Struans writes of the importance of the Church is passing on ‘tradition’, and indeed as being part of that tradition, which is an active movement of the Spirit and not some ossified set of formulae. In the Creed we speak of ‘One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’, and this, naturally enough has led many to claim that their Church, and their’s alone, is that Church. The Roman Catholic Church recognises the Chalcedonian Orthodox as a ‘valid’ Church; the Orthodox have no Magisterium to return the favour, but as both lifted their mutual anathemata one assumes that the Ecumenical Patriarch (a title which gets some Orthodox irritated) thinks the Roman Church is ‘valid’, even if the Orthodox do not use such terminology. So how are we to proceed, what is it makes a Church ‘catholic’?
Here, one of Jessica’s favourite blogs has something to enlighten us. The Conciliar Anglican ran a post on this the other day which I found most helpful:
… what makes a church truly Christian and truly Catholic is not automatically lost even when churches choose to separate from each other. Palmer even makes the point that errors in doctrine, so long as they do not constitute out and out heresy, are not enough to remove a local church from the Catholic whole. “All errors,” he says, “even in matters of faith, are not heretical.”
So that is part of what makes a Church ‘Catholic’.
As my friend, Servus Fidelis pointed out the other day in a comment on the first of my posts in this series:
For all the ‘contextual’ changes we might see, it seems that all deal with the exterior of the faith and not the interior which is common to everyone throughout the 2000 years. It is why I am more concerned with the interior life of the soul, contemplation, mystical prayer, mental prayer etc.
This fits with something Struans quoted in his essay on theology:
The work of theology is a continuing search for the fullness of the truth of God made known in Jesus Christ. It is not the repetition of traditional doctrines, but a continuous search for the truth to which they point and which they only partly and brokenly express.
So, where Christians conduct that search within their tradition, and within the living tradition of the Christian tradition (which is not confined to any single Church, however much some claim the ‘fullness’ is found there), then progress can be made towards a form of unity which may, in time, proceed from the interior to the exterior.
We see an example of this in the talks between the two main types of Orthodox, and it is no accident that it has often been the monks on both sides who have helped pave the way for talks – a clear example of the Spirit acting on the hearts and the hearts acting on the minds, and finally on the stubborn historical pride of men.
That is not to say that the ‘real’ Church is invisible – it is very visible, as are the scars which mark it. If a Church preaches Christ, and Him crucified and Risen, and Christ as the sole mediator between us and God, as the one road to our salvation, then it is a church which is part of the Christian tradition, and if it adheres to the ancient historic creeds, the same thing follows. ‘Scripture, Sacraments, Creeds, and Episcopacy’ are, Struans has reminded us, the marks of catholicity, and if by the latter one means that a Church has overseers whose office is passed on from their predecessors, then we can argue until the Kingdom comes about who is within a boundary God alone can police effectively.
All Along the Watchtower 
“if it adheres to the ancient historic creeds, the same thing follows. ‘Scripture, Sacraments, Creeds, and Episcopacy’ are, Struans has reminded us, the marks of catholicity,”
The Methodists claim they have Sacraments, Baptism and Communion. So are they Catholic even though they don’t believe in, “The True Presence?” Are they Catholic though believing “Original Sin,” don’t believe that Baptism removes it?
LikeLike
If those four marks are what is necessary, they are indeed part of the universal church. If you want to add further qualifications, you can get to the stage some OCs do where they say you Catholics aren’t Christians, or to the other place some RC’s go where only they are Christians. No one can stop folk believing they are the only ones bound for Heaven – but they may get a surprise when and if they get there 🙂
LikeLike
Just a note to clarify my remarks a bit, Geoffrey. It might be easier to use the all American game of Baseball founded by Abner Doubleday to explain it better.
I certainly don’t want to give an impression that rules and judgments within the Church are useless to the essence that we should all be striving to attain. As in baseball, the rules are to help the players concentrate on the essence: the actual performance of their individual tasks that constitute the game of baseball. Without rules, the chances of these players to perform their best and to do so within the time allotted to them is of great importance. It is also important in the game to have an umpire who is the final arbiter between the various referees appointed.
Likewise, we as Christians don’t want to spend our time during this short life policing every play of a game. We expect the rules to be rigid, the referees to be fair and the umpire to make sometimes, very hard calls: and yes, sometimes they get it wrong. But nevertheless, the game proceeds and order is established which frees those who are seeking to live a spiritual life, perform their best to be able to do so without taking on these tasks themselves. Otherwise, every controversy and every disagreement would end in players taking their bats and gloves and going off to play by themselves or making their own set of rules and creating similar games but with different sets of rules.
