This is the great, manifest, historical phenom-

enon which converted me,—to which all particular
inquiries converged: Christianity is not a matter

of opinion, but an external fact, entering into,

carried out in, indivisible from, the history of the

world. It has a bodily occupation of the world;

it is one continuous fact or thing, the same from

first to last, distinct from everything else: to be a

Christian is to partake of, to submit to, this thing;

and the simple question was, Where, what is this

thing in this age, which in the first age was the

Catholic Church? The answer was undeniable;

the Church called Catholic now, is that very same

thing in hereditary descent, in organization, in

principles, in position^ in external relations, which

was called the Catholic Church then; name and

thing have ever gone together, by an uninterrupt-

ed connection and succession, from then till now.

—Newman.



FINDING CHRIST'S CHURCH

WITH A MAP TO SHOW THE WAY

by

John A. O’Brien, ph.d., ll.d.

University of Notre Dame

With a Foreword by

The Most Rev. John F. Noll, D.D.

Bishop of Fort Wayne

Ask, and it shall be given to you : seek and you

shall find: knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7 :

7

AVE MARIA PRESS
Notre Dame, Indiana



NIHIL OBSTAT

Felix D. Duffey, c.s.c.

Censor Deputatus

IMPRIMATUR

Iji Most Rev. John F. Noll, D.D.

Bishop of Fort Wayne

February 28, 1950

All rights reserved. This booklet may not

be reproduced by any means in whole or in

part without permission of the publisher.

Copyright, 1950, AVE MARIA PRESS

Fifth Printing

Revised



FOREWORD

T^HIS is another among many excellent books of in-
“L

struction written by the Reverend John A. O’Brien,

Ph.dv professor of the philosophy of religion at the

University of Notre Dame. It is not to be adjudged

the least of the products of his pen, however, because

of its smaller size. More literature is brought into

every home today than its members take time to read.

Hence books on religious and spiritual subjects have a

better chance of perusal if they present their mes-

sage briefly.

Indeed, the brevity and conciseness with which

Father O’Brien presents a subject of vast importance

will win a greater multitude of readers; for this book

is a capital illustration of the old Latin phrase, multum

in parvo— much in little space. It deserves millions
of readers.

Millions of Americans refrain even from beginning

to investigate Christ’s way of salvation because the

many, who pose as experts in explaining His way,

speak so discordantly. Yet if man has an eternal des-

tiny, God must have provided a sure way of reaching

it. For fifteen centuries all Christians felt convinced

that they knew this way, and that if they were not

treading it, it was their own fault.

Today it is not so. Scarcely twenty-five per cent



of our population would insist that “they know the

truth.” Another twenty-five per cent would maintain

that each person may read into his Guide Book— the
Bible— the way which best satisfies his own inclina-
tions or preferences. The other fifty per cent either

have never striven to learn whether there is a divinely

appointed way of salvation, or they have actually

striven not to find out lest their consciences become

disturbed.

Father O’Brien shows with convincing evidence

that God did establish a way. To enable you to find

that way, the author has mapped it out carefully and

has established sign posts along the way. If you will

follow those signs, you will not be led astray; for you

will be traveling along God’s highway.

The undersigned requests you to study the author’s

maps prayerfully, and assures you in return that “peace

in believing,” which follows compliance with the Cre-

ator’s requirements.

* John F. Noll

Bishop of Fort Wayne



CHAPTER I

CLEARING THE WAY

A LL persons have a goal in life. For some, it is

advancement in their chosen line of work. For

others, it is the building of a happy home, the amass-

ing of riches, the gaining of political influence, the

achieving of social prominence and popularity.

Though these objectives may differ widely, there

is one goal that all people have in common. It is the

salvation of one’s soul, the attainment of everlasting

life, the achievement of the ultimate end for which

every human being has been created by God.

If that end is achieved, life has been a glorious

success
;

if that great goal is not attained, life has been

a tragic failure. The loss is irreparable: no amount

of success in business, in one’s profession, in society

or in politics, can retrieve that failure.

On the other hand, if life’s supreme objective is

attained, no matter how poor one is, or how little suc-

cess he achieved in business, or how little prominence

he gained in society, life is an unqualified success. He

has gained the only victory that really matters: the

saving of his immortal soul.

5



In stating this, the writer is expressing not merely

his private opinion but the truth uttered with such

impressive solemnity by the Divine Master, Jesus

Christ, when He said: “For what shall it profit a man,

if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his

soul?”
1 That is the central truth in the teaching of

Jesus; it is the point of emphasis in every Christian

Church. Differ though they may on other matters,

Christian Churches are all in agreement upon the clear

teaching of Jesus that the saving of one’s soul is more

important than the gaining of the whole world.

A PRACTICAL QUESTION

But you will ask— and rightly: “How is one to
achieve that goal? I am convinced, as are practically

all the people of America . . . and indeed the whole

civilized world . . . that the attainment of everlasting

life with God in heaven is man’s ultimate end and his

supreme goal. But what I want to know is, how can I

reach that goal? What are the means which I am to

use to achieve it? What is the good of emphasizing

the importance of the objective if specific directions

are not given to enable me to attain it?”

You are right; that is the practical question. It is

the question which we now proceed to answer. The

answer which we give is that which Christ gave and

which we unhesitatingly accept; because of its import-

1 Mark 8 : 36 .

6



ance, the question requires a full and detailed reply

which will admit of no misunderstanding.

Before presenting it, may we ask you to follow the

presentation with an open mind and an eye single to

the truths laid down by Christ. If you divest yourself

of all preconceived notions and prejudices and enter

into the discussion with eagerness to learn the truth

and a humble willingness to follow it whithersoever it

may lead you, you will derive the greatest profit. Should

we not all accept the clear teachings of Jesus with the

simplicity, the humility and the docility of a little

child? Listen to the words of Christ:

“And Jesus calling unto him a little child, set him

in the midst of them, and said: Amen I say to you,

unless you be converted, and become as little children,

you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Who-

soever therefore shall humble himself as this little

child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven .
55 2

Such is the model for all who seek to know the

teachings of Christ and the directions which He gave

for the attainment of man’s supreme goal— the king-
dom of heaven. An attitude of open-mindedness, of

humility, of prayerfulness, of child-like docility to the

revealed word of God will bring you the greatest divi-

dends both in time and in eternity.

2 Matt. 18 : 2-4 .

7



KINDNESS AND GOOD WILL

Having asked that from you, we promise in return

that we shall not deviate in our presentation by a

hair's breadth from the clear teachings of the divine

Founder of the Christian faith. On our part we

bring to the discussion a respectful adherence to the

word of God and a heart full of good will and love

for you.

As the writer is a stranger to you, perhaps it may

not be inappropriate to say that he is no narrow-

minded sectarian who thinks that all who believe

otherwise, however honestly, have a one-way ticket

to the nethermost regions. If he were a person of such

a stripe, he would not have been invited to speak on

the Catholic Faith in the leading Protestant Churches

—Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregational,
Disciples of Christ, Lutheran and Episcopalian—of the
community in which he ministered for nearly a quarter

of a century. Neither would he have received from the

Acacia fraternity, composed exclusively of Masons, a

gold Knights of Columbus pin as a token of their ap-

preciation of the influence for friendship and good will

which they esteem he exercised among students and

faculty of all faiths at the University of Illinois campus.

For nearly a quarter of a century the writer taught

University students of all faiths, including ministers

of various Protestant denominations, the philosophy of

8



religion and the basic truths of Christianity and

mingled with all of them in friendly intimacy. He

has spent more than thirty years at the Universities of

Illinois, Oxford, and Notre Dame, engrossed in the

philosophy of religion, whose major task is to supply

a correct answer to the question in the minds of

millions of thoughtful men and women today: What

are the means which God has provided, and which

He wishes me to use, to achieve my eternal salvation?

The writer mentions these facts in an objective

manner, with no thought of vain glory but simply

that you may believe him when he tells you that this

exposition of Christ’s teaching comes to you from a

heart full of friendship and love for you. Now for the

task at hand.

CHRIST'S PLAN

Christ did not fail to provide a safe guide for man

in the quest for eternal life. He did not allow every

individual to sink or swim in accordance with his own

ingenuity in finding out for himself every step of the

path that leads to man’s heavenly home: that would

have meant the loss of the vast majority.

Christ established a definite institution, clothed it

with the power and authority to teach all men His

truths, to sanctify them, and to assist them at every

step of the way in the saving of their souls. That in-

stitution is the Church He founded: the holy, Catho-

9



lie, Apostolic Church, governed by St. Peter and his

successors from the days of Christ down to the present

time. In consequence, Christ wishes, nay commands,

that every child of Adam embrace that faith and

avail himself of the Church’s authoritative teaching

and unerring guidance.

To escape from that central fact of history— the
founding of Christ’s Church— and from the logical
implications inevitably following from it, namely the

simple duty of embracing that divinely established

Church, men have manufactured various excuses,

alibis— the psychologist would call them “rationaliza-
tions” for their non-compliance. These excuses for

non-compliance with a solemn injunction of Jesus

Christ, have taken three forms:

1. All religions are equally good and true; there-

fore, it doesn’t really matter which Church you

choose to attend.

2. Sincerity is what counts with God; believe in

any religion, attend any Church; as long as you are

sincere, you are all right and will be saved.

3. Christ gave us the Bible: we take our own

religion from the Bible; therefore, we need no Church

to guide us in our belief or in our conduct.

Have you not heard one or other or all these

statements? In fact, they are in the very air we breathe

;

10



we hear them on all sides; we think we have encount-

ered them in one form or other a thousand times.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER ..."

Let us now consider the first of these claims: it

doesn’t matter what creed a man believes, what

Church he embraces. First of all, we distinguish

between that proposition as an expression of the emo-

tions and as an assertion of the intellect. As an ex-

pression of the emotions, it is intended to reflect kind-

liness and good will. With that sentiment of friendli-

ness we do not wish to quarrel; it is the kindly

sentiment which is implied in the assertion that has

been chiefly responsible for its wide currency. That,

plus the fact that it ministers to man’s natural in-

dolence and spares him from the painstaking task of

finding out which Church is the true one.

As an expression of the intellect, the claim of the

indifferentist is wholly untenable. Why? Because it

violates the first principles of logic and is in obvious

opposition to the clear teachings of Jesus. It is a

simple dictate of logic and of common sense that con-

tradictory statements cannot both be right: if one is

right, then the other must be wrong. We recognize
this in the affairs of our daily life and would consign

to a sanitarium the individual who reasoned and

acted otherwise.

To illustrate. A teacher takes a piece of white

11



chalk and writes on the blackboard. She asks eight

members of her class. “What is the color of that

writing?” One answers, “purple”; another, “green”;

another, “red”; another “yellow.” Still another re-

plies, “violet”; another, “orange”; another, “black.”

