Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Here is the issue. Has Christ established, besides the Scriptures, any other agency, or authority, to preserve, explain, and propagate His doctrines? We propose that He has; that there is a way, by which divinely revealed doctrine is propagated and preserved in its integrity. This is the Magisterium: the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.
During the days of Christ and his apostles the Christian Church exercised a powerful influence upon the civilization of that period. There was the conversion of unbelievers, an improvement in morals, and the betterment of the social status of women and slaves, all due in great measure to the miracles performed and by the intercession of the Holy Spirit. Without this divine intervention, the Christian religion could not have secured a foothold in a world conquered by pagan philosophies and idolatry. Unaided by the extraordinary works performed by Jesus and His disciples, Christianity could not have survived the crucifixion of the Son of Man. Unassisted by the Holy Spirit, the Church which Christ founded would have been summarily swept from the earth by the multitudes of idolaters who were in the midst of them and sought their lives. Even with these supernatural advantages, the earlier generations of Christians were many times apparently on the verge of extermination. They were often pursued to mountains, caves, and desolate places to escape massacre at the hands of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and pagans. These persecutions were to continue until the time of Constantine; under whose wise reign Christianity was allowed to endure and Christians were protected.
Constantine (c. 280-337 A.D.) was the son of Constantius Chlorus who, upon the retirement of Diocletion, was the first Caesar of the West. Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, was remarkable for her virtues. After his father’s death in 306 A.D. Constantine became Western Ceasar and them emperor of the West. He ruled Spain, Britain and Gaul, was commander of the Rhine, and gained the reputation of being a generous ruler and capable soldier. In 312, Maxentius, a contender for the throne, threatened Constantine. Outnumbered 5 to 1, Constantine marched into Italy and challenged Maxentius’s forces at the Milivian Bridge outside Rome. Constantine won the day and Maxentius drowned in the Tiber.
The great Christian historian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was a personal friend of Constantine, relates that the emperor had his resolve strengthened by a vision in the sky, showing the cross of Christ surrounded by light, with this inscription: “Under this sign you shall conquer.” Accordingly, the sign was carried on the standards of Constantine’s army and on the shields of his soldiers, though most of them were pagans. Believing that his victory was due to the protection of Christ, Constantine granted toleration and favor to the Christians by issuing the Edict of Milan (313). This decree marked the end of the Christian persecutions and “brought the Church out of the catacombs.” Great churches were built in Rome, and the imperial city of Constantinople was a Christian center. He was baptized by Eusebius only a few days before his death, on May 22, 337.
The Christian Church has undoubtedly been the most powerful and significant agent of both ancient and modern civilization. During the first centuries, the Church existed in the midst of an advanced state of material civilization. Poetry, oratory, philosophy, painting, sculpture, architecture, and whatever was calculated to please the senses were all in a very high state of development. But, morally and socially, the world was enveloped in the darkness of paganism and pharisaical superstition. There was pagan cruelty, intolerance, and a public sentiment, which held man on the same level as the wild beast in the arenas. There was little appreciation for individual human dignity or moral excellence. The dominant object of the people of Jewish and pagan Rome and Greece, during the first three centuries of the Christian era, was to please, excite and gratify their senses. Whatever stood in the way of sensual gratification was swept aside. On one occasion, after a Roman victory, the inhuman spectacles of the arena were kept up for a period of twenty-three days at the cost of more than six thousand human lives.
The state was father, master, and the only fount of glory and honor. In place of personal pride, ambition, respect and honor, individuality was absorbed in national power and greatness. Inspired by these general sentiments, the Roman citizen was an object of unmitigated selfishness and unbridled sensuality, unrestrained by any appreciation of the dignity of man or of simple justice, humanity or moral sense.
It was to reform, convert and save such a world that God became incarnate upon the earth. It was in the midst of these pagan and Jewish wolves that the Lamb of God first began his holy mission. As his disciples and their successors struggled during the first three hundred years, they preached and prayed and adored the living God, in the midst of the cruelest persecutions, with pagan swords continually at their throats, often sealing their faith with their blood. While Christ and his apostles preached brotherly love, charity, mercy, forbearance and forgiveness, the idolatrous and bloodthirsty emperor Tiberius and his men were slaughtering their enemies and friends of the republic by the thousands, to gratify their desire for revenge and bloodshed. It has been estimated that as many as one million Christian men, women, and children perished in martyrdom during this period.
In such a society, it required the continual presence and influence of the Almighty to introduce and establish the religion of Christ. Opposed as it was to the entire social, moral and religious system of the age, clashing with the prejudices, the selfishness, the licentious, and the pride of the people, it was resisted with deadly hostility at every step. Jesus, the apostles, and their successors were regarded as personal enemies. They had come to overthrow their cherished philosophies and superstitions and to disorganize and change the entire moral, social and religious condition, and to substitute the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It was not strange, therefore, that these men thirsted for the blood of Christ and his followers. It was not strange that the Church was moistened with the blood of Christian martyrs during the first centuries of the Christian era. Mere human agency could not have sustained and preserved the Christian religion until the conversion of Constantine. The elements of opposition were numerous, powerful and deeply rooted in the perverted and vicious hearts of the people. Without the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit there would not have been any hope of successful introduction and establishment of Christianity. This same blessed influence has remained with the same Church, sustained it, nourished it, and blessed it up to the present moment. While false teachers and false prophets abound, the Catholic Church has ever remained where Jesus her founder planted her, upon the rock of truth, indestructible, immutable and permanent.
