Church
CHURCH
BASIC R.C. BELIEF Infallibility of the Church is proved by Luke 10:16, “He who hears you hears me.” This indicates the special teaching authority of the Apostles. (Ed: Our Roman Catholic friends fail to notice that this is spoken to the Seventy, not to the Twelve.)
Archbishop (later Cardinal) Cushing said in 1949, “The infallible dictum which teaches that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, is among the truths that the Church has always taught and will always teach.”
POST VATICAN II From THE CHURCH, Catholic Enquiry Centre, #8, London NW3, “There are hundreds of different Christian groups in the world. Although they do not realize it, they are associated with the (Catholic) Church and do receive Christ’s life through her. There are many good Christians and holy people separated from the Catholic Church. She gives life to many outside her boundaries.
From an address by John Paul II to the WCC, Geneva, 6/12/84, “Certainly, when the Catholic Church enters upon the difficult tasks of ecumenism, it brings a conviction. Despite the moral afflictions which have marked the life of its members and even of its leaders in the course of history, it is convinced that in the ministry of the Bishop of Rome it has preserved the visible pole and guarantee of unity in full fidelity to the apostolic tradition and to the faith of the fathers.
“The Catholic Church believes, in fact, that the bishop who presides over the life of the local Church made fruitful by the blood of Peter and Paul, receives from the Lord the mission of remaining the witness to the faith professed by these two leaders of the apostolic community and which, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, brings about the unity of believers. To be in communion with the Bishop of Rome is to give visible evidence that one is in communion with all who confess that same faith, with those who have confessed it since Pentecost, and with those who will confess it until the day of the Lord shall come. That is our conviction as Catholics and our fidelity to Christ forbids us to renounce it.”
From SEPARATED BRETHREN by William Whalen; Nihil Obstat: John Hardon, S.J.; Imprimatur: John Bennett, D.D., Bishop of Lafayette, IN. page 17: “While insisting that membership in the Catholic Church is the ordinary channel of God’s grace, Catholic theologians acknowledge that God is free to bestow His grace on whom He will. The Jansenist proposition that `outside the Church there is no grace’ was long ago condemned by Rome even though the grace which non-Catholics receive comes to them somehow in virtue of the Catholic Church.
“Certainly the sincere Protestant Christian can receive the graces of baptism and matrimony, sacraments which need not be administered by a priest. True, the Protestant church in which he normally receives these is a man-made institution. As such it cannot be the vehicle of these graces, but de facto it is the occasion for the bestowal of these graces.”
From INTRODUCING CONTEMPORARY CATHOLICISM, by Theo Weston. “In the institution the structure dominates, in the movement, the cause. It can hardly be denied that, certainly around the Mediterranean, a vast stream of pagan elements have been kept alive for 2000 years which are foreign to the Gospel.
“It is dishonest to say that a monastic community lives in poverty when in fact it belongs to the most prominent landowners in the country. It is false to say that Rome is poor when it is choking in tax-free wealth. It is false to say that the institution cannot go wrong when the Reformation is there to prove that it did go wrong. It is false to say that the Church has always protected the poor when Italy and Sicily are crawling with soreinfested humanity.
Boniface VIII in his bull, UNAM SANCTAM (11/18/1302), trying to provide a theological basis for his exorbitant and unchristian claims in his quarrel with Philip IV of France said, `There are two swords in the power of the world and they both belong to the Church.’
“Visitors (to Roman Catholic churches) were introduced to tasteless stautuary, holy water, concert-hall performances of the Mass, the whole interspersed with patiently-dripping candles, where ritual gestures have lost their 4th century meaning and where the people have given up comprehension and surrendered themselves to passive assistance.”
From CATHOLICS’ READY REPLY, page 19, “You would expect the Church which Christ founded would have the largest number of followers, wouldn’t you?” (see Matthew 7:13,14)
CATHOLIC JOURNALS From a letter written in THE CATHOLIC VOICE, Oakland, CA. “. . . the layman’s authentic role in the Church – to pray, pay and obey.”