Finally the eighth pupil says: “Why, that’s white . . .

and no mistake about it.”

The teacher loves all of her pupils equally. Let us

suppose she says: “You are all equally correct.” Then

with one hand she clasps the hand of the pupil who

said it was black, and with the other she clasps the

hand of the student who said it was white, and beam-

ing upon each of them, observes: “Both equally right,

my dears!”

What would you think of such a performance?

Would you not say, “The teacher has a big heart all

right, but ... a soft head. She can satisfy her desire

to agree with all of them only at the expense of intel-

lectual suicide. The student who said it was white was

right; all the others were wrong: that is the long and

the short of it.”

CONDEMNED BY TWO COURTS

Now let us apply this line of reasoning to differ-

ences in religious belief. We ask: “Was Christ divine
or was He merely a man?” The Unitarian replies:

“Merely a man.” The Methodist answers: “Christ

was divine.” Can we shake the hands of each and

12



say: “You are both equally correct”? Not without

destroying all possibility of correct human reasoning.

Yet differences similar to the foregoing exist among

all the various creeds and churches. Therefore com-

mon sense demands that we reject the assertion of the

religious indifferentist . . . among other reasons, to

protect the sanity of the human mind. His assertion

stands condemned before the court of human reason.

Religious indifTerentism stands equally condemned

before the bar of divine revelation. On trial for His

life before Caiphas, Jesus gave no countenance to the

claims of the indifferentist. “I adjure Thee by the

living God,” said the high priest, “that Thou tell us if

Thou be Christ the Son of God.” 3

Jesus knew that His life hung upon His answer:

He could escape by denying His divinity; but He never

faltered. Without hesitation, Jesus replied in the

affirmative, saying, “Thou hast said it.” Thus did He

seal His fate and go to His death upon Calvary’s

Cross rather than give a misleading answer.

His command to the Apostles displays equal scorn

for the indifferentist: “Going therefore, teach ye all

nations . . . teaching them to observe all things what-

soever I have commanded you ...” The Apostles

understood clearly that neither they nor the faithful

were to depart one iota from the teachings which

Christ commanded them to impart. St. Paul declares:

3 Matt. 26 : 63 .

13



“But though ... an angel from heaven, preach a gospel

to you besides that which we have preached to you, let

him be anathema .
55 4 Thus do the teachings of Christ

and the Apostles repudiate the claims of the religious

indifferentist.

SINCERITY IS NOT ENOUGH

Let us consider now the second excuse offered for

failing to comply with Christ’s command to believe

His teachings under pain of eternal condemnation.

“He that believeth and is baptized
,

55

said Christ, “shall

be saved: but he that believeth not shall be con-

demned .
55 5

This second theory asserts that as long

as a person is sincere in believing, that is all that

matters: under this pretext the most fantastic and

bizarre doctrines would be justified. Here again we

make a distinction between sincerity as a subjective

quality, an attitude of the mind, and as a substitute

for objective truth and for reasonable efforts to find it.

Sincerity, as a subjective quality, like the senti-

ment of good will and friendliness in the attitude of

the religious indifferentist, is very commonly respected.

But sincerity, like good will, must have eyes; it must

be directed by intelligence; otherwise it will be led

by blind emotion and serve merely to bolster false-

hood. Sincerity, however, as a substitute for objective

4 Gal. 1 : 8 .

5 Mark 16 : 16 .



truth and for reasonable efforts to discover it, in the

sense in which it is used by the religious indifferentist,

is wrong and worthy only of condemnation.

To illustrate. Let us suppose the reader is ill; the

doctor has prescribed some medicine which is in a

glass near the bed. Beside that glass is another filled

with poison, which the nurse uses to disinfect her

hands. She comes into your room at midnight; she

does not know for certain which is the medicine and

which is the poison. Suppose she says to herself: “I

don’t know which is which, but I think this is the

medicine; I’m sincere about it and that is enough.”

Accordingly, she gives you the glass containing the

poison and you get worse at once and are brought to

death’s door.

Would any amount of sincerity on her part excuse

her from the duty of using her intelligence to find out

the truth? Does not sincerity imply the duty of doing

all in one’s power to discover the truth and to act

accordingly? Would you not say that such a nurse is

exceedingly culpable because she failed to make an

effort to discover the objective fact: which glass con-

tained the medicine and which the poison? Without

depreciating the virtue of sincerity, would you not

feel compelled to say: “Sincerity is an admirable

virtue, but it must not be used as a substitute for

truth, nor as an excuse for not making every reason-

able effort to ascertain the truth.”

15



WOULD YOU DO THIS?

If you had a Swiss watch to be repaired, would

you take it to a blacksmith and accept his sincerity

in place of skill to repair it? If you had a legal mat-

ter of great complexity, would you take it to a sincere

carpenter and accept his sincerity in lieu of knowledge

to guide you through the technicalities of the law? If

you were taken critically ill, would you call in a sin-

cere bricklayer and accept his sincerity in place of

medical knowledge to effect your recovery? No, you

would not belittle the virtue of sincerity but you would

say that it must never be used as a substitute for

knowledge nor as an excuse for not making an intelli-

gent effort to secure that knowledge.

Such is the position of the Catholic Church. She

respects sincerity as highly as any other organization

in the world: she merely asks that a person prove his

sincerity by making a careful investigation to dis-

cover which is the Church founded by Christ for the

salvation of all mankind. If a person makes such an in-

vestigation honestly and thoroughly, and at the outset

divests his mind of prejudice, the objective evidence

is so clear and unmistakable that he can scarcely fail

to find the true Church. The entrance of nearly two

million converts to the Catholic Church in the United

States in the 25-year period between 1926 and 14)51

offers abundant evidence of this fact.

16



If, however, because of prejudices which he can-

not eradicate or because of other circumstances beyond

his control, he does not find the true Faith of Christ

but believes in his own creed with sincerity and good

faith, then he is not culpable in the eyes of God.

Here is a case where sincerity is proved through

earnest and reasonable effort to find the objective

truth. In this case, though not a member of the body

of the Church, the individual is united to the soul of

the Church and will be rewarded by God for his

fidelity to the dictates of his conscience: such is the

teaching of the Catholic Church.

CHURCH IS BROAD-MINDED

The broad-mindedness and maternal solicitude of

the Church for the salvation of all mankind are no-

where more strikingly apparent than in this teaching.

No man is guilty in the eyes of God, says the Church,

unless he acts contrary to the light of his own con-

science. All persons who are true to that voice are

regarded as united to the soul of the Church, who is

the Holy Spirit and will be rewarded by God for their

fidelity.

Most non-Catholics express astonishment upon

learning of the Church’s teaching on this subject.

“Why,” they say, “we were under the impression that

your Church teaches that only her own actual mem-

bers can possibly be saved . . . that there is no chance

17



for Protestants and others outside her fold. Your ex-

planation has given us a new insight into the mind of

your Church; certainly nothing could be fairer, more

broad-minded, more reasonable, than the teaching

you have just explained to us.”

Yes, contrary to the impression of many outside her

fold, the Catholic Church is the most broad-minded

—

in the best sense of that term—and the most reason-
able institution in the world. As an organization re-

flecting the mind of Christ and perpetuating His teach-

ings, she would be bound to be the last word in kind-

liness and in reasonableness. Though she opposes every

heresy, as Christ obliges her to do, she loves the heretic

:

though she fights sin with all her power and resource-

fulness, she loves the sinner and never despairs of win-

ning him to a life of virtue and holiness. She holds ajar

the door of salvation for every human being; only he

who acts contrary to the light of his own conscience and

who refuses to investigate if he doubts closes that door

upon himself.

BIBLE ALONE SUFFICIENT?

We come now to the third reason which people
assign for not being members of the Church founded

by Christ to guide and assist them in the attainment

of eternal life : the claim that they have the Bible, get

their religion directly from it, and do not need the

Church to guide them. How often have we heard a

18



non-Catholic friend say: “I’m a Bible Christian. I

get my religion from it without consulting any priest.”

The fact is, however, that not one in a hundred

such persons has any accurate understanding of the

origin of the Bible, particularly of the New Testament

which is of supreme importance for Christians. They

seem to think that the New Testament existed before

the Church and that the latter is its creature, coming

into existence in the centuries following the preaching

of the word of God. To correct the many erroneous

impressions which well-meaning and even devout

people Have on this subject, we have prepared a chart

presenting in outline form the story of how the New

Testament came into being. That chart, The Making

of the New Testament
,

will repay careful study.

Explanation of the Chart: This chart presents in

outline form the essential historical facts about the

origin and formation of the New Testament. In show-

ing how it came into being, the chart shows that it

owes its existence to the Catholic Church, the Mother

of the Bible.

The chart likewise brings into clear relief the fol-

lowing important facts

:

1. The New Testament was written in its entirety
by Catholics.

2. St. Peter, the first Pope of the Catholic

Church, is the author of two of its epistles.

19



CHART I

A.D. 1

33

42

THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Catholic Church — Mother of the Bible

Life

of

Christ

Christ Founds

Catholic Church

PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST
NOTE CAREFULLY

Catholic Church existed before New Testa-

ment . . . was preaching Christ's teachings

for 9 years before a word of the New

Testament was written ... and for 67 years

before it was completed. The Church is not

the child of the Bible, but its mother.

-<42—MATTHEW'S GOSPEL WRITTEN

53

EPISTLES WRITTEN

100
'

New Testament

Not Completed

Until End of

First Century

393—COUNCIL OF HIPPO

New Testament

Not Yet

Formed

397—COUNCIL OF CARTHAGE

Canon or List of

New Testament

Books

Determined

1450—PRINTING INVENTED

New Testament

Not Yet Printed

1552—LUTHER'S TRANSLATION.

First Printed

in 1450

1582—DOUAY-RHEIMS

Douay-Rheims

1611—KING JAMES VERSION
King James

1941—REVISED CATHOLIC EDITION
(U.S.A.)

Revised Catholic

(USA.)

-<-52—MARK'S GOSPEL WRITTEN

-<—63—LUKE'S GOSPEL WRITTEN

<—97—JOHN'S GOSPEL WRITTEN

Catholic Church determined which

books are inspired and are to com-

pose New Testament. Canon first

fixed by Council of Hippo, 393, later

confirmed by Council of Carthage,

397.

626 Catholic editions printed in all

languages, 17 editions in Germany

before Luther's translation; 9 editions

before Luther was born.

English translation — Douay-Rheims
— official Catholic edition — 1582.
Authorized Protestant — King James
— English edition appeared in 1611
— nearly 16 centuries after Christ.
Catholic scholars in U.S.A. bring out

revised edition in 1941.

