The Indefectibility of the Church By Anthony Gonzales

[Joe]

http://www.roman-catholic.com/Roman/Articles/The%20Indefectibilty%20of%20the%20Church.htm

The Indefectibility of the Church

By

Anthony Gonzales

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1917 gives the following definition of
the Church's indefectibility:

"By this term is signified, not merely that the Church will persist to
the end of time, but further, that it will be preserved unimpaired in
its essential characteristics. The Church can never undergo any
constitutional change, which will make it, as a social organism,
something different from what it was originally. It can never become
corrupt in faith or in morals; nor can it ever lose the Apostolic
hierarchy, or the sacraments through which Christ communicates grace
to men."



The fact is that when Our Lord Jesus Christ established His Church
upon Peter He did so with the express intention of establishing the
means of salvation for all men, in every place and at all times. This
is the only ark of salvation outside of which no one can be saved.
Jesus would never have established a Church in futility knowing that
it would be corrupted and changed from His infinite intention. This,
of course, makes sense and is logical given the fact that Jesus is
God, the Second Person of the Trinity and therefore knows exactly what
He is doing. God does not create anything to have it destroyed by
either man or hell. Christ established His Church as the source of
salvation for every generation. He merited, by His passion, death and
resurrection the graces necessary for the continual protection of what
He established.



We must always remember that the Church is the "Pillar and Bulwark of
Truth", the Bride of Christ, the Kingdom of God, the very mystical
Body of Christ. Would Christ allow his bride to be destroyed? Would
God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity establish a kingdom only
to allow it to be essentially changed from His original intention by
sin, man, angel or anything else? It doesn't take a brain surgeon to
realize that Jesus will ultimately protect His Holy Bride the Church
and will guarantee her stability for every generation.



In the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18 Jesus gives Peter
the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus tells Peter that the Church
built upon him will endure "the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it." At the end of this same gospel St. Matthew reports the
last words of Jesus before he ascended into heaven. Jesus
commissions the Apostles by saying, "All power in heaven and on earth
has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded
you; and behold, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of
the world." (Mt. 28:18)



When the Angel Gabriel came to Mary he told her that her Son would
also be the Son of the Most High God and that "He shall reign in the
House of Jacob forever." (Luke 1:32) There are hundreds of such
passages. The Church is what Jesus came and died for. Would He have
done so in vain? It is ridiculous to even think that God would do
anything in vain.



All that having been said there are a vast number of Protestant sects,
such as, the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists and Evangelicals; and
cults such as the Mormons and the Jehovah Witnesses who believe that
after the death of the last Apostle the Church was completely
corrupted. The Modernists believe that dogmas and morals evolve and
therefore never remain the same. This, of course, flies directly in
the face of Christ's promise to Peter and the Apostles. The point is
that all those who are not united to the Church that Jesus founded
upon Peter have some kind of excuse for not being a part of it. They
all claim that either after the death of the last Apostle or sometime
thereafter the Primitive Church fell victim to error, which ultimately
turned it completely away from God's original intention. Now some of
these Protestants, realizing that saying this means that Jesus was a
charlatan, devised strange ways of compensating. One Protestant
"theologian" showed that in fact the Church remained intact through
the ages by taking the heretics of every age as his Christian
genealogy.



It has always been the contention of the Catholic Church that one can
demonstrate its credentials by using a combination of Scripture and
historic fact. We have seen how the Scriptures proclaim the
indefectibility of the Church. Now let us see if history points to the
claim of the Catholic Church that she in fact is the same Church
founded by Jesus Christ.



The Catholic Church claims that the Church Jesus founded was a
hierarchical church based on a clerical structure initiated by
Christ. If, as the Protestants and Modernists claim, an Ecclesial
hierarchy was a later development having no real relationship to
Jesus' original intention then there should be no evidence of this
hierarchy in the early extra-biblical writings written by the first
converts of the Apostles.



