The Purpose of the Papacy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 95 pages of information about The Purpose of the Papacy.

The Purpose of the Papacy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 95 pages of information about The Purpose of the Papacy.

And if the Catholic Church stands thus alone, again we repeat, it is because no other has received the promise of divine support, or even cares to recognise that such a promise was ever made.  The Catholic Church has been the only Church not only to exercise, but even to claim the prerogative of infallibility:  but she has claimed this from the beginning.  Every child born into her fold has been taught to profess and to believe, firstly, that the Catholic Church is the sole official and God-appointed guardian of the sacred deposit of divine truth, and, secondly, that she, and no other, enunciates to the entire world—­to all who have ears to hear—­the full revelation of Christ—­His truth; the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; fulfilling, to the letter, the command of her Divine Master, “Go into the whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark xvi. 15).

How has this been possible?  Simply and solely because God, Who promised that “the Spirit of Truth” (i.e., the Holy Ghost) “should abide with her for ever; and should guide her in all truth” (John xiv. 16, xvi. 12), keeps His promise.  When our Lord promised to “be with” the teaching Church, in the execution of the divine commission assigned to it, “always” and “to the end of the world,” that promise clearly implied, and was a guarantee, first, that the teaching authority should exist indefectibly to the end of the world; and secondly, that throughout the whole course of its existence it should be divinely guarded and assisted in fulfilling the commission given to it, viz., in instructing the nations in “all things whatsoever Christ has commanded,” in other words, that it should be their infallible Guide and Teacher.

Venerable Bede, speaking of the conversion of our own country by Augustine and his monks, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, says:  “And whereas he [Pope Gregory] bore the Pontifical power over all the world, and was placed over the Churches already reduced to the faith of truth, he made our nation, till then given up to idols, the Church of Christ” (Hist.  Eccl. lib. ii. c. 1).  If we will but listen to the Pope now, he will make it once again “the Church of Christ,” instead of the Church of the “Reformation,” and a true living branch, drawing its life from the one vine, instead of a detached and fallen branch, with heresy, like some deadly decay, eating into its very vitals.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 3:  No Pope, no matter what may have been his private conduct, ever promulgated a decree against the purity of faith and morals.]

CHAPTER II.

THE POPE’S GREAT PREROGATIVE.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Purpose of the Papacy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.