20



3. The Catholic Church determined the canon

or list of books to constitute the New Testament.

4. The declaration of the Catholic Church that

the books of the New Testament are all inspired by

God constitutes the sole authority for the universal

belief of both Catholics and Protestants in their in-

spired character.

5. The Catholic Church existed before the New

Testament.

6. The Catholic Church is the Mother of the

New Testament.

If she had not scrutinized carefully the writings

of her children, rejecting some and approving others

as worthy of inclusion in the canon of the New Testa-

ment, there would be no New Testament today.

If she had not declared the books composing the

New Testament to be the inspired word of God, we

would not know it.

The only authority which non-Catholics have for

the inspiration of the Scriptures is the authority of

the Catholic Church. If the latter be rejected, there

remain no logical grounds for retention of the cardinal

tenet of all Protestants— the inspired character of
Scripture.

With the possible exception of St. John, none of

the Aposdes ever saw all the writings which now make

up the New Testament.

21



If the Church did not preserve the Bible, shielding

it from the attacks of barbarians, copying it in her

monasteries throughout the long centuries before

printing was invented, the modern world would be

without a Bible.

MOTHER OF THE BIBLE

The chart shows that the Catholic Church, founded

by Jesus Christ, was teaching and preaching the word

of God nine years before a word of the New Testament

was written and for 67 years before it was completed.

The truths enunciated by her Divine Founder were

deep in her heart and fresh in her memory; she was

busily engaged in imparting these orally to mankind.

Christ wrote nothing; neither did He command

the Apostles to write. He commissioned them to teach

His doctrines to all mankind. “Go ye into the whole

world,
55

He said, “and preach the gospel to every

creature.
55

The Apostles fulfilled the command of

Christ by their oral preaching.

Peter, Matthew, John, James and Jude supple-

mented their preaching by writing. It is well to

remember, however, that the Church was a going

concern, a functioning institution, teaching, preaching,

administering the sacraments, saving souls, before the

New Testament ever saw the light of day.

She is not the child of the Bible, as many non-

22



Catholics imagine, but its Mother. She derives neither

her existence nor her teaching authority from the

New Testament; she had both before the New Testa-

ment was born; she secured her being, her teachings,

her authority directly from Jesus Christ.

If all the books of the Bible and all the copies

were blotted out, she would still be in possession of

all the truths of Christ and could still continue to

preach them as she did before a single word of the

New Testament was written. For those truths are

deep in her mind, heart and memory, in her liturgical

and sacramental life, in the traditions, written and

unwritten, which go directly back to Christ.

Great as is our reverence for the Bible, reason and

experience compel us to say that it alone is not a

competent nor a safe guide as to what we are to be-

lieve. A competent guide for the Christian religion
must possess these three qualifications:

1. It must be within the reach of every inquirer

after truth.

2. It must be clear and intelligible to all.

3. It must present all the truths of the Christian

religion.

The Bible, however, possesses none of these.

NOT ACCESSIBLE TO ALL

First, the Scriptures were not accessible to the

primitive Christians. Since the New Testament was

23



not completed till near the end of the first century,

it was obviously not available to those who died be-

fore that time. Neither was it accessible to the Chris-

tians of the first four centuries since the canon or list

of 27 books to comprise the New Testament was not

determined by the Church till 393. Furthermore, it

was not available from the fourth to the fifteenth cen-

tury because the printing press was not invented until

about 1440 and hence it was impossible to provide

each member with a copy. Even at the present time,

as in all previous ages, there are millions who are

unable to read, millions to whom the Bible remains

a sealed Book.

NOT CLEAR TO ALL

Secondly, the Bible is not a clear and intelligible

guide to all. There are many passages in the Bible

which are difficult and obscure, not only to the or-

dinary person but to the highly trained scholar as

well. St. Peter himself tells us that in the Epistles

of St. Paul there are “certain things hard to be un-

derstood, which the unlearned and the unstable

wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their

own destruction.” 6 Consequently, he tells us else-

where “that no prophecy of scripture is made by

private interpretation.”
7

St. Luke narrates in the Acts of the Apostles that

a certain man was riding in his chariot, reading the

6 2 Peter 3 : 16 . 7 Ibid 1 :20 .

24



Book of Isaias. Upon being asked by St. Philip

whether he understood the meaning of the prophecy,

he replied: “How can I understand unless some man

show me?” In these modest words is reflected the

experience of practically all readers of the Bible.

True, in the first years of his separation from the

Church, Luther declared that the Bible could be in-

terpreted by every one, “even by a humble miller’s

maid, nay by a child of nine.” Later on, however,

when the Anabaptists, the Zwinglians and others con-

tradicted his views, the Bible became “a heresy book,”

most obscure and difficult to understand. He lived to

see numerous heretical sects rise up and spread

through Christendom, all claiming to be based upon

the Bible.

Thus, in 1525, he sadly deplored the religious an-

archy to which his own principle of the private inter-

pretation of Scripture had given rise: “There are as

many sects and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow

will have nothing to do with baptism; another denies

the Sacrament; a third believes that there is another

world between this and the Last Day. Some teach

that Christ is not God; some say this, some that.

There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or

fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy

Ghost, and he himself a prophet.” 8

The hundreds of bickering sects all claiming to

8 Grisar, Luther IV 386-407.

25



draw their doctrines from the Bible offer abundant

evidence that the Bible alone is not a clear and a

safe guide.

DOES NOT CONTAIN ALL TEACHINGS

Thirdly, the Bible does not contain all the teach-

ings of the Catholic religion, nor does it formulate

all the duties of its members. Take, for instance, the

matter of Sunday observance, attendance at divine

service, and abstention from unnecessary servile work

on that day. This is a matter upon which our Prot-

estant neighbors have for many years laid great em-

phasis; yet nowhere in the Bible is the Sunday

designated as the Lord’s day; the day mentioned is

the Sabbath, the last day of the week. The early

Church, conscious of her authority to teach in the

name of Christ, deliberately changed the day to Sun-

day: she did this to honor the day on which Christ

rose from the dead and to signify that we are no

longer under the Old Law of the Jews but under the

New Law of Christ.

St. John ends his Gospel by telling us “there are

also many other things which Jesus did which are not

written in this book.” St. Paul emphasizes the im-

portance of holding fast to the teachings transmitted

not only by writing but also by word of mouth:

“Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the tradi-

tions which you have learned, whether by word, or

by our epistle .”
9 From all of which it must be

9 2 Thess. 2:14

26



abundantly clear that the Bible alone is not a safe

and competent guide because it is not now and has

never been accessible to all, because it is not clear

and intelligible to all, and because it does not contain

all the truths of the Christian religion.

MISUSE OF BIBLE

The folly of attempting to make the Bible alone

serve as a guide for each individual in matters of doc-

trine is becoming recognized by an increasingly large

number of Protestants. In the leading Protestant

weekly, The Christian. Century, this folly was pointed

out by the editor, Rev. Charles Clayton Morrison.

Writing on the “Protestant Misuse of the Bible,’
5

he

declares: “Protestantism has put the Bible in the

wrong place. ... It has put it in the place which

Christianity accords to Jesus Christ alone.”

Here is how they came to make so fatal a mistake.

“The reformers,” he continues, “reacting violently

against the Roman Catholic system with the Pope as

its head, were unwisely led to assume that it was

necessary to set up an authority other than Christ

Himself, which would unite Protestantism as Catholi-

cism was united under the Papacy. The Bible, newly

translated into the vernacular, and made available to

the laity by the invention of printing, became this

authority. It was to be the supreme tribunal of

appeal.”

27



Dr. Morrison points out that Luther had hardly

begun his revolt when “the conference of Luther and

Zwingli at Marburg, the intention of which was to

unify the German and Swiss Reformations, broke

down in an unhappy temper over the failure of the

two leaders to agree on the interpretation of a single

Biblical text: ‘This is My Body . 5 From that day on
the misuse of the Bible has vitiated the spirit of

Protestantism, narrowed its vision, preoccupied it with

petty contention, unendingly divided it into sects and

warped the supreme character of the Bible itself .
55 10

Thus at the very birth of Protestantism the poison

of private judgment was injected into the offspring:

a poison which has wrought such woeful dissension,

strife and anarchy within its body ever since.

NEEDS LIVING INTERPRETER

The simple truth is that the Bible, like all dead

letters, calls for a living interpreter. The founding

fathers of our republic did not leave the Constitution

to be interpreted by every individual according to his

whims: that would have spelled speedy destruction

to the unity of the infant republic. They wisely con-

stituted the Supreme Court to be the living, authori-

tative interpreter of the Constitution. When Victor

Berger, a congressman from Milwaukee, was arrested

and brought into court, charged with treasonable

10 The Christian Century, June 5, 1946.

28



utterances during World War I, he pleaded his con-

stitutional right of freedom of speech.

“But,” said the Court in effect, “you are not the

authorized interpreter of that document. The Supreme

Court has decreed that that passage of the Constitution

may never be so construed as to countenance treason

to the government; freedom of speech is always lim-

ited by the duty to refrain from inciting citizens to

rebellion against the government.”

Just as the Supreme Court is the authorized living

interpreter of the Constitution, so the Catholic Church

is the living authoritative interpreter of the Bible. She

has been the preserver and custodian of the Bible

through the centuries, and she interprets it for us in

the name and with the authority of Jesus Christ.

Christ never wrote a word— except in the dust—
never commanded his Apostles or disciples to write;

He taught and commissioned His Apostles to teach

and assured them of His abiding presence with them.

RESTORE UNITY TO CHRISTENDOM

It is evident, therefore, that the Bible alone is not

a competent or safe guide to a correct understanding

of all the teaching of the Christian religion. Discern-

ing leaders within the Protestant denominations, like

the Rev. Charles Clayton Morrison, are coming in

increasing numbers to recognize the woeful misuse

of the Bible of which Protestants have been guilty:

29



the substituting of the Bible for Christ and His living

voice in the Church. That misuse has been chiefly

responsible for the Pandora’s box of many evils which

have afflicted Protestantism from its birth.

That misuse has opened the door to the fatal mis-

conception that each individual, regardless of educa-

tion or lack of it, is able to interpret for himself all

the books of the Bible : that fallacy has brought endless

bickering and strife to Protestantism and has split it

into myriads of warring sects and factions. We point
this out not with glee but with sadness; we hope that

the tragic error will be rectified so that the unity

which prevailed before the religious upheaval of the

sixteenth century may be restored to a distracted

Christendom.

We have now shown the fallacy of the three claims

put forth by well-meaning people to justify themselves

in not becoming members of Christ’s Church. The fal-

lacy of the contention that all religions are equally good

and true, that sincerity is an adequate substitute for

truth and for the effort to discover it, that the Bible

alone is sufficient, has been uncovered so plainly and

so unmistakably that even he who runs can see and

understand. Having removed these misconceptions,

we come now to the question of supreme practical im-

portance, Which Is Christ’s True Church? That is

the question we answer in the following chapter.