The earliest written documents that, in the beginning, were listed
with the Scriptures are the letters of St. Clement of Rome and St.
Ignatius of Antioch. St. Clement was the 3rd successor of St. Peter to
the Pontificate and took his position as Vicar of Christ with great
authority. A dispute had arisen in the Greek city of Corinth. The
Corinthians having come to an impasse in resolving the situation wrote
to the Pope to request his mediation and judgment regarding all the
facts presented to him. It is interesting to note that the
Corinthians did not turn to the last living Apostle for his mediation
and judgment. He lived in Patmos and it would have been much easier to
communicate with him. Yet the Corinthians understood the significance
of the See of Peter and its Christ-given primacy.



In the corresponding letter to the church at Corinth Pope St. Clement
addresses himself primarily to reiterating the spiritual and moral
principles handed on by the Apostles from Our Lord Jesus Christ. In
paragraph 20, Pope Clement I gives the clear Roman Catholic teaching
on Apostolic Succession and the hierarchical constitution of the
Church which came directly from Christ. It must be noted that this
letter was written around the year 80 A.D. only 47 years after the
death of Christ and only 15 years after the death of Sts. Peter and
Paul. Paragraph 20 reads as follows:

"The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ;
and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God,
and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements,
then, are by God's will. Receiving their instructions and being full
of confidence on account of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and confirmed in faith by the word of God, they went forth in the
complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the good news that
the Kingdom of God is coming. Through countryside and city they
preached; and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by
the spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was
this a novelty: for bishops and deacons had been written about a long
time earlier. Indeed, Scripture (the Old Testament) somewhere says: "I
will set up their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in
faith." (Paraphrase of Is. 60:17)



St. Ignatius of Antioch who died about A.D. 107 was the third bishop
of Antioch successor of St. Peter who appointed the first bishop after
himself, St. Evodius. Ignatius was actually a disciple of St. John and
was ordained by him. He became bishop of Antioch around the year 69
A.D. He died in A.D. 107 by martyrdom. Because he was a Roman citizen
he was tried and sentenced to death in Rome. His martyrdom took place
in the amphitheater where he was literally torn apart and devoured by
two ravenous lions. Having been taught by St. John himself and having
fully embraced the faith handed down to him; St. Ignatius is our most
reliable "extra-biblical" early Church Father.



In his Letter to the Magnesians, St. Ignatius writes in his final
paragraph: "Take care, therefore, to be confirmed in the decrees of
the Lord and of the Apostles, in order that in everything you do, you
may prosper in body and in soul, in faith and in love, in the Son and
in the Father and in the Spirit, in beginning and in end, together
with your most reverend bishop; and with that fittingly woven
spiritual crown, the priesthood; and with the deacons, men of God. Be
subject to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ was subject
to the Father, and the Apostles were subject to Christ and to the
Father; so that there may be unity in both body and spirit."



In the letter to the Smyrnaeans St. Ignatius reaffirms the constant
apostolic teaching about the Blessed Sacrament:

"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus
Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are
to the mind of God. For love they have no care, nor for widows, nor
for the orphan, nor for the distressed, nor for those in prison....
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not
believe that the Eucharist is the Flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ,
the Flesh that suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His
goodness, raised up again. They who deny the Gift of God are perishing
in their disputes.... It is right to shun such men and not even to
speak about them, neither in public nor in private.

Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as wherever
Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."



St. Ignatius was the first Apostolic Father to use "Catholic" as the
name of the Church established by Jesus Christ.



There are literally hundreds of such quotes of the first "children" of
the Apostles who had passed on the revelation of Jesus Christ. I
highly suggest reading the early Church Fathers. You will be impressed
by the continuity of Catholic dogma and the perfection by which they
show the proper interpretation of the Scriptures.



