The Catholic Church: a reflection Father John Leies

On Pentecost Sunday we celebrated not only the feast of the Holy Spirit but also the birthday of the church. Jesus had chosen 12 men, instructed them for three years, put one of them, Peter, in charge, and then had them wait for the coming of the Spirit in the upper room. After the Pentecostal anointing, the apostles went out and preached with bold proclamation. And the church was born. Everywhere they went, the disciples formed communities of followers of Jesus, consecrated bishops, priests and deacons to assure the continuity of these communities, and continued the bold proclamation.

But there were those who wanted to destroy the church. The Jewish leaders tried — and they failed. The Roman emperors tried for three centuries — and they failed. Julian the Apostate Emperor died, so legend says, murmuring “Galilean, you have won, you have won.” In the 16th and 17th centuries, English rulers promised that they would eradicate the “papist religion” from Britain.

Today, there are more Catholics in churches on any Sunday than Anglicans. In the 18th century, Voltaire, leader of the French Encylopedists, railed against the church: “Crush the infamous thing.” The revolutionaries thought they had. Yet within the 50 years after the French Revolution, more active religious orders arose in France than in any other comparable period in church history.

Thirty-five years ago I read in a St. Louis paper a citation from an Italian journal: “Unless it changes, the church in the United States will be annihilated in 20 years.” That would have been 1992. And we are still here. There were problems.

And later we learned of the most serious scandal ever in the history of the American church, that of clerical sexual abuses. Yet the visit of Pope Benedict to the United States last month indicated a new hope and a new strength for the Catholic Church here.

Enemies of the church have always tried to destroy it. But they always fail. In the early 20th century, the dissenting scholar Alfred Loisy remarked with bitter sarcasm: Jesus preached the Kingdom of God, and what he got was a church! But that, of course, is not the Catholic view. We as Catholics believe what St. Augustine wrote: “Whoever does not have the church as mother, will not have God as father.”

The church is the bark of Peter, the mystical Body of Christ, the bride of the Holy Spirit. It is God’s will for us. Through the church, we have the Scriptures and their authentic explanation; the sacraments, all seven of God’s channels of grace, willed by Jesus to help us on our way to heaven; and the examples of lived holiness — such as John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Padre Pio, Thérèse of Lisieux and many, many others.

At the end of April, the Medical Commission of the Congregation for Saints declared the authenticity of a miracle due to the intercession of John Henry Newman.

An American deacon by the name of Jack Sullivan from Marshfield, Mass., was cured of a serious spinal cord injury. There is no natural explanation for the cure. This opens the door to the beatification of Cardinal Newman, a man who deeply loved the church.

Newman was the foremost intellectual of England in the first part of the 19th century — an Oxford don, a brilliant scholar, an historian and researcher, a leader of the Oxford Movement of the Anglican Church. His printed tracts were purchased in the streets and read at table in English homes. People flocked to hear his sermons at his parish church. He read them word for word but their profundity and the expression of the ideas in the most beautiful prose of the century captivated his hearers.

But Newman had doubts. He realized that his “Three Branch Theory,” i.e., that the church of Jesus was divided into three separate but equal branches — Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican — did not really reflect the prayer of the Lord — “That they all may be one.” In 1845, he entered the Catholic Church. He lost his privileged place in English social, political and ecclesial life; he was ostracized by even his closest friends. But Newman
recognized that he had found the pearl of great price. He rejoiced in the authentic Eucharist, all the sacraments, the unity with Peter. He once remarked how wonderful it was that he could visit the most magnificent Catholic cathedral or the poorest Catholic country church and find in each the Eucharist Lord.

So we celebrated the birthday of the church on Pentecost. And we were reminded that the church is for us our home.

Father John A. Leies, SM, STD, is president emeritus of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and was formerly the dean of the Theology Department there.