When we sign on to play baseball, it is expected that the players are subject to the rules, accept them, abide by them and their effectiveness as a player is judged by their performance within the parameters as set out by the Commission of Baseball for the betterment of the game. That is, in simple way, what proper belief in Tradition, Dogmatic and Moral Theology and a Papacy gives a Church. Are the rules there to hinder or to help? Are the Sacraments there to hinder or to help? We look to the all stars of baseball and find our heroes whose performance was better than the average and are honored by their ability to play the game according to the rules, with the acceptance of the judgments made (whether absolutely correct or not) which were attempts made in good faith (with a few scandalous attempts at controlling the outcome which mar the game thrown in for good measure.
It is why I am so reluctant to give in to radical theological change, moral change and even changes of practice. If they obscure the rules or confuse the rules, then the players are back to working on the exterior framework and it detracts or makes it impossible to work on and to perform as well in regards to the essence. The rules, referees and umpires are there for our benefit and like them or not, are important for the success of a baseball player.
So I prefer to learn of baseball by looking at the greats and to look at the Saints and spiritual equivalent of the all-stars of the game of baseball. They are success stories that speak to our hearts, heads and emotions. The same is true in our faith. I surely hope that a penchant for change is radical in its ‘new’ or ‘more up-to-date’ theology as the changes need be more organic and preserve the essence of what we are trying to accomplish.
Please excuse the long and imperfect analogy: but it was the first one that came to mind. 🙂
LikeLike
No a bad one, but the problem is we can’t all agree on the rules!
The anaology which comes to a Yorkshireman is cricket.
When I were a lad there was one form – the five day match. Then, in the wretched 60s they introduced a one-day game, and more recently something even faster called ’20/20′. To me these are, at best, fast food compared to a gourmet menu, and if I want to be sniffy I’ll say they aren’t cricket at all. Of course, to many, they are. They give them what they want from cricket, and give it them quickly. I like my cricket as I do my meals – long and cultured – but if pushed, I’d admit they are all cricket – even if my form is the original and the best 🙂
LikeLike
Ahh, cricket; the OT version of baseball. 🙂
Baseball is a bit easier since we do not have 3 different types of games. Many changes have slowly and organically changed the game in small degrees but not in its essence. It is, like you said, something where the Tradition of baseball from the beginning, is still recognizable and I doubt Abner Doubleday would have any problem recognizing the game.
LikeLike
That’s why cricket is the better analogy here 🙂
I maintain the oldest is the only real cricket, but would have to concede that the two other forms are more popular and, in many ways, allow the real thing to survive. Not everyone wants to spend 5 days watching 22 men and two bats – can’t understand why not, myself, as it is the ideal way to spend a summer day 🙂
LikeLike
You seem to be the Roman Catholic of cricket fans. 🙂
LikeLike
That’s us Yorkshiremen – over the way in Lancashire they think otherwise – they are heretics 🙂
LikeLike
Indeed so. They should be excommunicated from the game or at the least banished to the cheap seats. 🙂
LikeLike
Aye, well, being Lancashiremen, they’ll go for the cheap seats anyhow 🙂
LikeLike
Fully in agreement with you there Geoffrey.
LikeLike
With you on this one Geoffrey. Test cricket is five day matches, and preferably five of them. There used to be a time when they played continuously until both innings had been played, no matter how long it took.
LikeLike
Yes, it seems not a bad one.
LikeLike
Certainly, Lutherans believe in “Original Sin” yet at least some don’t believe that their Baptism removes it and yet believe in The True Presence.” Are they Catholic?
So it seems no matter which way we turn it all comes back to “Authority.”
LikeLike
Well, I recall Jesus and St Paul saying stuff about needing to believe in Jesus – seems pretty authoritative to me 🙂
LikeLike
Well, there’s this book called the NT, and in it Jesus is revealed to us and from it you can see that he wants us to believe in him to be saved, and all sorts of toehr things. What you can’t see from it is that only people in communion with the Bishop of Rome can be saved. You can see that He wasn’t keen on priestly types who put yokes on the people and argued over the width of their phylacteries. So, I trust in Jesus and his church as defined in this post.
LikeLike
Do try reading. There are four marks of Catholicism, your church is one of a number which possess them.
LikeLike
Orthodox Church.
LikeLike
By whose definition? If you are going to use your own one, then no one is holy. Of course, your own church disagrees with you, as Dominus Iesus shows, but you appear not to mind knowing more than the CDF.
LikeLike
In which case they are holy and have all four marks – and as usual, you are wrong.
LikeLike
Jesus is who the early Church said he was and is.
When we see Him saying you have to follow a huge set of rules set out by priestly types, then you’ll have a point, untill then, you don’t 🙂
LikeLike
I find that when folks descend to ad hominems they hope that others won’t notice they have no argument; you are wrong, I did.