Now with the above examples it can be seen that those who were
converted and taught by the Apostles held fast to their teachings and
an examination of their lives clearly demonstrate not only their love
for our Lord Jesus Christ but also for the Church. They lived
exemplary lives of heroic virtue and most of them were martyred for
the Faith. This continuity with the Apostles and our continuity with
them demonstrate what St. Thomas Aquinas proclaims: "Our Faith is
identical to the Faith of the Apostles." And so it is today.



I know that many of you will say that this may have been true up to
about 35 years ago but, because of the Modernist infection, the Church
has substantially changed from Christ's original intention. Wrong! No
matter what the Modernists have done, no matter how they have
attempted to change the Church from within, they have not succeeded in
changing the essential constitution of the Church. Our Lord Jesus
Christ has guaranteed that He would remain with his Church until the
end of time. The fact is that all of the changes that have taken place
within the last 35 years are primarily external changes and not
substantial changes. All of the dogmas of the Church remain the same
and have not changed. The Modernists may have succeeded in changing
the meaning of dogma in the minds of the weak but the Magisterium of
the Church continues to teach exactly what she has always taught and
the meaning of those dogmas have never changed.



The reality is that the outward manifestations of the Faith have
changed throughout the centuries. Certain essentials remained the same
but if you go to a Coptic Rite liturgy, for instance, you would be
hard pressed to recognize the same essential part of the Roman Rite
both Traditional and Novus Ordo. Devotion in the first centuries was
based more on Scripture than the "devotio moderna" of Thomas a'Kempis.



I am not making light of the present crisis in the Church. What we are
now undergoing is by far the worst crisis the Church has suffered in
its 2000-year history. The only other crisis that compares was the
Arian Heresy where, as St. Jerome said, "One day the world woke up and
groaned to find itself Arian." Our crisis is similar. After 35 years
we find the world Modernist. But the Church will survive.



I know that the Modernists intend to change the Church into a utopian
religion of the One World Order but they can never succeed. The Unity
of the Church rests upon the Rock of Peter and no matter how weak
Peter may be Christ has prayed for him.

"Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift
you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail;
and when once thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren." (Lk.
22:31-33)



Why do you think that Jesus picked someone like Peter to be the first
Pope? He was impetuous, vacillating, courageous and cowardly all at
the same time. He was probably the strongest and, paradoxically, the
weakest of all the Apostles, yet even though he denied our Lord 3
times he ended by being crucified upside down for that Him. Peter in
the end proved that he truly was "the Rock". Jesus uses Peter as the
perfect example to prove His point that His Church is Indefectible.

[e_space]

lets see ... the catholics have declared that the hierarchy is
infallible, and also state that their religion enjoys
indefectibility ... what i would find reassuring regarding these
issues, is that someone outside of the church gave them such
accolades ... its quite easy to put a crown on your own head, but
quite another thing for someone else to put that crown on your
head ...

it seems that 99 out of 100 restaurants one goes to will tell you that
they have the best food in the city ... at least 98 of them are
wrong ... self promotion is cheap advertising ... what should be
considered valid is what the consumer has to say about it ...

On Apr 30, 1:57 am, Joe <jfg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.roman-catholic.com/Roman/Articles/The%20Indefectibilty%20o...

[Joe]

Well, I'm a consumer, so to speak, not a member of the hierarchy, and
I believe the Church is indefectible. For whatever that's worth. But
I'm not "outside of" the Church, at least, I hope not!! It seems to
me that anyone who does hold that the Church is the organ of Truth in
the world, would be compelled by the force of truth to come inside and
remain there.

I just want to point out, while it is true that the Catholic Church
declares herself indefectible (i.e., that is the official position of
the Magisterium), it is not that declaration of the Magisterium that
is the source of the idea. The source of the idea is twofold: the
words of Christ, and the sense of the faithful. Most importantly,
Jesus guaranteed that His Church would always keep the true Faith
intact, as referenced in the article. But after that, on a practical
level, that indefectibility manifests as the fidelity to the true
Faith, of the body of believers. The Magisterium holds the middle
position, as the means by which believers receive the true Teaching of
Christ.

