Why the Catholic Church?

At current count, there are more than 45,000 different denominations of Christianity in the world today. A denomination is a group of people who holds common beliefs and practices when it comes to Jesus. Even within these denominations, people often hold differing ideas and beliefs. When differences in their beliefs become too great the denominations will split into new denominations. We like to think of this as a modern problem that started in the 16th century, but truth be told this started in the earliest days of the church.

We read in the letter to the Corinthians where St. Paul warns of the super apostles. The super apostles were men who went around to the early churches preaching a gospel of their own creation. They often placed their own requirements on the people, like you have to convert to Judaism and be circumcised before you can be a follower of Christ. They often claimed an authority to preach that they had never received. They always tried to take the people’s focus off from those who had the real authority bestowed on them by Jesus, either directly or through the Church. They would follow behind Paul and try to steal away his converts.

"Don’t listen to Paul. He’s not a real apostle. He never knew Jesus in the flesh. Trust me. I followed Jesus during his public ministry." This is something that started in the very beginning of the church and continues to this day.

With so many different denominations how do you know which one is right? How do you know which one to follow?

The devil has done a very good job at getting us all not to ask the question of what is right. Instead, he has us asking what is right for me? Jesus certainly did not intend there to be 45,000 different ways to follow him. The separation of his church has to be one of the most disheartening things for him.

When Martin Luther created his own church, he taught that we are saved through faith alone, by grace alone. This idea of alone has evolved into the modern belief that we no longer need a church. Only a personal relationship with Jesus is necessary. When you separate Jesus from his Church an interesting thing happens. The Jesus you have a personal relationship with starts to resemble less and less of the Jesus from the bible and becomes more and more of a Jesus of your own making. This is the definition of idolatry.

When we look at God, we see a unity of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the perfect family. God created us so that through our baptisms we can be adopted into this perfect family. A family is a group of people who love and care for one another. A family is not me and Jesus alone. The idea that all I need is a personal relationship with Jesus to be saved goes directly against the nature of who God is and is completely the opposite of the two final commands Jesus gave his Disciples before he ascended into heaven, namely love God with all you are and love each other with that same love.

The Trinity is the perfect family. When God created man, he created us to be in a familial relationship with one another. After God made Adam and Eve, he formed them into a natural family with their children. The natural family of father, mother, and children was made to mirror the supernatural family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The family is the primary building block of society. As the family goes, so goes the society. This is why the devil does everything he can to dismantle the family unit. This country used to be centered on the family. We started our journey away from that when we embraced artificial birth control and abortion. We turned from the family structure and centered our attention on the individual. There was a revolt against authority in an attempt to make each individual the sole authority of their lives. If you are the sole authority over your life, God is not. This is the end game of the devil.

Jesus came to bring the Church God created, namely the tribes of Israel, to its fulfillment. When the leaders of the temple rejected Jesus, he still brought the religion of Israel to its fulfillment by creating the catholic church. The catholic church was a sect of Judaism for almost the first 100 years of our existence. We worshiped in the temple and taught in the synagogues. It was only after the complete destruction of the temple in 70 AD that the Catholics began to separate from Judaism.

We believe Jesus created the Church when he made Peter the first Pope. He gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven and said that it was upon the faith of Peter that he built his Church. In Jewish numerology, twelve is a number that signifies governance. Jesus selected the governance of his Church when he selected twelve disciples to have a special place as his inner circle. He told them that all power and authority the Father had given him he gave to the twelve. He had thousands of disciples. Disciple is a word that means student. He only gave his authority to the twelve in order that they could govern and lead his Church in his place.

The Nicene Creed was written centuries ago to help Christians remember the important beliefs of the faith. In the Nicene Creed we identify the four marks of the Church. The four marks of the Church are not characteristics that the Church creates or develops or learns. They are qualities that Jesus Christ shares with his Church through the Holy Spirit. The four marks of the Church are that it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Just as God is one in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so also is the Church one. The founder of the Church is Jesus Christ, who brought us back to God and made us into the family of God. The Church is one in the Holy Spirit, who dwells in those who believe. The Church is not divided into 45,000 different "churches" each believing something different.

The Church is holy because the Church lives in union with Jesus Christ, the source of all holiness. Through the Holy Spirit the Church leads others to holiness. The holiness of the Church is seen in the love that the members of the Church have toward one another and the many sacrifices they make for the sake of the world.

The word catholic comes to us from the Greek καθολικός (katholikos) which means universal. The first recorded time that the Church was referred to as catholic was by St. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, a student of St. John, the beloved Disciple.

“Wherever the Bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of people also be; even as; wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” – St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, AD 107.

What does it mean to be universal to the Church?

“universal /yoo͞″nə-vûr′səl/ - Done, produced, or shared by all members of the class or group under consideration."

