The word church is used twice in the Gospels—once in the sense of an assembly of men to decide a dispute, the other time in connection with the obscure utterance about a stone— Peter, and the gates of hell. From these two passages in which the word church is used, in the signification merely of an assembly, has been deduced all that we now understand by the Church.
But Christ could not have founded the Church, that is, what we now understand by that word. For nothing like the idea of the Church as we know it now, with its sacraments, miracles, and above all its claim to infallibility, is to be found either in Christ's words or in the ideas of the men of that time.
The fact that men called what was formed afterward by the same word as Christ used for something totally different, does not give them the right to assert that Christ founded the one, true Church.
Besides, if Christ had really founded such an institution as the Church for the foundation of all his teaching and the whole faith, he would certainly have described this institution clearly and definitely, and would have given the only true Church, besides tales of miracles, which are used to support every kind of superstition, some tokens so unmistakable that no doubt of its genuineness could ever have arisen. But nothing of the sort was done by him. And there have been and still are different institutions, each calling itself the true Church.
The Catholic catechism says: "L'Èglise est la société des fidéles établie par notre Seigneur Jésus Christ, rédpandue sur toute la terre et soumise à l'authorite' des pasteurs légitimes, principalement notre Saint Père le Pape,"[1] understanding by the words "pasteurs legitimes" an association
- ↑ "The Church is the society of the faithful, established by our Lord Jesus Christ, spread over the whole earth, and subject to the authority of its lawful pastors, and chief of them our Holy Father the Pope."