Jesus left behind a visible Church, with consecrated bishops, possessing authority to teach and preach a set form of doctrine, such as faith, repentance, baptism and obedience to the commandments. He actually designated a “prime-minister” to this divinely instituted ecclesiastical organization, in the person of Peter, who was to preside over the other officers of the Church and to see to it that, her disciplines and doctrines were faithfully obeyed. No one should deny that the chief mission of Christ was to instruct mankind in a set form of doctrine and to found a visible organization or church, with bishops, priests, and deacons to teach and perpetuate this doctrine. No one will testify that Christ failed in this endeavor. It would be unreasonable to suppose that God would establish his Church, his bishops and priests, and a settled and positive code of principles and ceremonies during his stay on earth, and on his departure, allow this organization to become extinct for three centuries.
“‘As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”[1] St. Paul, following the example of Christ, ordained Timothy and Titus and sent them away to teach, and to ordain others, charging them as follows: “Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.”[2] “And what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”[3]
“This is why I left you in Crete, that you might amend what was defective, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you…”[4]
From this first quotation it is evident that Christ consecrated his apostles, endowed them with the Holy Spirit, conferred upon them the power of binding and loosing from sin, and then he sent them as his special representatives to teach and practice the doctrines, which they received from him, and which he received from the Father. Here then, was an organized body of men, divinely appointed and ordained to sustain the Church. From the declarations of St. Paul and other apostles, it is clear that Christ instructed them and their successors to perpetuate this ecclesiastical organization, in order that his Church might be ever visible, immutable, and operative. St. Paul wrote: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.”[5]
Christ became incarnate for the express purpose of teaching mankind his holy truths and preserving and transmitting them to future generations through an organized Church. His love for this Church was so great that he willingly suffered and died for it. It is inconceivable that he would have allowed the Church to become corrupt or disappear. The Christian Church, its institutions, its popes, and its authority have existed uninterruptedly since the days of the apostles. “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”[6]
“You did not choose me, but I choose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”[7]
On one occasion when Christ was addressing the multitude, he distinctly recognized the superior functions of his apostles. “Then the disciples came and said to him, ‘Why do you speak in parables?’ And he answered them, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.’”[8]
The fact that the first bishops and priests of the Church did not worship in temples and exercise the authority and functions of the priesthood openly and publicly may account for the hasty inference that no ecclesiastical organization or priesthood existed for the first three centuries of the Church. The bishops and priests of the first three centuries had to preach, teach, practice their religion and preserve the Scriptures in dark catacombs, caves, and secluded forests. For the most part they had to meet by stealth and at the risk of their lives. Pagan spies were at every door, watching the coming and going of every suspected Christian, reporting every suspicious word. In this manner, the Coliseum was furnished with an abundance of victims. Was it to be expected that under these circumstances that bishops and priests would expose themselves to martyrdom unnecessarily?
Did Christ found his Church upon a rock and give the keys of the kingdom to Peter without any set form of doctrine, rules of discipline or body to exercise pastoral authority over the faithful? If not, it would have been probable that the organization would have ceased to exist. The first Christians composed but a small portion of the population, were obscure, poor, despised and persecuted. Any exhibition of Christian faith or any conversion to it was punishable by death. The very fact that the Church has survived, notwithstanding the vast powers, which were arrayed against her under Tiberius, Nero, Claudius, Caligula, etc., proves not only a continuous Church organization, but also the ever-sustaining presence of God.
In organizing this Church, Christ did not design that his doctrines and sacred truths should be submitted to the people for discussion, for criticism or for private interpretation. He did not grant the liberty to alter and amend, or reject them as ignorance, prejudice or whim might dictate. He did not submit his doctrines to the judgments or criticisms of the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and lawyers of Jerusalem, or to the learned governors of Rome. He never sanctioned what would now be termed as “freedom of conscience “and” private interpretation, but demanded unconditional faith and obedience in his teaching and in the teachings of his apostles. He announced a fixed code of religious principles and observances, directly opposed to the opinions and practices of the entire civilized world. He appointed and consecrated a special class of men as his agents, representatives and ambassadors, to teach, practice and perpetuate them. They were to teach, among other things, the necessity of faith in him and in all his words and works, however repugnant or confusing to human reason. He did not give his priesthood the discretion to submit these precepts to the fallible judgments of their hearers, with permission to accept or reject in part. They were commanded to simply declare the law and the necessity of receiving it without reservation or discussion. If these doctrines had been submitted to the illiterate, the depraved or the skeptical public, during the early and middle centuries, not a vestige of the religion would have survived for us. A universal skepticism would have pervaded the world. This is evident from the actual results of modern Protestantism.
[1] Matt. 20:22-23.
[2] 2 Tim. 1:6.
[3] 2 Tim. 2:2.
[4] Titus 1:5.
[5] 2 Cor. 5:18-20.
[6] Eph. 5:25-27.
[7] John 15:16.
[8] Matt. 13:10-11.