The Four Marks of the Church | Ronald A. Knox | From The
Hidden Stream: Mysteries of the Christian Faith
When we have come to the conclusion that our Lord founded a Church, we have
still to ask a further question, Which Church? That need not surprise or scandalize
us; it's the good things in the world, not the bad things, that produce a crop
of imitations--people imitate Keats, they don't imitate Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
This good wine that Christ has given us-it is only natural, in an imperfect
world, that there should be some confusion about the labels. In order to keep
our heads, when we start out to look for the true Church, we remember that in the
Credo at Mass it is qualified by
four distinguishing marks, "I believe in one, holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church." Those four marks must be present in the body we are
looking for. And this is worth observing; we must be content if we find that
they are there at all, we must not expect, necessarily, to find them in an
eminent degree. That is a common experience when you are dealing with
definitions. The usual definition of Man is that he is a reasoning animal; he
is Homo Sapiens. And that is
true, you see, even of lunatics; they reason, in fact they often reason with
great acuteness, like the mad don who thought the don underneath was trying to shoot
him through the floor, and consequently always sat on the table until at last
he grew to believe that he was a tea-pot. At the same time, when you reflect on
this definition of man, and realize that sapience is his characteristic
quality, it makes you examine your conscience a bit, and wonder whether, having
matriculated at a University, you ought not to trying to become a little more
sapient. And so it is, as I shall try to point out, with these four marks of
the Church. They show us what it is, and at the same time they encourage us, our
small way, to try and make it rather more so.
Read the entire excerpt...
Comments