30



CHAPTER II

DIVINE ORIGIN OF CATHOLIC CHURCH

T\7HEN after careful consideration one comes to
* realize that it does matter what one believes, he

finds himself confronted with the question: Which is

Christ’s true Church? The answer might be obtained

by finding out which Church possesses the marks of

unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity; for these

are the marks which Christ imprinted upon His

Church to distinguish her from all others. It might

prove somewhat tedious, however, to examine all of

the several hundred Christian denominations to dis-

cover if any one of them possesses all these char-

acteristics.

Besides, there is a shorter way of answering the

query: Which is the true Church? That is by discov-

ering: Which is the Church founded by Jesus Christ?

For, if one can discover a Church founded directly

and immediately by Christ and authorized to teach

in His name, and to which He promised the abiding

presence of the Spirit of Truth, then one can be cer-

tain that if the true Church is to be found anywhere

on the earth, it must be that institution of which

Christ Himself is the Founder.

CHRIST SPEAKS

Turn now to the pages of any reliable history,

whether written by Jew, Protestant, Catholic, or non-

31



believer, and you will find that there is unanimous

agreement among all historians that the Catholic

Church at least was founded by Christ. The evidence

of the Holy Scriptures, considered simply as historical

documents, is too overwhelming to permit any doubt

or quibbling on this point. Let us look at the solemn

words whereby our Divine Saviour founded His church

and then clothed it with the power and authority to

teach all mankind in His name.

The credentials are not confined to one gospel,

but are to be found in all four: the words are simple;

their meaning is unmistakable. It is Christ Himself

who is speaking to the Apostles: “As the Father hath

sent Me, I also send you .
55

1

“All power is given to Me
in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye

all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father,

and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching

them to observe all things whatsoever I have com-

manded you: and behold I am with you all days,

even to the consummation of the world .
55 2

These words constitute the evidence of the

Church’s divinely appointed mission to teach the

truths of Christ to all nations: they constitute the

charter which the Church is to present to every gen-

eration as the imperishable credentials of her delega-

tion as the duly accredited agency to teach in the

name and with the authority of Jesus Christ. That

1 John 20 : 21 . 2 Matt. 28 : 18-20 .

32



the people hearing this divinely authorized teaching

are not to regard themselves as free to accept or re-

ject it, is made likewise clear by our Divine Master:

“Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel

to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized,

shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be

condemned .
55 3

With equal clarity, St. Luke presents this same in-

sistence of Christ on the duty of the faithful to accept

the gospel because of the authority which lies behind

it: “He that heareth you, heareth Me, and he that

despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth

Me, despiseth Him that sent Me .
55 4

CHRIST COMMANDS HIS CHURCH TO TEACH

From these clear words of Christ, it is evident that

our Divine Saviour did not follow the procedure

imagined by many people today— the disinterested
procedure of merely uttering certain religious and

moral truths without establishing any institution to

interpret and to transmit them to future generations.

The idea that Jesus simply enunciated certain truths

and failed to provide any responsible agency for the

transmission of these teachings to all mankind is not

only uncomplimentary to the wisdom of Jesus and to

His solicitude for the salvation of all mankind, but it

also finds no warrant in Holy Scripture. To have

3 Mark 16 : 15-16 . 4 Luke 10 : 16 .

33



placed upon each individual who was to be bom into

the world the task of ferreting out for himself from

the mists of the historic past the precise teachings of

Jesus, and the equally difficult task of interpreting

them with unerring accuracy, would have been a

procedure which would have foredoomed His enter-

prise to certain and inevitable failure.

Indeed, the overwhelming majority of mankind

has neither the time nor the ability to accomplish so

Herculean a task. It is to be remembered that not

only was the printing press not then in existence, but

that even the art of writing was the accomplishment

of few. Furthermore, as has already been pointed out,

there is no evidence that Christ ever wrote a line for

a permanent record, or that He commanded any of

His disciples to write.

On the contrary, His command to the Aposdes

was to preach, to teach, in season and out of season.

This method renders it possible for the teacher to

adapt the presentation of the Master’s teachings to

the varying capacities of his hearers to understand;

it is the only effective method for the transmission of

Christ’s legacy of truth to mankind; it is the proce-

dure, which the Scriptures disclose with unmistakable

clearness, that Christ actually adopted. The impres-

sion so prevalent in non-Catholic circles, that Christ

simply uttered certain truths nineteen centuries ago,

and then allows every individual to sink or swim in

34



accordance with his ability to find out and to interpret

for himself the precise meaning of His teachings,

finds no support in the pages of Holy Writ.

THREE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF HISTORY

Hence it is most important that men and women

nowadays be brought to realize three fundamental

facts of history:

1. Jesus Christ actually founded a Church.

2. He conferred upon that Church the jurisdic-

tion and the power to teach all mankind.

3. The Church which Christ founded and clothed

with such power and authority is the Catholic Church.

From the above historical facts, there follows with

inexorable logic the simple conclusion: The Catholic

Church is the one true Church, established by Jesus

Christ for the salvation of all mankind. Is there any

possible escape from this conclusion? While admit-

ting, as all men must admit, that the Catholic Church

was founded by Jesus Christ, some have sought to

escape from the above conclusion by alleging that the

Catholic Church in the course of ages ceased to teach

the pure truths of Christ, introduced error, and there-

fore is not today to be regarded as the true Church.

But this can be true only if our Saviour broke the

promises He made to His Church when He said:

“And behold I am with you all days, even to the con-

summation of the world,” and “upon this rock I will

35



build my Church and the gates of hell shall not pre-

vail against it .
55

If Christ broke those solemn promises,

then we can confidently affirm that there is not today

anywhere on the face of the earth the true Church

of God.

That Christ did not break His pledge is evident

from the fact that the Catholic Church is the only

institution in Christendom which has come down

through nineteen hundred years teaching the world

today the same deposit of divine truth which she

taught to the Greeks and Romans, the Medes and the

Persians in the first century.

CHRIST HAS FULFILLED HIS PROMISE

The Church has suffered from kings and emperors

from the days of Nero to those of Communist ter-

rorism and persecution in our own. In every land her

children have suffered martyrdom for the Faith; they

have braved the executioner’s sword; they have faced

the wild lions in the Roman arena. They have with-

stood the burning fagots at the martyr’s stake : neither

have they quailed before the firing squads of the

modem day.

The Church has witnessed the despoliation of her

property by Henry VIII and the captivity of her

supreme Pontiff by Napoleon Bonaparte. But she has

not surrendered, either for king or peasant, one single

bit of those divinely revealed truths which Jesus Christ

36



commanded her to proclaim to all the nations of the

world until the crack of doom.

She has withstood the acids of modem unbelief

which have eaten so deeply into the traditional fabrics

of other faiths; she has refused to surrender to the

gilded paganism of the day, and has declined to lower

her ethical standards to suit the demands of a pleas-

ure loving world. She has refused to make compro-

mise with Caesar by surrendering any of her sov-

ereignty in the spiritual domain to the heightened

nationalism and imperialism of the day. She preaches

“Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today; and the same

forever.”
5

This perpetuity of the Church, this sur-

vival through all the ages, without the surrender of

any of her truths, and without ever ceasing to carry

her divine deposit of doctrine to all the nations of the

world, is the blinding evidence that Christ has kept

His promise to be with her all days. The Catholic

Church today is as truly the Church of Christ as when

she first came from the hands of her Divine Founder

nineteen centuries ago in Judea.

THE VOICE OF HISTORY

Chart II, The Voice of History

,

shows at a glance

that the Catholic Church is the only Church in the

world today which traces her origin back to Christ.

It shows that she alone was founded by Christ while

5 Hrt. 15 :8 .

37



CHART

II

—

THE

VOICE

OF

HISTORY
1500



all other churches were established by men. It brings

this into such clear relief that even he who runs may see

that the Catholic Church with Christ for her Founder

and Protector through all the centuries is the one true

Church of Christ on earth.

The vertical lines indicate the centuries of the

Christian era. The horizontal lines represent some of

the larger and more important of the many hundreds

of religious denominations that have risen during the

past nineteen centuries. Those lines indicate the

duration of the various sects by beginning at the re-

spective dates of origin, and ceasing when they dis-

appeared. The width of the line shows the approxi-

mate size of the denomination.

It is to be noted that Protestantism first appears

upon the earth in the sixteenth century, in contrast

to the Catholic Church which had been in existence

at that time for fifteen hundred years, having been

founded by Jesus Christ in Jerusalem in the year

33 A.D.

While the term “Protestantism” had its origin at

the Diet of Spires in Germany in 1529, the first mani-

festation of the movement occurred when Martin

Luther nailed his theses to the doors of the church at

Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. All the other Prot-

estant denominations were started by various human

founders since that time. Contrast the divine origin

39



CHART

III

—

RECENT

HUMAN

ORIGINS

AND

DIVISIONS

OF

PROTESTANTISM

AS

SHOWN

IN

"LIFE"

MAGAZINE

CATHOLIC

CHRISTENDOM



CHART

Rla



CHART

IV

—

CHRIST

OR

LUTHER?

5000

?

1000

'

1500



CHART

V

—

A

GAP

OF

FIFTEEN

CENTURIES



of the Catholic Church with the human origins of all

the Protestant churches.

The comparatively recent origin of Protestant de-

nominations is shown likewise in chart III which was

published in Life magazine. It also portrays the nu-

merous divisions and the utter lack of unity within

Protestantism. Note that the chart brings out that

long before a single Protestant sect saw the light of

day the Catholic Church was carrying on her divinely

appointed mission to mankind. Christendom, as the

chart brings out, was Catholic: for Catholicity and

historical Christianity are identical.

"TIME" SPEAKS OUT

This is the significant truth which Time magazine

brought out in an article on the fragmentization of

Protestantism as shown by the numerous sects compos-

ing the National Council of Churches and illustrated

with a graph, aptly entitled, Christian Chaos. With

chaos characterizing even the Council seeking to pro-

duce some semblance of unity, how, wonders Time, can

anything but confusion result?

“Christendom (meaning
c

all Christians collective-

ly
5

)
is split

55

,
observes Time

,

“into disunited, sometimes

warring, sects and churches, more than 250 in the U. S.

alone. Protestants have lived with Christian fragmen-

tation—and rationalized it with Christian double talk
—for centuries (see chart Ilia). But it has a way of

44



bringing them up short whenever they confront the

concept of ‘The Church
5

. What is the Christian Church

and where is it ?
55

Time continues: “Roman Catholics have a ready

answer. The Church is the Church of Rome, and no

other. Protestants cannot answer the question so

easily. For them The Church can exist on this earth

only as an ideal; its reality is in the future—and in
heaven, where it is formed of ‘the blessed company of

all the faithful people .
5

But this is not a Comfortable

concept to many U. S. Protestants, who, as practical

organization - minded men, would rather have the

Church, like the Kingdom of Heaven, inhabit this

earth.

