What Are You Looking For? Part 1: The Nicene Creed

Catholic

Catholic

            To understand the use of the word “Catholic”, we have to go way back in time.  The earliest documents referring to the church as being catholic come from around 110 AD and were written by St. Ignatius.  At his time, the word was taken to mean “universal”.  By the beginning of the third century the phrase “Catholic Church” was in common usage.  It also had acquired a more narrow meaning.  In the third century, and the centuries following, the Catholic Church meant the place where sound doctrine was taught and was free from schism.  It wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation, when there began to be many different Christian Churches that “Catholic Church” began to mean what it does today.

            The fact of the matter is, all Christian churches are, in a way, Catholic.  They all form the universal body of Christ.  They are united in one Baptism, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  However not all churches profess all of the Catholic faith.  But we’re all still family.  “’All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God…And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation.’” (CCC 836)

            As part of the catholic church, the universal church, united in one faith in Christ and one Baptism, we are all given one universal mission.  We are all commanded by Christ to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”  (Matthew 28: 19-20 NABRE)  Sometimes we’ve done a really great job of this.  But not always.

            “On her pilgrimage, the Church has also experienced the ‘discrepancy existing between the message she proclaims and the human weakness of those to whom the Gospel has been entrusted.’  Only by taking the ‘way of penance and renewal’ the ‘narrow way of the cross’ can the People of God extend Christ’s reign.  For ‘just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men.’” (CCC 853)

            All we have to do is look at history to see than every Christian tradition is guilty of not being clear in the message we proclaim to the world.  For a long time we focused so much on the differences existing in the universal church that we forgot about the mission entrusted to us.  A mission first given to the Apostles, then passed on to the universal catholic church, then to the Roman Catholic Church (which up until about 500 years ago was the only church), then to the churches that came out of the Protestant Reformation.  It’s only been fairly recently that dialog has begun to be open between the Protestant Traditions and the Roman Catholic Church.  Which is a shame, because within the Roman Catholic Church is a wealth of writings going back to the earliest days of the Church; writings that provide a window into the church of the early centuries.  Writings that clearly show just what it was that made them so successful in carrying out the Great Commission given to the church by Jesus himself.

            Because we, all of us together, form the universal body of Christ, because we are all united in our love of Christ, our faith in Christ and our Baptism, wouldn’t it be nice if we would all go back and study those early Church Fathers.  Back when the church was one.  When it was universal.  When it was Catholic.