LikeLike
That would be the four times you mention me. We know what Jesus taught, we can read. If you need a man in a frilly nightie to help you, that’s your business – adults manage without them.
LikeLike
That’s my point. You persist in acting as though my church does not exist. You made a choice to join a number if churches seriatim. You are now in the RCC, but hate your Pope. My church guides me, your church guides you. The difference appears to be that you insist only RCCs are Christians. This is patent nonsense which not even your church holds.
By all means go the Pharisee route, argue about phylacteries and rules galore. Me, I stay with the words of Jesus and the Creeds – without the RCC silly addition.
LikeLike
Your church makes many claims, far more than she delivers. Mine claims to help us grow in Christ in prayer and love.
LikeLike
You said no other church possessed the marks of Catholicity, I named one, you defied your own church and its teaching by denying what the CDF concedes to the Orthodox. It is you who is changing the argument.
LikeLike
More Gnosticism from you. The Pope, the CDF, half the world, the bovine people and the mysterious pure Catholic do trine understood only by the elite, which, of course includes you
I prefer Christianity which is understood easily by all who will receive it.
LikeLike
The Gnostics held as you do – that only a few really understood the faith. That was not the teaching of Jesus.
LikeLike
Pure Gnisticism. Salvation is available to all who confess his holy name.
LikeLike
Indeed, and many of those are those arguing about the width of their phylacteries, or the number of candlesticks on what kind of altar situated where. All inessentials, what matters is the heart – and those preoccupied with form miss that.
LikeLike
Obedience to God sometimes involves telling some in power in the Church that they have got things badly wrong.
The Church is God’s, He alone knows its boundaries. What the Church needs is to teach the Faith day in and day out and forget about worldly power and pomp. It needs to serve, not command.
LikeLike
We do well to reserve such displays of obedience for God. Men cannot easily bear such things, it tends to corrupt them.
LikeLike
I agree on the last, but medieval Popes tended the sane way. We owe to no man what we owe to God. But I am all for respect being paid to those who do the Lord’s work.
LikeLike
Leaders do, alas, vary. I hope your Church finds a better Pope soon.
LikeLike
We all confess Christ crucified and risen. The Risen Christ is no longer on the cross.
LikeLike
If you imagine any Christian does not agree, you are wrong. We just don’t need to see him on the cross to be reminded.
LikeLike
Fair enough – but do not judge others.
LikeLike
Who hates The Lord in the Cross?
LikeLike
And what do you, with your deep insight into the hearts of others, draw from that? Bosco draws from Catholics kneeling that they worship statues – you seem determined to mirror his methods.
LikeLike
Lor’, are you sure you are not Bosco? This is his mad reasoning. Because some early Protestants assumed that Catholics were worshipping a man on a cross, they destroyed the cross in the way the iconoclasts did icons – they were anti-idolatry. It never occurred to them, as it has not to you, to ask why they did these things. Tere you all go, assiming you know best, judging others, and paving the way to hell.
LikeLike
I don’t cherry-pick. I know that those who inherited that tradition had a serious disagreement about it during the Iconosclast crisis, and therefore that those who inherited that tradition interpreted it in different ways.
I am convinced, and long have been, by the Iconophile arguments. I understand why the Boscos of this world, always happy to rush to judgement before engaging brain with mouth, think Catholics are worshipping wood and stone – but I do wish they would use the brains God gave them to work out that no Christian worships stone and wood – just as no Christian hates the Cross.
I am a very proper Baptist – we take our line and stick to it 🙂
LikeLike
It is no my word – this is where you keep making adhoms you don’t acknowledge. My Church has a confession of faith – the Nicene Creed shorn of your addition. One of us is faithful to Nicaea, one adds to it. One claims to be the only church, one claims all who confess Nicaea are Christians – the teaching of the early church. You add to the yoke on the people, we follow Christ’s example.
LikeLike
I go by what the Fathers said, you add to them in your journey towards Gnosticism. My authority is that of Christ and the Creed as set forth by the Fathers. You put your faith in secret knowledge, I in Christ, the one and only mediator. If His name is not enough for you, go and put your faith in men. Me and mine will say where I have been these fifty odd years. When you have spent one decade in a church without disagreeing with those set in authority above you, let us know.
LikeLike
And you are your own authority when it comes to deciding that your own CDF and Pope are inadequate. Yet you bang on about me following my own authority. I follow that of my church. Try it for a while yourself.
LikeLike
I hold to the Creed of 381, you add to it. I hold to a church governed by elders and presbyters. You add, we don’t.
LikeLike
It doesn’t, what offends me is its claim that the development of my tradition is heretical. I take a broader and more irenic view than the inquisitor in chief – not, of course, that generations of persecution have actually helped your church. Just left it with an appalling reputation which puts folk off it.
