Man is not without scandals, and them that work {671} iniquity. [Footnote 147] Hence the kingdom of G.o.d on earth embraces the entire Church in her temporal existence. The latter is shown to be a kingdom of long-suffering, in preserving her connection even with ingredients estranged from her in spirit, leaving the ultimate separation of the false members to the final judgment.

Even these erring ones carry on their souls the impress of the kingdom, the signature of baptism. Nevertheless their adhesion to the kingdom is external and objective merely. In the more accurate sense of the word, the idea of the kingdom applies only to the marrow, the soul of the Church. The good seed only are the real children of the kingdom.

[Footnote 147: Matt. xiii. 41.]

This account of the formation of the kingdom of G.o.d explains how the essence of the true Church becomes a historical reality in the actual condition of Catholicism, notwithstanding its imperfections. The position, therefore, that the spirit of the Church is inseparable from her temporal existence by no means denies that this historical exterior of Catholicism may be infected with elements having nothing in common with, and even hostile to, the character of the true Church.

This results from the fact that the true Church, though always preserving a unitary organization, realizes herself by degrees only.

The form of Catholicism is gradually purified and disclosed by the sanctifying virtue of its inner life. Thus it is that parasites take root in the soil of the Church.

It is therefore a shifting of the real issue when Mr. Hase defines the Catholic antagonism to the ideal Church of Protestantism as consisting in a notion of Catholicism that in all essential attributes there is a perfect congruity between the idea of the Church and the concrete Church of Rome; or in other words, that the latter Church is at all tunes the perfect type of Christianity. Two distinct things are here confounded. The position of Catholicism--that the essence of the true Church, so far as realized at all, exists only within the Catholic Church, where alone, therefore, a further development of this essence can be accomplished or the ideal of the Church attained--is by no means equivalent to the pretension, attributed to Catholicism by Hase, that Catholicism has already attained the ideal, or that it is at all times the most perfect representation of Christianity. After this misrepresentation of the position of Catholicism, Hase has no difficulty in distorting the well-known Catholic doctrine that sinners also belong to the Church into an unconscious acknowledgment of the ideal Church of Protestantism.

While the toleration of spurious members is a mandate of the educational mission of the Church, it involves, moreover, a special dispensation of Divine Providence. Like her divine principle, the Church appears as a servant among men. The beauty of her inner life is veiled beneath an exterior covered with manifold imperfections. This serves as a constant admonition to the Church not to rely upon externals. Yet even these shadows on the image of the Church are evidences of her vitality. How superhuman must be an organization which outlasts all enemies in spite of many deficiencies! It is error, therefore, to infer from the undeniable, practical incongruity between the essence of the Church and her outward form that there cannot be an exclusive, concrete realization of the true Church in history.

To make the growth of Catholicism intelligible to his hearers, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven with a grain of mustard, which unfolds the least of all seeds to a stately tree. Immediately thereafter it is said that the kingdom of heaven penetrates the ma.s.s of humanity like leaven. The law of development of Catholicism is further ill.u.s.trated by the following parable: The earth, says Jesus, bringeth forth fruit; first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear; man has but to cast the seed into the earth; then he may sleep, and the seed shall {672} spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. Even so is the kingdom of G.o.d. The Church therefore carries the germs of her growth in her inmost nature. Catholicism is gradually developed out of itself, from within. Thanks to the energy of her own principle, the Church with her arms encircles nation after nation. The faculty of being all things unto all men she owes to her being the kingdom of G.o.d. Here is the root of Catholicism. As the kingdom of G.o.d, the Church is fraught with a wealth adequate to the mental requirements of all individuals and all nations. As the kingdom of G.o.d, the Church is adapted to every age and clime.

The word "Church" is used by Jesus Christ far more rarely than that of the "kingdom of heaven;" indeed but twice, and on each occasion in direct reference to the external form of the Church.

That this historical exterior of Catholicism, designated the Church, is the manifestation of the kingdom of G.o.d, We have already deduced from Matt. xvi. 18, 19, and xiii. 41. The same truth is expressed in the parable of the treasure hid in the field. He who would possess the treasure, that is to say, the kingdom of heaven, or the vital principle of Catholicism, must buy the field in which the gem is concealed. The field, the Catholic exterior of the Church, is not the inner life; but the latter is realized only in the historical form of Catholicism.

