One of the best and worst things going for the Catholic Church is its very existence. The fact that it has survived for two thousand years, and can claim with at least some level of credibility to be directly descended from the original disciples of Jesus, puts it among the most enduring and significant achievements of the human race. I was trying to think last night of any other organization that’s lasted that long, and the only thing I can really think of is the Chinese nation, or rather its bureaucracy, since Chinese dynasties are long-lived but hardly eternal. But not only has the Church survived, it’s grown, flourished, and adapted itself to hundreds of distinct cultural, political, and historical situations.

The Church would answer that it has survived because it is not purely a human institution, but in fact something “against which the gates of hell will not prevail”. This is not something to be dismissed lightly, no matter how little importance we moderns give to history. The downside to being an enduring institution, however, is that there are a lot of things the Church has done that most people would rather forget about. Catholics don’t have the option, like Methodists, Baptists, or Lutherans, of splitting from the Church and forming a new denomination. To some extent this is a consequence of the fact that the Church really is catholic (universal): it has to speak to all people at all times in all situations. There are just as many wacky mystics, heartless intellectuals, and sinners in the Church as there are anywhere else; as James Joyce once said, “Here comes everybody”.

As an aside, the Church has also suffered from the fact that it was pretty much the only institution to survive the collapse of the Roman Empire, and as Charles Kingsley points out in the introduction to Hypatia, the worst elements of that Empire – the power-hungry, the nihilistic ascetics, the hedonists – latched onto the Church and subverted its hierarchy for their own purposes, diverting it from its true mission of ministering to the poor, sick, and powerless. It wasn’t until Pope John XXIII and Vatican II that the entrenched hierarchy admitted the overriding importance of this mission.

It’s a major bone of contention between Catholics and Protestants as to whether the Church established by Christ is a visible Church or an invisible one; that is, whether it should exist as a human institution, or only as a collection of believers bound together in a purely spiritual sense. Of course, Protestants have to reject the visible Church in order to justify the fact that they have split from it. Thus, the basis of this disagreement is in doctrinal matters, not because they have an innate dislike of hierarchy (and many Protestant synods and denominations are as hierarchical as the Catholic Church). But certain things get thrown out with that particular batch of bathwater. In particular, it forces Protestants into a difficult position with respect to Scripture. Scripture becomes the sole basis of faith, and because there is no visible community of believers, the interpretation of Scripture is up to the individual – or in practice, the pastor of one’s local church. Now, I don’t deny that individuals are in fact responsible for intepreting Scripture, and I think it’s one of the major weaknesses of the Catholic Church that it doesn’t encourage more private study of the Bible. Believers are indeed guided by the Holy Spirit in their understanding of Scripture; I tend to believe that any Christian who honestly seeks God’s guidance in understanding the Bible is not going to go very wrong. But none of us are saints, and none of us will ever read the Bible purely in the light of divine guidance: there will always be other motives, and there will be simple misunderstandings. This is why we have to submit to the community of believers, to the Church.

It is rather late in this essay to get into the question of the origins, dates of writing, and authenticity of Scripture, but I think it is fair to say that it is the Church that produced the New Testament, and not the other way around. It is certainly the Church that decided on which books belonged in the canon, and the best evidence suggests that the Gospels were written 20 to 60 years after the death of Christ. If God guarded the apostles’ memories and understanding of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ long enough for them to write authoritative accounts that long after Christ left, then we have to accept at least the possibility that he continues to guard that understanding.

A final caveat: there is a danger that we will see only the communitarian aspect of the Church. Mainline Protestants and more radical splinters like the Unitarians have gone in that direction, and under the guidance of liberal theologians who have gotten so caught up in the search for the “historical Jesus”, these churches maintain community without any of the hope and joy that comes from a proper understanding of salvation and a personal relationship with God. No doubt there are Catholics and Catholic communities that have gone in this direction as well, but rest assured that your faithful correspondant will not become Catholic if he doesn’t agree with Catholic doctrine.