LikeLike
And so say the Orthodox about your own Church.
You all seem to treat tradition and Christianity as though it is dead and needs preserving in aspic. It is alive, the Spiriti moves it, and if your church thinks otherwise, it needs to wake up.
LikeLike
It depends which teaching you are talking about? There is such a lot of it.
LikeLike
Can’t think of anything that is heresy. I think you are wrong about the position of the Pope, and am not keen on the way you and the Orthodox and Anglicans have developed the position of the elder, but I don’t find heresy.
LikeLike
We turned down his application.
Spectacles, etc ….
JCMS
LikeLike
Ah, that was it was it 🙂
LikeLike
I do not say there is no error, I say I see no heresy. I see no heresy – that is wrong belief, in my own church. I see differences of emphases and misunderstandings that male pride has erected into causes of schism (and it is men, not women).
There is nothing in where I am from which I dissent. I cannot see that the RC interpretation of the powers of the Pope is superior to that of the Orthodox. A man should change his church slowly and only when there is either active heresy, or a good reason to go elsewhere. Here I have been for more than fifty years now, and here, unless the Lord decides otherwise, I shall remain.
LikeLike
Peace be with you, my son.
Spectacles, etc …
JCMS
LikeLike
David – yes, it certainly comes back to Authority. My view is that your church claims to have authority that is in the hands of God alone. My view is that when your priests claim that baptism by them washes away original sin, then they’re acting as unauthorised mediators. My view is that when your priests claim that Christ is speaking through them when they say ‘this is my body’, they are again acting as unauthorised mediators. It all comes back to authority and you guys are giving God some outside help which I don’t think he really needs (in the words of the BB King song).
LikeLike
Jock, my point exactly, to claim Catholicity out side the RC there must an agreement on what the word Sacrament means and does. So far at least, the Methodists and Lutherans can’t agree amongst themselves and both are in disagreement with the Catholic Church. Furthermore, I have no idea where you fall on this matter except you disagree with the Catholic Church.
LikeLike
David – there is one set of folk in the NT who bang on in this way – if your church models itself on the Pharisees it takes an odd route. Can you show Jesus agrees with ti?
LikeLike
I was pointing out the limitations of Struans point of view at the end of your blog.
LikeLike
Limiting on the false prestige of the bishop of Rome, yes. : )
S.
LikeLike
OK …. so they’re looking lovingly into each others eyes and holding hands.
Which one is the bride and which one is the groom?
LikeLike
Maybe they’re just about to give each other a Glasgow kiss, eh?
LikeLike
🙂
That’s the debating style at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
LikeLike
Headbutts in frock coats? I like it.
LikeLike
Oh my child Quiav, let them know they arent in the bosom of our beloved catholic pure and white church. The only thing these non catholic heretics like my son Jeff understands is the point of a bayonet. Oh thank you Mary. Let us pray;
Oh mary, queen virgin of heaven, may you bring back our glory days when we dropped these hereitcs in a cauldron of boiling oil. And Mary, may we once again rip their tongues out and leave them to die in squalid jail cells like we used to do. Thank you Mary for the church Christ founded. And Oh Mary, let us light them on fire who dont belong to Christs one true church like we are want to do. Let the world know we are gods true holy apostolic one true universal pure and white church. Anyone who professes otherwise, we will chain their limbs to 4 different horses and tear them asunder to let them know that the catholic church is the one true church that Christ founded. Thank you Mary for St Bartholomews Day
LikeLike
…. Amen!
LikeLike
Oh my children, why is our beloved Holy Father holding that nasty heretics hands and smiling? The Holy Father should be stomping the tea and crumpets out of that hell bound heretic. Oh Mary, whats this world coming to
LikeLike
Bosco simply parrots you.
LikeLike
He parrots the attitude you have adopted.
You made a choice, but not even your Pope and your CDF meet your approval. You seem to need a church which agrees with you.
LikeLike
Oh the pain. My own mentor calling me a heretic. Oh the pain.
Mary, why arent you doing something about this? Dont just sit there on your cloud playing that darned harp.
LikeLike
Bosco my child – peace be with you. He didn’t write ‘a heretic’; he wrote ‘an heretic’ and presumably the ‘h’ is silent. Best not to go down there and ask what he means. Anyway, we’re watching him and we have the toasting forks ready.
Spectacles, etc ….
JCMS
LikeLike
Peace be with you, my child.
Spectacles, etc ….
JCMS
LikeLike
Bosco, my child – haven’t you heard? They’re getting married in the morning – and that’s no way to talk about the bride.
LikeLike
Oh Carinal Jock, i didnt know. Is our beloved catholic church allowing the clergy to get married now? They make a lovely couple. I have but one question Cardinal….who gets the cigar? Go in peace Cardinal.
LikeLike