THE POWER OF ONE - WHY BE CATHOLIC?
Having a math leaning brain, I often reconcile issues numerically, and evaluate scenarios in terms of their probability.
I even reconciled the idea of God by reason and probability. In contemplating an immensely ordered, complex and interconnected world, there was no way that burst into being as a chemical accident. The odds were simply too great against it.
As I began to research the claims and history of various spiritualities, I found the veracity of Christianity to be not only the most holistic, but more importantly, true. There was enormous historical documentation that Jesus Christ did in fact live, teach and die. This wasn’t a myth or fable – this was a person, and one well documented in history.
It’s also worth reminding ourselves that the birth and death of Jesus Christ was so significant that it literally became the inflection point for how we describe time – BC representing the years before Christ, and AD being Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of the Lord.”
Then there were the fruits of the early church – twelve of his students set out sharing the message of love across the world. That message spread like wildfire, even under violent persecution.
My next quandary was this – with the many competing claims within Christianity, who was right, and to what degree? There were many similarities, but some seemed further off the ranch than others.
1/30,000 < 1
I then encountered this equation - 1/30,000 < 1. My math brain lit up. It was put forth by a writer making the claim that Catholicism is the one, universal church created by Jesus himself (Catholic being the Greek word for universal).
The context of the equation was that a single, unified church is greater than 30,000 Christian churches/denominations, each with unique claims to being the one true church. That felt right – Jesus even prayed to God the Father that he wanted all to be one, as he and the father were one. And if God really was love itself, it seemed to me that he would want all to know and accept that love. It called to mind the motto of the Three Musketeers - all for one and one for all.
I'll also admit that in our era of wishy washy relativism, there was something intriguing about an institution that would make so bold claim as to be the one, true church. So I set off to investigate their case.
JESUS INSTITUTES THE CHURCH
First, I had to recognize that Jesus did not come to earth and hand over a book (the Bible.) Instead, he shared his teaching over three years with a set of student disciples, in what is called the Tradition. He also instituted a church, meant to be a unified body of believers who preserved and passed on that Tradition.
In doing so, Jesus specifically called out Peter, one of his twelve student disciples, to lead, saying,
This established the church (not churches), and provided continuity for Christ’s teachings on earth, with his authority entrusted to it, and Peter as its leader. He had turned over the keys to the proverbial house to a mere mortal. Significantly, Jesus had previously called himself, “rock,” and was now renaming Peter, “rock.”
Natural law and all of human history affirms the need for structure and authority. Over and over we see that any organization without a visible head quickly dissolves into anarchy. Jesus knew the Church would need a leader, now known as the pope.
The authority given to Peter, the first pope, and the apostles (those sent by Jesus) as the first bishops, has been passed down by uninterrupted over two centuries in what is called apostolic succession.
Apostolic succession is important because every deacon, priest and bishop of the Catholic Church can trace their ministerial ancestry and genealogy back to Peter, the first pope, and as importantly, can trace their teaching and authority back to Jesus Christ himself.
The Bible was compiled and formalized over 350 years after the death of Jesus Christ based on the Tradition and practices he had passed along to his student disciples. Jesus didn’t bring a handy table of contents telling which books and letters belonged in the Bible and which did not. The way the church determined whether a book or letter belonged in it was by who wrote it (disciple of Jesus or one they taught), and if it fit the Tradition that they had practiced over three centuries.
This point is critical to understand - the Bible came from the church, not the church from the Bible. It is the Church, with it's members as a unified body and Jesus Christ as the head, that is, "the pillar and bulwark (foundation) of truth." And the church - the one, universal church - came from Jesus himself.
THE EARLY CHURCH
My next thought was, “What did the church do in the time right after Jesus's time on earth? Does that early church look anything like the Catholic Church of today?”
I researched and found a group called the early church fathers. These were a collection of apostles (those sent by Jesus), bishops, and theologians who were debating and documenting the beliefs and practices of the fledgling church. A thorough study of these writings demonstrated that their beliefs and practices are nearly identical to those of the Catholic Church today. The early church was, and continues to be, the universal Catholic Church of today.
That universal church was unified as one for nearly 1500 years, until the Protestant Reformation. The term Protestant comes from the word protest, which described those protesting abuses within the church. The abuses were addressed within the Catholic Church in what was termed the Counter Reformation, but the proverbial unified thermometer had been broken.
Because Jesus only instituted one church, the Protestant reformers had to show the Catholic Church was wrong to justify their claim to be the one true church. Most non-Catholic Christians, through no fault of their own, aren’t aware of this history. They only know that what they have learned is that the Catholic Church is wrong in some way, and it is rooted in this initial fracturing and attempted justification.
The outcome was a fragmenting of the one body and church Christ had instituted. Five hundred years and 30,000 denominations later, that initial split figuratively splintered the cross of Christ.
THE NAMED (NOMEN) CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST
How does this tie in to our math problem 1/30,000 < 1? The Protestant word denomination is very telling. The base word, nomen, means “named.” If you think of fractions in math, the denominator is always under the top number, and the resulting fraction is always equal to less than one.
The Catholic Church is the one, whole, named, Church of Jesus Christ. It is the nominal - the named nomen. By their nature, those that split away from the nomen, those that denominate, carry less than the whole - the one, whole church that Christ intended.
Jesus specifically prayed to God the Father that we would be one as a church, as he and the Father were one. With Catholic meaning universal, it was and is meant to be the one Christian home for all. The disunity of the Christian church defies God’s design and will for us, and is frankly a scandal of divine proportion.
That disunity also severely impairs Jesus’s mission for those within the church to bring the whole world home to an awareness of and life in his love. The more fractures that occur, the more muddled the message becomes, and the less effective our outreach is in sharing God’s love for all.
There is enormous power in unity - the power of one. It should be the goal and prayer of all Christians that we would be reunited. It is nothing short of God’s will for us.
Consider the words of Saint Paul, an early convert to Christianity and writer of several letters in the New Testament of the Bible, writing to the church in Galatia,
“For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
We are all one in Christ Jesus - help us to recognize the power of one.