When we apply this meaning to the universal Church, we are talking about a church that believes, teaches, and practices the same faith everywhere, for everyone. Using this definition, the only Church that can honestly claim to be the universal Church is the Catholic Church. The tens of thousands of Protestant denominations do not believe, teach, or practice that same things. Their beliefs differ mainly on their individual interpretations of the bible. They are anything but universal. Most, but not all, share the same Sacrament of Baptism and therefore are part of the Body of Christ, but then reject the Church Christ established for one a man who disagreed with the Church established.

Other churches separate themselves by ethnicity or nationality. They are not everywhere for everyone.

The Church traces its tradition directly from the apostles; therefore, the Church is considered apostolic. With the Holy Spirit the Church preserves and continues the teaching of the apostles. The Pope and bishops are the successors of the apostles. We believe that the apostles passed their authority to their successors. We see this in the bible when the eleven get together to replace Judas, who had died. They didn’t add two or three or four new disciples. They only chose one person to take the place of the one who was lost. This was Mattias. We often say that the Twelve were the first bishops of the Church. They were actually proto-bishops, in other words, what existed before the creation of the office of bishop.

The word bishop means overseer. The bishops are the supervisors of the Church. As the early Church grew, the Twelve needed mean to lead, guide, and teach the new churches. They laid hands on, or ordained, men for this purpose. They gave to these men the authority Jesus had given them. Those men did the same for their replacements. This gives us an unbroken line of succession all the way back to the first Twelve Disciples. Every person ordained, from deacon to bishop, is part of this unbroken chain of apostolic succession.

When people like Martin Luther broke from the Church, the apostolic succession ended with them. Martin Luther was a Catholic priest, so he had the supernatural connection to the Twelve. As a priest, he could not ordain a replacement. This is a function reserved to only a bishop. Luther’s apostolic succession ended with him along with all of the authority he had to do things like forgive sins and consecrate the Eucharist. If you go to a Lutheran Sunday service you will see them say and do things that look very similar to our Mass. They believe they are consecrating the host but they have no authority to do so. Apostolic succession is very important to Catholics. Our entire understanding of the faith hinges upon it.

Back to the question of why do I need the Church. When Adam and Eve turned from God they were cast out of the Garden and the gates of heaven were closed to them. When Jesus paid the debit for sin the gates of heaven were re-opened to us and the offer to spend eternity in heaven with God was given to us. The offer of eternal life in heaven comes with a price. We have to chose the love of God over the love of self. The road to heaven is very narrow and the gates of heaven do not allow earthly baggage to pass through. Jesus did not leave us to our own devices to find the way to heaven. If he did no one would ever make it.

Our Catholic faith is the road that guides us to the pearly gates. Jesus gave us the Church to be the light for our steps, to lead the way to him. Without the Church we walk this path blindly and as we do the devil puts every stumbling block in our way. Jesus spent three years teaching his disciples his way. He created the Church and gave the authority to run that Church to the Disciples. The bishops today have the solemn authority to pass on to the faithful all that Jesus taught. They are guided by the Holy Spirit to do this without error. When someone disagrees with an official Church teaching, they don’t disagree with the Church. They disagree with Jesus who is head of the Church.

The first thing the devil ever did was to get Adam and Eve to question God’s authority. “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from the tree? He didn’t mean you’d actually die. He knows if you eat from the tree, you’ll become just like him.” The devil does the same thing in our time when he gets people to reject the authority of the Church. "There is nothing wrong with birth control. Abortion is a good thing. Cohabitation is the way of the world. The Church needs to get with the times."

The Church was a gift to us from Jesus. The Church has the responsibility to teach us the true faith. Our faith is what leads us to heaven. Why would anyone want to reject a gift given to us by God? Yet, that is what a growing percentage of people are doing every day. The largest growing percentage of our population right now refer to themselves as the nones. No, we are not talking about consecrated women who dress like penguins. The nones are those who have no religious affiliation at all. They don’t see the need to belong to any church.

This comes from decades of encouraging people to rebel against proper authority and emphasizing the importance of the individual. "You are the most important person in the world and you have sole authority over your own body. Anything you choose to do for yourself is ok." Of course, these are all lies that the devil uses to separate people from the family of God.

You will hear the Church referred to as the bride of Christ. To use the family as the example, Jesus is the head of the Church, the father. The Church is the mother, his spouse. You may have heard the church referred to as Mother Church. The faithful are the body of the Church, or the children. As with any family, the father is the head of the family and leads the family, the mother nurturer of the family, and the children are to be obedient to the father and the mother.

Those who want a relationship with only Jesus reject both his spouse and his children. They reject the familial relationship we were created to be part of. We are all one big family in heaven so if you reject the family, you reject heaven. Jesus died to save all of us, but he does not save us individually. He saves the entire body and not just its parts.

Jesus said, “If you love me, you will follow my commands.” Like every father, Jesus tells his children to obey their mother. Jesus has given us the Church to pass on to us his teachings and to guide us to eternal life. We are forever lost without this guidance. This is why we need the Church.

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