“How
55

asks Time

,

“to bring that about? Again (if

their tremendous premise is accepted
) ,

it is the Roman

Catholics who have the simple, uncompromising, logi-

cal answer: unconditional surrender to Rome. Let

all who call themselves Christians submit to the author-

ity of the Roman Church, they say, and the unity of

Christendom will thereby be established .
55

The logic

is inexorable and one can escape from that conclusion

only by following the ostrich policy of burying his head

in the sand to avoid unpleasant facts closing in on him

from every side.

Non-Catholics in increasing numbers, Time points

out, are beginning to perceive this. “In the present

45



century”, Time says, “U. S. Protestants have been in-

creasingly unhappy about themselves. Unhappiest of

all were the missionaries, whose work spotlighted the

absurdity of the Christian schism (How can you ask

a Chinese in North China to become a Southern Bap-

tist?).
55

Heartsick at the sight of the 250 bickering sects of

Protestantism destroying every vestige of that unity for

which Christ pleaded so earnestly, the late Bishop Brent

said : “In our hearts most of us are devotees of the cult

of the incomplete—sectarianism. The Christ in one
church often categorically denies the Christ in a

neighboring church. It would be ludicrous were it not

tragic.
55

Yes, the only solution of the problem of a

divided Christendom is for all the sects to return to the

see of Peter, the historic center of Christian unity, the

Mother Church of all Christendom, where they will

find a mother’s hearty welcome, the fullness of divine

revelation, security, peace of mind and unity at last.

Chart IV, Christ or Luther? contrasts the divine

origin of the Catholic Church and the human origin

of Protestantism. It shows that the problem of decid-

ing which is the true Church boils down to the ques-

tion : Whom are you to believe— Martin Luther, the
founder of Protestantism or Jesus Christ, the divine

Founder of the Catholic Church? That is the whole

problem in a nutshell.

46



A GAP OF FIFTEEN CENTURIES

Chart V, A Gap of Fifteen Centuries

,

focuses at-

tention upon the tell-tale gap of fifteen centuries that

yawns between the foundation of Christ’s Church in

33 to the establishment of Lutheranism, the first form

of Protestantism, in 1524. Why is that gap significant?

Because it brings out so clearly and so simply the fact

that a Church which did not see the light of day for

fifteen or more centuries after Christ had ascended

into heaven, cannot possibly claim to have Christ for

its Founder. This even a blind man can see.

The three charts bring out more clearly and more

vividly than a volume of a thousand pages the fol-

lowing important historical facts:

1. The Catholic Church alone has Jesus Christ

for her Founder.

2. She had been carrying on her divinely ap-

pointed work of teaching the religion of Christ to

mankind for fifteen centuries before Protestantism

began.

3. All forms of Protestantism are man-made.

4. They are without any divine sanction or ap-

proval.

5. Loyalty to Christ demands that one abandon

any of these man-made creeds and embrace the re-

ligion founded by Jesus Christ for all mankind.

47



TITLE DEED OF CATHOLIC CHURCH

Table I, The Title Deed of the Catholic Church

,

shows the unbroken list of pontiffs from St. Peter to

today. That is the evidence of history that the Catho-

lic Church speaks to the world today with the author-

ity of Jesus Christ. Why? Because Christ constituted

Peter the visible head of his Church on earth and

clothed his office with supreme and infallible teaching

authority. We know that our present pontiff speaks
to us with that same authority because his title goes

back in unbroken succession to Peter and through

Peter to Christ.

If you were about to purchase a piece of property,

would you not examine the title deed to make sure

that it goes back all the way to the original owner. If

it did not, you would know that the title is worthless.

Why not exercise the same care in your search for the

true Church of Jesus Christ? If you examine the title

deeds of all the Churches calling themselves Christian,

you will find that only one goes back to Peter and to

Christ—the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church, founded
by Christ and governed by Peter and his successors in

an unbroken line down to the present day.

48



Table I

THE SUPREME ROMAN PONTIFFS
St. Peter of Bethsaida in Galilee, Prince of the Apostles, who received from

Jesus Christ the Supreme Pontifical Power to be transmitted to his Successors,

resided first at Antioch, then at Rome for twenty-five years where he was

martyred in the year 64, or 67 of the common reckoning.

END OF PONTIFICATE, A.D.

St. Linus, M
St. Anacletus or Cletus, M.

St. Clement I, M
St. Evaristus, M
St. Alexander I, M
St. Sixtus I, M ....
St. Telesphorus, M
St. Hyginus, M
St. Pius I, M
St. Anicetus, M
St. Soterus, M
St. Eleuterius, M
St. Victor I, M
St. Zephyrinus, M
St. Callistus I, M
St. Urban I, M
St. Pontain, M
St. Anterus, M
St. Fabian, M
St. Cornelius, M
St. Lusius 1, M
St. Stephen I, M
St. Sixtus II, M
St. Dionysius

St. Felix I, M
St. Eutychian, M
St. Caius, M
St. Marcellinus, M
St. Marcellus I, M
St. Eusebius, M
St. Melchiades, M
St. Sylvester, I

St. Mark
St. Julius I

St. Liberius

St. Damasus I

St. Siricius.

St. Anastasius I

St. Innocent I

St. Zozimus

St. Boniface I

St. Celestine I

St. Sixtus III

St. Leo I (the Great)

St. Hilary

St. Simplicius

St. Felix III or II

76

97

105

115

125

136

140

140

166

175

189

199

217

222

230

235

236

250

253

254

257

258

268

274

283

296

304

309

309

314

335

336

352

366

384

399

401

417

418

422

432

440

461

468

483

492

END OF PONTIFICATE, A.D.

St. Gelasius I 496

St. Anastasius II 498

St. Symmacus 514

St. Hormisdas 523

St. John I 526

St. Felix IV or III 530
Boniface TT 432

John II 535

St. Agapitus 536

St. Silverius, M 537
Vigilius 555

Pelagius I 561

John III 574

Benedict I 579

Pelagius II 590

St. Gregory I (the Great) .... 604

Sabinianus 606

Boniface III 607

St. Boniface IV 615
St. Deusdeditus or Adeodatus T"Z 618
Boniface V 625
Honorius I 638

Severinus 640

John IV 642
Theodore I 649

St. Martin I, M 655
St. Eugene I .. 657

St. Vitalian 672

Adeodatus II 676

Donus I 678

St. Agathonus 681

St. Leo II „ 683

St. Benedict II 685

John V 686
Conon 687
St. Sergius I 701

John VI 705
John VII 707

Sisinnius 708

Constantine 715

St. Gregory II 731

St. Gregory III 741

St. Zachary 752

Stephen II 752

Stephen III 757

St. Paul I 767

Stephen IV 772

49



Adrian I

St. Leo III
Stephen V
St. Paschal I

Eugene II

Valentine

Gregory IV
Sergius II

St. Leo IV
Benedict III

St. Nicholas I (the Great)

Adrian II

John VIII

Marinus I

St. Adrian III

Stephen VI
Formosus

Boniface VI
Stephen VII
Romanus
Theodore II

John IX
Benedict IV
Leo V
Sergius III

Anastasius III

Landus

John X

END OF PONTIFICATE, A.D.

795

Leo VI
Stephen VIII ...

John XI ..
Leo VII

Stephen IX
Marinus II

Agapitus II

John XII

Leo Vm
Benedict V
John XIII

Benedict VI
Benedict VII ....

John XIV
John XV
Gregory V
Sylvester II

John XVII
John XVIII .....
Sergius IV
Benedict VIII .

John XIX
Benedict IX
Sylvester III

Benedict IX
Gregory VI
Clement II

Benedict IX
Damasus II
St. Leo IX
Victor II

816

817

824

827

827

844

847

855

858

867

872

882

884

885

891

896

896

897

897

897

900

903

903

911

913

914

928

928

931

935

939

942

946

955

964

965

966

972

974

983

984

996

999

1003

1003

1009

1012

1024

1032

1044

1045

1045

1046

1047

1048

1048

1054

1057

END OF PONTIFICATE, A.D.

Stephen X 1058
Nicholas II 1061

Alexander II ....... 1073

St. Gregory VII ....... 1085
B. Victor VTT ... 1087
B. TTrhan TT 1099

Paschal II ....... 1118

Gelasius II 1119

Callistus II 1124

Honorius II 1130

Innocent II 1143

Celestine II 1144

Lucius II 1145

B. Eugene III 1153
Anastasius IV 1154
Adrian IV 1159
Alexander III 1181

Lucius TTT 1185
TTrhan TTT 1187

Gregory VIII 1187

Clement III 1191

Celestine III 1198

Innocent III ...._ 1216

Honorius III ....... 1227

Gregory IX ... 1241
Celestine IV 1241
Innocent IV 1254
Alexander IV 1261
Urban IV 1264
Clement IV 1268
B. Gregory X 1276
B. Innooent V 1276
Adrian V 1276
John XXI 1277
Nicholas III 1280

Martin IV 1285
Honorius IV 1292
Nicholas IV 1292
St. Celestine V 1296
Boniface VIII 1303

B. Benedict XI 1304
Clement V 1314
John XXII 1334
Benedict XII ....... 1342
Clement VI 1352
Innocent VI 1362
B. Urban V ...... 1370
Gregory XI ......... 1378
Urban VI 1389
Boniface IX 1404
Innocent VII 1406

Gregory XII ....._ 1415
Martin V 1431
Eugene IV 1447
Nicholas V ... ...... 1455
Callistus III ...... 1458

Pin. TT ... 1464

Paul II 1471

Sixtus IV ..... 1484

50



END OF PONTIFICATE, A.D.

Innocent VIII 1492

Alexander VI 1503
p;.,« TIT 1583

Julius II 1513

To„ V 1.V1
Adrian VI 1523
Clement VII 1534

Paul III 1549

Julius in 1555
Marcellus II 1555

Paul IV 1559
p;,.« tv 15fW

St. Pius V 1572
Gregory XIII 1585

Sixtus V ;. 1590
Urban VII 1590

Gregory XIV 1591
Innocent IX 1591
Clement VIII 1605
Ton VT ifir>5

Paul V 1621
Gregory XV 1623
Urban VIII 1644
Innocent X 1655

END OF PONTIFICATE, A.D.