It now behooves us to more precisely expound this relation between the spirit and the outer form of the Church from the words of Jesus. The way to do this is indicated by our Lord himself. It consists in an extended a.n.a.lysis of the biblical idea of the kingdom of G.o.d. In it is disclosed the inmost nature of the Church and thereby the ultimate origin of her historical figure as inst.i.tuted by Christ, or the principle of Catholicism, which is the object of our search.

My kingdom, says the Lord, is not of this world; that is to say, its origin is not here, and it is not established by the exercise of worldly power. _Regnum meum non est hinc_. True, the kingdom of Christ is established in the midst of the world, but it was not generated there: from above, from heaven, it was planted in the world as a supernatural _realm of grace_. Therefore its existence and its extension is in no wise dependent on worldly power; its foundations lie deeper, in the principle of truth which has entered the world with Christ. For this cause came he into the world, that he should bear witness unto the truth. All they that are of the truth, do him homage as their king, and hear his kingly voice. The same principle works in them as that of a new worship; they worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

But this elevated sense of truth in individual souls is the fruit of a higher form of being. He that is of G.o.d heareth the words of G.o.d; but they hear them not who are not of G.o.d. The entrance into the kingdom of G.o.d therefore necessarily presupposes a new beginning of man's life, a new birth of water and of the Spirit. Wherever the kingdom of G.o.d obtains a foothold, it a.s.sumes the form of an entirely new state of things, of a new creation, of the principle of a new mental activity, a new _nature_ of the spirit.

A trans.m.u.tation of our souls, such as just described, necessarily involves a rupture with the natural man, a discarding of the original individuality. Without this alteration we are impervious to the new light which is to enter our souls together with the kingdom of G.o.d.

This indispensable self-denial is accomplished by a two-fold instrumentality--by the love of G.o.d, which is the first commandment, and by the love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whoever is in this frame of mind is p.r.o.nounced by Jesus to be not far from the kingdom of G.o.d.

What has been said reveals another peculiarity of the kingdom of G.o.d on earth. It is a _supernatural_ kingdom. At this point only do we fully comprehend the t.i.tle of the Church to {673} the designation of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of G.o.d historically manifested in the Church is intimately connected with the intro-divine relations or the inmost life of the Deity. By admission into the Church G.o.d the Father translates us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. This is not merely an exercise of the creative love common to the three persons of the Trinity. On the contrary, it is an evidence what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of G.o.d. Precisely in this is the peculiar supernatural character of this dispensation made manifest. It is this supernatural characteristic of the Church which accounts for the bestowal upon the Church of the name of the coming realm of glory. The germ of the latter is already contained in the existing Church. While, for this reason, the Church visible is called the kingdom of heaven, so the latter continues to bear the name of the Church even in the splendor of its eternal glory.

This circ.u.mstance warrants the bold utterance of the apostle that our conversation is in heaven. In the same sense it is laid down in the catechism of the council of Trent that the Church militant and the Church triumphant are but two parts of the one Church, not two churches; and with entire consistency the same authority speaks of the Church militant as synonymous with the kingdom of heaven.

It is but another expression for the supernatural character of the Church if she is called the Jerusalem which is above, even in her historical form and figure. And precisely because this epithet applies to her, she is free and is our mother. The catholicity of the Church, her faculty of enfolding all mankind, of being the spiritual mother of us all, is owing to her supernatural character.

This doctrine of the supernaturalness of the Church is the connecting link between the essence and the form of Catholicism. As the latter is supernatural in its character, so must the form of its establishment bear a supernatural impress. How can anything utterly supernatural attain an adequate form of expression by mere natural development? It a.s.sumes a historical reality in so far only as it a.s.sumes simultaneously with its supernatural essence a corresponding supernatural image. The form as well as the substance of the Church must needs be the fruit of an immediate interposition of G.o.d, because the substance must needs exercise its supernatural functions.

