ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. The word church ilas etymologically many meanings. It might be used correctly of any gathering or assembly, secular or religious; actually it is commonly employed either to denote those who are united in a definite religious aim, or to signify the building in which they come together for united worship. In this article we are dealing with the word in a strict theological sense. By it we mean the visible body or organization which Christ Himself set up to perpetuate for all time the authoritative teaching of the truths which He came on earth to reveal to mankind. In this sense there can be only one Church, divinely constituted, divinely protected, in order that it may accomplish its mission. A more technical definition would be as follows : "The Church instituted by Jesus Christ is the visible society of men who, having received baptism, are united in the profession of the same faith and in one corn munion, and are seeking the same spiritual end under the author ity of the Roman Pontiff, the successor of St. Peter, and of the bishops who are in union with him." To this Church Christ the Founder has given the right and duty to guard, teach and main tain the doctrine which He taught, and to preach it to the whole world without let or hindrance on the part of any human power. From the very nature of this one Church it is clear that men are bound to submit to its authority as soon as they become clearly aware of its existence and of its divine claims to their allegiance. Such submission is necessary for salvation.
In this living organism, the Churih, we may distinguish the body and the soul. The body is the visible union of the Faithful, and their external government and organization; while the soul denotes all those invisible elements which give life to the body, rendering it capable of attaining the supernatural end for which alone it exists, namely sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the like. As sanctifying grace is essentially necessary for salvation, no one can be saved who does not belong to the soul of the Church, and who does not, at least implicitly, desire and intend to belong also to its body. Such desire and intention are found in the sincere will to observe all the divine precepts and to take all means necessary for salvation. They are necessarily included in a real act of love of God and perfect sorrow for sin.
The Church, as we have said, has the right and duty of teaching all without exception. To those who by baptism have become its subjects the Church proposes its doctrine and expects from them obedience to its teaching. Those who are not baptized are bound not by the authority of the Church, but by the divine law, to seek, and when found, to accept the truth which God has revealed.
To sum up, Catholics believe that there is in the world a society which is both supernatural and visible, which is holy and universal; that this society was established by Jesus Christ Him self, while He sojourned on this earth; and that He called this society His Church. They believe, furthermore, that the unity of the Church is founded upon the Apostolic See of Rome ; and that all men are strictly bound by divine law to enter into the unity of this Church so soon as they become really aware of its existence and fully conscious of its divine claim upon them. (F. Bo.) The Catholic Church is governed by a hierarchy of bishops with the pope as bishop of Rome at the head. Under him patri archS, archbishops and other greater prelates are possessed of various local jurisdictions over the bishops of their respective provinces. The Church teaches that the origin of all this varied jurisdiction must be sought in the authority given by our Lord Himself, and recorded for us in the Gospels. Just as no man,
not even an Apostle or the Chief of the Apostles, could institute a Sacrament, so it was not in the power of man alone to originate the fundamental organization of the Church. Christ Himself be fore He ascended into heaven left the Church an organized body, with a system of rule that could indeed be developed indefinitely to meet the constant changes which must inevitably occur as the centuries passed, but which in its fundamental principles must remain unchanged to the end of the world. As we study the Gospels we find that all authority over this Church was left by Christ in the hands of a body of 12 chosen disciples, of called the Apostles, over whom as a chief he placed oneof themselves in the person of St. Peter. The essential and un changeable organisation of the Church is, therefore, according to Catholic doctrine, that the organisation instituted by Christ must be perpetuated; that there must always be the College of the Apostles ruling the Church, and that above all there must be the heir of St. Peter, governing all as the Good Shepherd in Christ's place in virtue of the great Petrine texts Matt. xvi. 16-19; Luke xxii. 32 and most of all, John xxi. 15-17. (See PAPACY and POPE.) The great scarcity of documentary evidence for the history of the Church, from the close of the Apostolic age to the beginning of the 3rd century, makes it impossible to trace in anything like accurate detail the steps by which the system of episcopal government, each bishop ruling in his own diocese and limited as to his personal jurisdiction to that diocese, followed and took the place of government by the Apostles them selves. We can see the beginning of it in the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul, in the cases of Timothy and Titus, but no more than the beginnings. But at the beginning of the 3rd century, when first we can get a clear idea from surviving documents of the actual system by which the Church was being governed, we are confronted with the change as an accomplished fact. The Apostles themselves have long since passed away, but the Apos tolic College remains in the College of Bishops. No single bishop is in himself an Apostle in the full sense, for each is limited to a local jurisdiction. But the whole body of the bishops is the successor, as a body, of the whole body of the Apostles, and by them, as a body, the whole of the powers granted by Christ to his Apostles are preserved and exercised. Over them, as their primate or chief, there is one of their own number, the bishop of Rome, acting as such in virtue of the claim that he is the successor of St. Peter, as being the bishop of the see in which St. Peter died and to which he left his privileges. No other bishop claims in the same way to be the successor of any other apostle. No apostle, except St. Peter alone, left a successor be hind him. The bishop of Rome alone lays claim to being in his own person possessed of the full Apostolic power and to be in virtue of his succession to St. Peter the Universal Shepherd of all Christ's sheep. Naturally in those difficult times of persecu tion, the government of the Church was far less centralized than it afterwards became, for communications were always dangerous and often impossible, but the primacy of the bishop of Rome was everywhere acknowledged as well as claimed, and although its extent and the method of its exercise had to be developed and defined as the years went on and the needs of the Church required, it has always been based upon our Lord's grant to St. Peter and draws its sanction and authority from that grant and from nothing else.