Alexander VII 1667

Clement IX 1669
Clement X 1676
Innocent XI 1689
Alexander VIII 1691

Innocent XII 1700
Clement XI ... 1721
Innocent XIII 1724

Benedict XIII 1730

Clement XII 1740

Benedict XIV 1758
Clement XIII 1769

Clement XIV _ 1774
Pius VI 1799
Pius VII 1823
Leo XII 1829
Pius VIII 1830

Gregory XVI 1846
Pius IX 1878
Leo XIII ..... 1903
Pius X 1914
Benedict XV 1922
Pius XI 1939

51



CHAPTER III

CATHOLIC CHURCH ALONE IS APOSTOLIC

^CONFIRMATION of the all important fact that

the Catholic Church alone was founded by Christ

and governed by His divinely appointed vicars on

earth is proved not only by her unbroken list of pon-

tiffs— the unassailable title deed of her divine origin
— but also by the fact that she alone has retained all
the teachings of Christ. Her doctrinal code today is

that of the Apostolic Church of the first century. This

identity of doctrine and of practice places upon the

Church’s title deed the telltale fingerprints of Christ

and the Apostles.

Those fingerprints show that her doctrines are not

the work of innovators, heresiarchs or so-called re-

formers who, fifteen to nineteen centuries later, sub-

stituted their own private opinions for the ancient

faith of the Aposdes. Those fingerprints stamp the

Church with the seal of divine origin and divine

authorization.

Many doctrines of the Apostolic Church are no

longer found in the creeds of our separated brethren.

We shall cite in parallel columns a few of the basic
teachings of Christ and the Apostles showing the iden-

tity of such doctrines with the Catholic Faith, and the

departure from those truths by Protestant denomina-

tions.

52



Apostolic Church

Jesus and the Apostles

taught that the Holy Eu-

charist contains the Body

and Blood of Christ:

“Take ye, and eat. This

is my body . . . drink

ye all of this, for this

is my blood . . .
”

1

“The chalice of benedic-

tion, which we bless, is

it not the communion of

the blood of Christ? And

the bread, which we

break, is it not the par-

taking of the body of the

Lord?” *

Christ conferred upon the

Apostles the power to for-

give sins: “Whose sins

you shall forgive, they

are forgiven them.” 3 St.

Paul mirrors the faith

of the Apostolic Church

when he writes: “God

hath given to us the

ministry of reconcilia-

tion.” *

Mirroring the faith of

the Apostolic Church, St.

James says: “Is any man
sick among you? Let him

bring in the priests of

the Church, and let them

pray over him anointing

him with oil in the name

of the Lord.” 8

1 Matt

.

26:26-28.

* John 20-23.

Catholic Church

THE HOLY EUCHARIST

The Catholic Church holds

fast to the clear teaching

of Christ and the Apos-

tles that the Holy Eu-

charist contains the Body

and Blood of Jesus under

the appearance of bread

and wine.

POWER OF PARDONING

As the inheritors of the

power and authority of

the Apostles, the bishops

and priests of the Catho-

lic Church exercise the

ministry of reconciliation,

forgiving penitent sinners

in the name of Jesus

Christ.

EXTREME UNCTION

In conformity with the

injunction of St. James,

priests of the Catholic

Church pray over the sick

and anoint them with oil

in the name of the Lord,

thus administering the an-

cient sacrament of Ex-

treme Unction.

2
1 Cor. 10:16.

*11 Cor. 5:18.

Protestant Churches

Protestant Churches, with

the exception of a branch

of the Episcopal Church,

reject the doctrine of the

Real Presence as idol-

atrous. They regard the

partaking of communion

as the receiving of a

mere memorial or sym-

bol of Christ’s Body.

Protestant Churches re-

ject the sacrament of

Confession and deny that

God delegated to man

the power of pardoning

sinners in His name.

No Protestant Church ob-

serves the practice of

anointing the sick, not-

withstanding the clear

injunction of the Apostle.

53

8 James 5:14.



Apostolic Church Catholic Church Protestant Churches

MARRIAGE BOND UNBREAKABLE

Christ taught that the

bond of Christian mar-

riage is unbreakable and

forbade divorce, saying

:

“What therefore God

hath joined together let

no man put asunder.” •

“Whosoever shall put away

his wife and marry an-

other, committeth adultery

against her. And if the

wife shall put away her

husband, and be married

to another, she com-

mitteth adultery.” 7

The Apostles, Peter and

John, confirmed the new-

ly baptized in Samaria.

They “Prayed for them,

that they might receive

the Holy Ghost. For he

was not as yet come upon

any of them; but they

were only baptized in the

name of the Lord Jesus.

Then they laid their

hands upon them, and

they received the Holy

Ghost.” •

Christ made Peter the

head of the Apostles and

conferred upon him the

power of ruling His

Church: “Thou art Peter;

and upon this rock I

will build my Church. . . .

I will give to thee the

keys of the kingdom of

heaven.” • “Confirm thy

brethren.” 10 “Feed my

lambs. . . . Feed my

sheep.” u

In compliance with
Christ’s command, the

Catholic Church pro-
claims the indissoluble

character of Christian

marriage and forbids di-

vorce.

CONFIRMATION

As a successor of the

Apostles, every Catholic

bishop likewise prays over

baptized persons and im-

poses hands upon them in

the sacrament of Con-

firmation through which

they receive the Holy

Ghost.

PRIMACY OF PETER

In conformity with Our

Saviour’s teaching, the

Catholic Church gives the

primacy of honor and of

jurisdiction to Peter and

to his successors.

Protestant denominations

have departed from
Christ’s teaching and

most of them remarry

persons who have been

divorced for the most

trivial reasons.

With the exception of

Episcopalians and some

Lutherans—and even they
do not recognize it as a

sacrament—no Protestant
Church in this country

imposes hands upon the

baptized.

Protestant Churches prac-

tically deny the suprem-

acy of Peter over the

other Apostles and do not

acknowledge the author-

ity of his successors.

7 Mark 10:11-12.
10 Luke 22:32.

54

• Matt . 19:6.
• Matt . 16:18-19.

• Acts 8:15-17.

“ John 21:16-17.



Apostolic Church Catholic Church Protestant Churches

INFALLIBLE TEACHING AUTHORITY

Christ conferred upon

Peter and the other

Apostles the power of

teaching His doctrines

with inerrancy. The Apos-

tles exercised this power,

and the Apostolic Church

recognized and perpetu-

ated it. “When you have

received of us the word

of the hearing of God,

you received it not as the

word of men, but (as it

is indeed) the word of

God.” 12 “It hath seemed

good to the Holy Ghost

and to us,” say the as-

sembled Apostles, “to lay

no further burden upon

you than these necessary

things.” 18 “Though we,

or an angel from heaven,

preach a gospel to you

besides that which we

have preached to you, let

him be anathema.” 14

"Thes. 2:13.

Perpetuating the Faith of

the Apostolic Church, the

Catholic Church alone

proclaims the teachings

of Christ with infallible

authority. United with the

Holy See, her ministers

preach with authority,

and the faithful receive

with implicit confidence

what the Church teaches,

because of the promise of

Christ to be with her “all

days,” protecting her

from error and falsehood.

"Acts 15:28.

No Protestant Church
teaches with infallible

authority or even claims

to possess it. Protestant

ministers proclaim no

authoritative doctrines but

advance their opinions,

reflecting their own in-

terpretation of the Bible.

Their listeners claim the

same right as their min-

isters to interpret the

Scriptures according to

their own private judg-
ment. Hence the confu-

sion and ceaseless differ-

ences among them.

14 Gal. 1:8.

Christ conferred upon His Church the power and

authority not only to teach His doctrines but also to

administer His sacraments. These are the channels

through which the fruits of the Redemption are ap-

plied to the individual soul; they are thus channels

of divine grace. Each sacrament was constituted by

Christ for a particular purpose and each sacrament

imparts a grace which helps to achieve the end for

which it was instituted; this grace is called sacramen-

tal grace. Chart VI shows how the graces and fruits

55



CHART

VI



of the Redemption are applied through each of the

seven sacraments to the soul of the individual.

CEASELESS DIVISION WITHIN PROTESTANTISM

In contrast with the unbroken continuity of the

Catholic Church through nineteen hundred years, pre-

serving her unity of faith inviolate under one supreme

spiritual head, are the various sects which arose in the

course of the centuries and which are conspicuous for

the lateness of their arrival upon the stage of Christen-

dom, for their impermanence and instability, and for

the divisions and disintegrations which have gone

steadily on within their own ranks. The heretical

sects which sprang up in the early centuries, such as

the Novatians, Macedonians, and Pelagians, have dis-

appeared from the earth, leaving only their names and

the memory of their errors to posterity. As the branch

of the tree cut from the trunk is deprived of life-giving

sap, and thus speedily withers and dies, so these sects,

when separated from the Mother Church, were de-

prived of the life-giving graces flowing through her

sacramental veins to all the members of her organic

body and speedily withered and died.

It was the realization of this truth that brought

the gifted scholar, John Henry Newman of Oxford

University, England, into the fold of Christ. While

engaged in his great historical investigation of the

Monophysites and other heretical sects in the early

57



ages, the startling question suddenly burst upon him:

“Am I not after all in the same relative position to the

Church of Christ as the Monophysites of the fifth cen-

tury?
5 5

As he surveyed the innumerable divisions

within Protestantism, the query persisted: “What is

the difference in the position of all the Protestant

sects who cut themselves off from the historic centre

of unity in the sixteenth century and the heretical

sects which did the same in the fifth?
55

The question

gripped him and would not let him rest.

In his classic Apologia Pro Vita Sua he describes

his sudden realization of the analogous position of

Protestants of the sixteenth century and of his own

day to the heretical sects of the fifth century. “There

was an awful similitude
,

55

he writes, “more awful, be-

cause so silent and unimpassioned, between the dead

records of the past and the feverish chronicle of the

present. . . . My stronghold was antiquity; now here,
in the middle of the fifth century, I found as it seemed

to me, Christendom of the sixteenth and nineteenth

centuries reflected. I saw my face in the mirror
,

55

he

adds with horror, “and I was a Monophysite .
55

CARDINAL NEWMAN'S SURRENDER TO TRUTH

The penetrating realization of the implications of

that historical analogy that now loomed up vividly

before him, stubborn and ineradicable, proved to be

the turning point in his life. It was not without a ter-

58



rific struggle that he surrendered. With all the might

of his powerful intellect he struggled valiantly to estab-

lish some logical justification for Anglicanism as a sect

or “branch
55

distinct from Rome. But all his continued

research into the records of history served only to con-

vince him beyond all possibility of doubt that the

Catholic Church alone was founded by Christ, and

that she alone retained in their fullness the teachings

of the Apostles. The conclusion which follows with

irresistible logic, that the Catholic Church is the one

true Church of Christ on earth, brought this gifted

scholar, as it has brought many other brilliant minds

both before and since his day, into the fold of Christ.