In practice, the guarantee of indefectibility does not apply to
individual bishops, except insofar as they are in conformity with the
Bishop of Rome. The Bishop of Rome possesses the Charism of
Infallibility for the whole Church, according to the words of Jesus to
Saint Peter. For example, Arius was a bishop, and he taught a
doctrine at variance with the truth. But, in time, God corrected the
whole Church, officially through the Council of Nicaea, whose
pronouncements are respected to this day by Catholics and Protestants
alike.

So indefectibility does not apply specially to any one person, but to
the whole Body of Christ, and to its visible head, the Bishop of Rome
(the Pope.) But it applies to the Pope in his office as Pope, and not
to him personally. The person occupying the Chair of Peter might
still defect from the truth of the Faith, but he would not be able to
teach his error to the whole Church, according to the guarantee given
by Christ to the first Pope, Saint Peter.

[e_space]

protestants dont accept that the pope is the head of the body of
christ ... actually, all xtians other than RC dont believe that ...
what the RC declares really has little significance to other
denominations ... or the non-religious

> ...
>
> read more »

[Joe]

They have defected.

[e_space]

rc wasnt the first xtian religion ... they just took over by force,
subverting the existing xtian religions ... if by "defected" you mean
that they "escaped", i agree ... if my belief was being steered or
molded in any way, i too would "defect" ... the sheep remained, but it
seems the flock is getting restless and many are hopping the fences as
we speak ...

> ...
>
> read more »

[Joe]

On May 3, 6:40 am, e_space <espace1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> rc wasnt the first xtian religion ... they just took over by force,
> subverting the existing xtian religions ... if by "defected" you mean
> that they "escaped", i agree ... if my belief was being steered or
> molded in any way, i too would "defect" ... the sheep remained, but it
> seems the flock is getting restless and many are hopping the fences as
> we speak ...
>

Not His sheep. They hear His voice, and do not follow another.

The history you give above is as undocumented as it is flawed. From
the beginning, Saint Peter was the chief of the Apostles, and from the
beginning, disputes in the Church have had final recourse to the
Bishop of Rome. This is a matter of historical fact. As Our Lord
said,

Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world. A city seated on a
mountain cannot be hid.

[e_space]

sheep abound ... id suggest that you ask those who fervently followed
jones, but alas they are rather hard to find ...

regarding the history of the church, even this is debated by
scholars ... the following wikipedia posts, seem to support my comment
that it was painful [at least], to be part of other religions during
the early days of xtianity ...

"In 385, this new legal authority of the Church resulted in the first
use of capital punishment being pronounced as a sentence upon a
Christian 'heretic', namely Priscillian. Priscillian's execution was
only the first use of this new Church authority after which, down
through the centuries, many more heretics would be executed by the
authority of the Catholic Church."

"Constantine required those who had not converted to Christianity "to
foot the bill". Christian chroniclers tell that it appeared necessary
to Constantine "to teach his subjects to give up their rites and to
accustom them to despise their temples and the images contained
therein," This led to the closure of temples due to a lack of support,
their wealth flowing to the imperial treasure; Constantine did not
need to use force to implement this, although his subjects are said to
simply have obeyed him out of fear"

> ...
>
> read more »

[dom]

"The smoke of Satan has entered the sanctuary, and wreathes the
altar."

Pope Paul VI after Vatican II.

On Apr 29, 10:57 pm, Joe <jfg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.roman-catholic.com/Roman/Articles/The%20Indefectibilty%20o...
>

[Joe]

Still doesn't take away the identity of the Roman Catholic Church as
God's Church.

[Joe]

On May 9, 7:35 am, e_space <espace1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> sheep abound ... id suggest that you ask those who fervently followed
> jones, but alas they are rather hard to find ...
>

Jones is not Christ.

I'd suggest you stick to what you know, i.e. finding the echo of God
in your own conscience, and stop trying to talk about what you do not
know, i.e. where God Himself is actually to be found.