The idea just expressed may have been dimly present to the mind of Moehler when he wrote: "But it is the conviction of Catholics that this purpose of the divine revelation in Christ Jesus would not have been attained at all, or at least would have been attained but very imperfectly, if this embodiment of the truth had been but momentary, and if the personal manifestation of the Word had not been sufficiently powerful to give its tones the highest degree of intensified animation, and the most perfect conceivable efficacy, that is to say, to breathe into it the breath of life, and to create a union once more setting forth the truth in its vitality, and remaining emblematically the conclusive authority for all time, or, in other words, representing Christ himself."

Viewed in this light, the historical manifestation of the Church, inst.i.tuted Matt. xvi. 18, 19, presents itself as a postulate of her essence. Because the Church was essentially destined historically to manifest the kingdom of G.o.d, the Lord built her upon Peter, the rock.

A temporal establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this world required the divine installation of an individual keeper of the keys. Thus the idea of the papacy flows from that of a kingdom of G.o.d on earth.

If, then, this explanation presents Catholicism as a supernatural kingdom, and if this very attribute const.i.tutes the characteristic feature of its being, its inmost life and fundamental {674} principle, it is manifestly inadmissible to place the kingdom of G.o.d as established in the Church on the same footing with the works of creation. A juxtaposition like this would entirely ignore the vital essence of the Church, that is to say, her superiority to nature.

The same distinction is overlooked by those who regard Church and state as simply two manifestations of the same kingdom of G.o.d. Such is the point of view of a system of moral theology, the influence of which upon the opinions prevailing among a considerable fraction of the present generation of theologians is not to be mistaken. In the eye of that doctrine "Mosaism and Christianism--state and Church--both externally represent the kingdom, and both represent one and the same kingdom; the former [the state] rather in its negative, the latter [the Church] rather in its positive aspect. And thus we have two great formations in which the kingdom on earth is made manifest, Church and state." Could Hirscher have reached any other conclusion? He regards it as his task "to dispose of the question whether the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil, and whether they can spring forth from it [_i.e._, from the character or nature of man himself] and blossom as the kingdom of G.o.d."

Although it is here said that "G.o.d abode in man with his Holy Spirit and with its sanctifying grace," yet the Holy Spirit or his grace is not made the foundation upon which the kingdom is erected; that foundation is sought, on the contrary, in the "divine powers" infused into man at his creation. G.o.d only a.s.sists at the upraising of the kingdom through them by "dwelling in them for ever as the principle of divine guidance."

The logical inference from these premises, which seek the germs of the kingdom of G.o.d as established on earth in human nature itself, that is to say, in the "heavenly faculties" inherent in man, is well disclosed in the definition of the kingdom of G.o.d on earth given by Petersen, a theologian reared in the school of Schleiermacher. "The kingdom of G.o.d on earth," says he, "is at once Church, state, and civilization, _i.e._, it is an organism of community in religion, morals, and society, and by these three special organisms it essentially approaches, develops, and perfects its organic unity, in organizing its religious principle in the Church, its moral framework in the state, and its natural base in civilization, thus in the unity of all three rounding its proportions as a universal organism of genuine humanity." If "the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil," it is entirely consistent to regard the kingdom of G.o.d on earth as "substantially identical with the idea of the human race," as "the realization of that idea."

It gives us pleasure to state that the notion of the kingdom of G.o.d on earth just alluded to has been declared unscriptural even in a Protestant exegesis of greater thoroughness. [Footnote 148]

[Footnote 148: Hofman, _Schriftbeweis_, 1855. ]

III. THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Next to the idea of the kingdom of G.o.d, the most significant expression for the inner essence of Catholicism is found in the scriptural conception of the body of Christ. As his body, the Church is intimately connected with him. Christ and the Church belong together as the head and the body; both const.i.tute a single whole.

This intimate relation between Christ and the Church is described by the Scriptures in animated terms. The Church, it says, is for Christ what our own body is for us; as members of the Church we are members of the body of Christ, of his flesh, and of his bones. On one occasion, indeed, the apostle uses the word Christ as synonymous with the Church, so intimate is their relation.

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