In the twentieth century as surely as in the fifth,

when a branch is tom from the trunk of a tree, it

withers and dies. The constant divisions and ceaseless

disintegration which have been taking place within

Protestantism since it separated from the Mother

Church are after all but forms of institutional wither-

ing and creedal death. Not a single one of the found-

ers of a Protestant creed, if he returned to earth today

would recognize either his creed or his progeny.

Table II presents the date, place of origin, and

the names of the founders of the leading Protestant

denominations as recorded by non-Catholic authori-

ties, chiefly the United States Religious Census. Study

that table carefully. It shows that the first form of

Protestantism did not see the light of day until the

59



Table II

DATE. PLACE OF ORIGIN. FOUNDERS OF VARIOUS CHURCHES

Name Year Founders Origin Authority

Catholic 33 Jesus Christ Jerusalem New Testament

Lutheran 1524 Martin Luther Germany S. S. Schmucker in

History of All

Denominations

Episcopalian 1534 Henry VIII England Macaulay and other

English Historians

Presbyterian 1560 John Knox Scotland Religious Bodies : 1936

U. S. Religious Census

Baptist 1600 John Smyth Amsterdam
99

Congregational 1600 Robert Brown England
99

Methodist Episcopal 1739 John and Charles Wesley England
99

United Brethren 1800 Philip Otterbein

and Martin Boehm

Maryland
99

Disciples of Christ 1827 Thomas and Alexander

Campbell

Kentucky
99

Mormon 1830 Joseph Smith New York
99

Salvation Army 1865 William Booth London
99

Christian Science 1879 Mary Baker Eddy Boston
99

Four-Square Gospel 1917 Aimee-Semple McPherson Los Angeles
99

sixteenth century— fifteen hundred years after Christ
had founded the Catholic Church. In 1524, Martin

Luther established the Lutheran Church; ten years

later, Henry VIII set up the Anglican Church in Eng-

land; Amsterdam witnessed the founding of the Bap-

tist Church by John Smyth in 1600; John and Charles

Wesley established the Methodist Episcopal Church in

60



England in 1739. Admittedly all these denominations

are of human origin: all of them rejected one or more

of the fundamental doctrines of historic Christianity

and introduced new tenets of their own devising.

WHOM SHALL WE BELIEVE— CHRIST OR LUTHER?

Whom shall the earnest searcher after truth be-
lieve— Jesus Christ, the Son of God on the one hand,
or Martin Luther, Henry VIII, John Smyth or John

Wesley on the other? The whole question, Which is

the true Church? boils down to the question, Am I to
believe Jesus Christ in preference to Martin Luther,

Henry VIII, John Smyth, or John Wesley? Is not the

authority of Jesus Christ greater than that of any of

these men and of the other human individuals who set

up creeds of their own in contradiction to the plain

teachings of Jesus Christ? If the authority of Jesus

Christ is greater, then there is no escape from the con-

clusion that the Church which He Himself founded

is to be accepted by all men as the one and only true

Church of Christ on earth.

The speed with which these dissenting denomina-

tions split and disintegrated among themselves is evi-

dent from the fact that in America today there are

more than three hundred denominations, all disagree-

ing with one another. Indeed the larger denomina-

tions have undergone a ceaseless division within their

own groups. Thus the last U. S. Religious Census

61



reports no fewer than 20 different divisions

within the Lutheran denomination, no fewer than 17

within the Methodist, and 10 within the Presbyterian

denomination. Within the Baptist Church there are

2 1 different divisions— grim evidence of the internal
dissension that has been ceaselessly at work within

the bosom of Protestantism.

Among the divisions listed in the Baptist church

are: Northern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist

Convention, Negro Baptists, American Baptist Asso-

ciation, Christian Unity Baptist Association, Colored

Primitive Baptists, Duck River and Kindred Associa-

tions of Baptists (Baptists Church of Christ), Free

Will Baptists, General Baptists, General Six Principle

Baptists, Independent Baptist Church of America,

National Baptist Evangelical Life and Soul Saving,

National Assembly of the United States of America,

Primitive Baptists, Regular Baptists, General Associa-

tion of Regular Baptist Churches in the United States

of America, Separate Baptists, Seventh Day Baptists,

Seventh Day Baptists (German 1728), Two-Seed-in-

the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists, United American

Free Will Baptist Church (Colored), United Baptists.

Bewildering as is this multitudinous splitting within

the Baptist denomination, it does not, however, tell

the whole story. There are branches and offshoots

from this denomination, as there are from the other

denominations, wherein the name of the original

62



Church has been sloughed off and in consequence they

are no longer listed as divisions of the same. This fact

is illustrated in the listing of the U. S. Religious

Census of the various religious denominations. Thus

immediately following the list of the previously enu-

merated divisions of the Baptist denomination, there

is listed the following: “Brethren, German Baptist

(dunkers).” Herein it is evident that the German

Baptist Body, commonly known as Dunkers, is offi-

cially listed as Brethren, though it has actually

stemmed from the Baptist parent trunk. This instance

of fission or splitting, with the loss of the parent name,

has occurred times without number in the major

Protestant denominations.

IS THIS "ONE FOLD"?

Is this the “one fold
55

and the “one faith
55

in which

Jesus wished all His followers to be united and for

which He prayed so fervently shortly before His death

upon Calvary’s Cross?

No; on the contrary, it is the confirmation which

the twentieth century offers of the persistence of that

spirit of internal strife and dissension which charac-

terized the activities of the Reformers in the sixteenth

century. That this spirit alarmed even the Reformers

themselves is evident from the following passage in a

letter Calvin wrote to Melanchthon:

“It is of great importance that the divisions which

63



subsist among us should not be known to future ages;

for nothing can be more ridiculous than that we who

have been compelled to make a separation from the

whole world, should have agreed so ill among our-

selves from the beginning of the Reformation.
551

It

is the persistence of this spirit of internal discord and

dissension which split Protestantism into so many

hundred warring sects that recently caused the Rev.

Peter Ainslie, a Disciples of Christ minister at Balti-

more, to characterize this multiplicity of sects as “the

scandal of Christendom.
55

CHRIST FULFILLS HIS PROMISE

Chart VII, The Growth of Churches in the United

States, shows how the Catholic Church has outstripped

all in the marvelous rapidity of her climb to her pres-

ent position of numerical superiority. In 1785 there

were but about 23,000 white Catholics ministered to

by 34 priests, according to Bishop Carroll, the Prefect

Apostolic. They thus constituted considerably less

than one per cent of the population.

From a litde colony of immigrants they have in-

creased by leaps and bounds, until today they consti-

tute by far the largest religious body in the United

States. Their rapid rise to numerical ascendancy in

spite of discrimination, opposition and slander, offers

a striking parallel to the marvelous growth of the

1 Epist. 141 .

64



CHART

VII



early Christians from an impoverished and persecuted

minority to the dominant religious organization in the

Grecian and Roman empires.

VITALITY OF THE CHURCH

The marvelous vitality of the Catholic Church in

our day is shown in Chart VIII. Herein is contrasted

the net gain of the Catholic Church of 1,309,934 with

the net loss of 1,221,377 suffered by 13 principal Protes-

tant denominations in the decade last reported in the

U. S. Federal Census. The denominations are the

Baptist, Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterians, Episco-

palians, Lutherans, Churches of Christ, Christian Ad-

ventists, Churches of the United Brethren, Congrega-

tionalists, Disciples of Christ, Evangelical Reformed,

and Church of the Latter Day Saints.

One of the distinctive marks of the Catholic

Church is her inexhaustible vitality. Though more

than nineteen centuries old, she possesses the vigor of

unending youth. On her head are the snows of myriad

winters, but in her heart is the spirit of eternal spring.

As a result of a life time spent in historical re-

search, Lord Macaulay was profoundly impressed by

the unparalleled vitality of the Catholic Church,

which enabled her to survive the fall of nations and

the wreck of empires, to stand out among all the insti-

tutions of the world as dowered with immortal life.

“The Catholic Church,” he wrote, “is still sending

66



CHART

VIII

Catholic

population,

1951:

29,407,520

as

reported

in

The

Official

Catholic

Directory

1952.

Ed.



forth to the farthest ends of all the world missionaries

as zealous as those which landed in Kent with Augus-

tine and still confronting hostile kings with the same

spirit with which she confronted Attila. Nor do we

see any sign which indicates that the term of her long

dominion is approaching. She saw the commence-

ment of all the governments and of all the ecclesias-

tical establishments which now exist in the world
;
and

we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the

end of them all. . . . And she may still exist in undi-

minished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand

shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on

a broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins

of St. Paul’s.”

Chart IX, The Religious Complexion of the

United States

,

is taken from the U. S. Federal Census

and bears additional witness to the fact that the Cath-

olic Church towers head and shoulders above every

other religious organization in our country. Both these

charts offer abundant evidence that Jesus Christ is

keeping the promise which He made to the Church

in the first century: “And behold I am with you all

days, even to the consummation of the world.”2

The beloved disciple of Christ, St. John, placed

his discerning finger upon the salient reason why the

Catholic Church has withstood the fall of empires and

the invasion of the barbarians which caused even the

2 Matt. 28-20 .

68



CHART IX— THE RELIGIOUS COMPLEXION OF THE
UNITED STATES

69



mighty empire of Rome to collapse
;
why she has with-

stood the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century

which shook Christendom to its very foundation, and

why she is able to withstand today the acids of mod-

ern unbelief and the enervating influence of a gilded

paganism, when back in the first century he exclaimed

with prophetic foresight: “For whatsoever is born of

God, overcometh the world: and this is the victory

which overcometh the world, our faith.” 3 Because

the Catholic Church was founded directly and imme-

diately by Jesus Christ, because He has remained with

her through the ages, protecting her from error, the

Church remains today as she has been throughout the

past nineteen hundred years, the one true Church of

Jesus Christ on earth.

Chart X, The Pull of Truth Upon the Open Mind,

shows the constantly increasing number of converts to

the Catholic Church in the United States. In 1926

converts totalled 35,751; in 1934 they totalled 63,845;

in 1951 they reached the total of 116,839 — making a
grand total for the 25-year period of 1,820,1 14.

Many of the most brilliant minds in America have

thought themselves into the Catholic Church. That

line we trace from Orestes A. Brownson, a profound

philosopher, to Bishop Frederick J. Kinsman, one of

the most scholarly of all Anglican divines, down to

Professor Carlton J. Hayes, the outstanding historian

3 I John, 5:4.

70



CHART

X

—

THE

PULL

OF

TRUTH

UPON

THE

OPEN

MIND

71

*

The

number

of

converts

to

the

Catholic

Church

for

the

year

1949

totalled

119,173.

Ed.



of Columbia University. The reasons which brought

this galaxy of brilliant scholars, as well as the other

1,820,111 converts into the Church, can all, as G. K.

Chesterton pointed out, be reduced to the one reason:

“Catholicism is true
”

“The other day,
55

wrote Professor William Lyon

Phelps, “I read as a piece of news that in fifty years

science will have destroyed religion, so that there will

be nothing left of it except a memory. Meanwhile

conversions to the Roman Catholic Church continue in

such quantity and quality as to excite the attention

of all who are interested in what is called the trend

of modern thought. I recommend to those who won-

der ‘how any intelligent man can become a Roman

Catholic
5

a little book called Restoration
,
written by

Ross
J.

S. Hoffman, a professor of history in New

York University, who tells us how he went from noth-

ing to everything.
55

The noted author, John L. Stoddard, thus sum-

marizes what his conversion has brought to him : “The

Catholic Church has given me order for confusion,

certainty for doubt, sunlight for darkness, substance

for shadow.
55

Therein is reflected the experience of

all converts.

72



CHAPTER IV

CHRIST’S PLAN FOR HIS CHURCH

As Sketched in the Bible

TESUS CHRIST founded the Catholic Church and
^ stamped it with the marks by which it can easily be
distinguished from the sects and creeds started by

men. He is the Architect who specified not only the

general structure of His Church but also its various

parts. The blueprint of Christ’s plan for His Church

is contained in the Bible. Since all Christians recog-

nize the authority of the inspired word of God, it will

be well to present in some detail Christ’s plan for His

Church as outlined in Holy Scripture. This is done

in the following sketch.

CHRIST FOUNDS HIS CHURCH

Christ
Jesus Christ founds His Church in Jerusalem,

A.D. 33, and commissions the Apostles to

spread His teachings to all nations, saying to them:

“All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth.
Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them

in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things

whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am

73



with you all days, even to the consummation of the

world.
55

Matt. 28:18-20.

Appearing to the Apostles in the upper chamber

after His resurrection, Christ thus addressed them:

“As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.
55

John 20:21.

CHRIST APPOINTS PETER

peter
Christ chooses Peter to be chief of the Apostles

and the visible head of His Church on earth,

saying to him:

“Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build

my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail

against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the

kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind

upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and

whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed

also in heaven.
55

Matt. 16:18-19.

After receiving from Peter a threefold profession

of love, Christ commits to him the feeding of His

entire flock, saying:

“Feed my lambs . . . feed my sheep.
55

John 21:

15-17.

Reminding Peter that Satan was conspiring

against all the Apostles, Christ says to Peter:

“But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail

not; and thou

,

being once converted, confirm thy

brethren.
55

Luke 22:32.

74



THE POPE IS PETER'S SUCCESSOR

pope Peter was the first Pope, the first Bishop of

Rome, the first visible head of Christ’s Church.

The successors to the office first held by Peter inherit

all the power and authority which Christ conferred

upon that office. The long line of pontiffs stretching

across nineteen centuries, from Peter to Pius XII now

gloriously reigning, numbers 261 and constitutes the

abstract of the Catholic Church’s title to being the

one, true Church of Jesus Christ on earth.

BISHOPS ARE THE SUCCESSORS OF THE APOSTLES

bishops
Christ assures the Apostles that He will be

with them in their work of teaching all na-

tions unto the end of time, saying to them:

“And behold I am with you all days, even to the

consummation of the world.” Matt. 28:20.

The successors of the Apostles are the bishops,

consecrated by the Apostles to continue their divinely

appointed task of teaching the truths of Christ to all

mankind. The power and authority, which every

bishop in the Catholic Church possesses, have come to

him through a long line of bishops from one of the

Apostles who in turn received such powers from Christ

Himself.

BISHOPS ORDAIN PRIESTS

priests
Priests, commonly called presbyters in the

early centuries, are ordained by bishops to

75



carry on the sacred ministry of preaching, pardoning,

and offering up the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Luke records the action of Paul and Barnabas in

ordaining priests to carry on their work:

“And when they had ordained to them priests in

every church, and had prayed with fasting, they com-

mended them to the Lord, in Whom they believed.”
Acts . 14:22.

THREEFOLD POWER OF PRIESTHOOD

Upon His first priests, Christ confers the threefold

power of the priesthood, namely, to preach with

authority, to forgive sins, to offer the Eucharistic

sacrifice.

Power of Preaching. “Go ye into the whole world,

and preach the gospel to every creature. He that be-

lieveth and is baptized, will be saved: but he that be-

lieveth not shall be condemned.” Mark 16:15-16.

Power of Pardoning. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them;

and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”

John 20:22-23.

‘

Power of Consecrating. After pronouncing the

words of consecration at the Last Supper, thereby

changing the bread and wine into His Body and Blood,

Christ said to His first priests:

“Do this for a commemoration of Me.” Luke

22:19.

76



PRIESTHOOD MUST NOT BE USURPED

Christ says to His first priests at the Last Supper:

“You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you;

and have appointed you, that you should go, and

should bring forth fruit
;
and your fruit should remain

:

that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My

name, He may give it to you.’
5

John 15: 16.

Paul warns against the usurpation of the priestly

office, saying:

“For every high priest taken from among men, is

ordained for men in the things that appertain to God,

that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins. . . .

Neither doth any man take the honor to himself, but

he that is called by God, as Aaron was.
55

Hebrews

5:1-4.

THE MARK OF UNITY

The members of Christ’s Church are all bound

together by the bond of a common faith, are united

in the reception of the same sacraments, and all

acknowledge the authority of their divinely appointed

spiritual leaders, bishops, priests and supreme pontiff.

•“There shall be one fold and one shepherd.” John

10:16.

Paul exhorts the Ephesians to be “careful to keep

the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One

body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope

of your calling. One Lord, one faith and one bap-

tism.” Eph. 4:3-6.

77



Paul sounds a similar note 10 the Galatians,

saying

:

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach

a gospel to you besides that which we have preached

to you, let him be anathema . . . for I give you to un-

derstand, brethren, that the gospel which was

preached by me is not according to man. For neither

did I receive it of man, nor did I learn it; but by the

revelation of Jesus Christ.
55

Gal. 1:8-12.

CHRIST'S MYSTICAL BODY

catholic The members of Christ’s Church are
family members of Christ’s Mystical Body. Thus

Paul says of Christ:

“He is the Head of the body, the Church.” Col.

1:18.

“So we being many are one body in Christ.” Rom.

12:5.

“As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it

abide in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide

in Me.” John 15:4.

THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

conclusion The Catholic Church was founded by

Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, A.D. 33. He

conferred upon it the power to teach all nations all

the truths which He taught, and He assured the

78



Church that He is with it all days even to the consum-

mation of the world. Christ chose Peter as the first

pope. His successors govern with all the power and

authority conferred by Christ upon Peter. The bishops

are the successors of the Apostles, and ordain priests

to carry on the ministry of preaching, pardoning, and

offering up the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The members

of Christ’s Church are members of His Mystical Body,

the prolongation of the Incarnation, sharing through

grace Christ’s divine life. All profess the same faith

and acknowledge the same spiritual authority. Mem-

bership in the Catholic Church, the one true Church

of Jesus Christ on earth, and the observance of its

laws and teachings bring you eternal salvation.

BACK HOME AGAIN!

So much then for the Biblical blueprint of Christ’s

Church. So much for the evidence of the divine founda-

tion of the Catholic Church and for her authority to

teach all mankind in the name of Jesus Christ. Now
the time has come for you to pray and to act. Faith is

a gift of God. It requires not only a turning of the eyes

of the intellect to the light of divine truth but also a

genuflection of the will to God’s decree and plan.

God never turns a deaf ear to the prayer of the

man who on his knees cries out: “Lord, that I may
see !” In response to that moving cry and prayer, God

causes His light to shine and stretches forth a hand to

79



lift him to his feet and to guide him aright. Pray

then fervently and, as St. Paul says, “Pray without

ceasing .
5 ’

1

Do not hesitate to call upon a priest; have him ex-

plain to you in detail the teachings of the Catholic

faith. This he will do gladly and freely; you can be

assured of kindness, understanding, and personal in-

terest. Since it is a matter of supreme importance, do

not delay a single day. Membership in the Church

of Jesus Christ will give you peace of mind and happi-

ness here below, and the faithful observance of her

teachings and commandments will assure you happi-

ness for all eternity.

St. Paul has said : “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,

neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what

things God hath prepared for them that love him .
55 2

1 Thess. 5 : 17 .

2 1 Cor. 2 : 9 .

80



PAMPHLETS
Published by AVE MARIA PRESS

ACHIEVING HAPPINESS IN MARRIAGE—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.

AMERICAN FREEDOM AND PAUL BLANSHARD—Dale Francis

ANSWERING PAUL BLANSHARD—Dale Francis
THE BLASPHEMOUS THING—John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C.
CHILDBIRTH IS NATURAL—Barbara Francis
CHOOSING A PARTNER FOR MARRIAGE—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.

THE CHURCH, THE CONSTITUTION AND EDUCATION—
James A. Corbett

THE CHURCH, THE STATE AND MRS. McCOLLUM—Clarence Manion
CONVERSION OF RUSSIA—Elie and Maria-Jacqueline Denissoff

DEMOCRACY AND LASTING PEACE—Pope Pius XII
FALLING IN LOVE WITH OPEN EYES—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.

FINDING CHRIST—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE NATURAL LAW—Clarence Manion
GOD AND YOU (What Every Atheist Should Know)—

Thomas A. Lahey, C.S.C.

HOW YOU CAN CONVINCE TRUTH SEEKERS—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.
IT’S A WOMAN’S WORLD—

Helen Wi.hey, Eileen Nutting, Mary Mullally

LOVE ENOUGH TO GO AROUND—Oren Arnold
MAKING MARRIAGE STICK—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.
OUR LADY’S WARNING AT FATIMA—Thomas A. Lahey, C.S.C.
PREPARING FOR MARRIAGE—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.
SINGLED OUT—William M. Robinson
SOLVING MY RELIGIOUS PROBLEM—Henry C.F. Staunton
STRATEGY IN COURTSHIP—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.
VOCATIONS CONCERN ALL CATHOLICS—Patrick J. Carroll, C.S.C.
WE THE PEOPLE—Most Rev. John K. Mussio, D.D.
WHY NOT EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL CHILDREN?—

John A. O’Brien, Ph. D
WHY THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL?—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.

10 Cents Each

15 cents for single copy, postpaid

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FINDING CHRIST’S CHURCH—John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE ROSARY— John A. O’Brien, Ph. D.

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FINDING CHRIST

the story of 14 noted converts

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