Is Catholicism Jesus’ True Church? (Fr Cristino)

Is Catholicism truly the Church Jesus founded? Join Father Cristino as he explores why the Catholic Church claims to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church established by Christ Himself (Matthew 16:18). Discover the historical and spiritual roots of Catholicism, from its founding by Jesus to its unbroken apostolic succession through the Bishop of Rome. This episode offers a clear, respectful explanation of why Catholicism isn’t just another denomination, inviting Catholics and non-Catholics alike to reflect on the “fullness of truth.”

Transcript

Father Cristino, welcome back. Thank you, Ken. How would you respond to this question? Is Catholicism just one of many denominations within the Christian church out there? Well, now I'm going to get a little technical because we use, as you're used to with me, very precise language. Yes. Around what we mean by the things that we say. Uh and so when it comes to using the word the church and that definite article the church uh we have to be careful that we don't actually from the Catholic perspective mean just any old group of people that consider themselves Christians. We actually make a distinction between referring to other congregations of various Christian denominations as communions and the church being a category that we apply strictly to we who are part of the of the Roman Catholic faith of of the Catholic faith. uh more broadly speaking which would include also the eastern rights of of the Catholic Church uh and the Orthodox churches. We do refer to them as being churches specifically because of the fact that they retain apostolic succession. And although we are not in communion with each other in the sense that the bishop of Rome is seen as as the head of of all Orthodox churches, all of the remaining other necessary ingredients that would lead to that unity are still intact and in place. and and therefore the dialogue that we strive to have in the Roman Catholic Church with Orthodox churches really is, you could say, at the precipice of of a full communion of of us really being able to be one. These other Christian denominations uh that we refer to as communions, we refer to them as that because uh there are varying degrees of things which separate us from each other which are not only sacramental and pertaining to ministry and the priesthood specifically, but also doctrally now uh where sometimes it's not even clear that we believe the same things about the trinity or or about Jesus anymore. Uh and if we aren't on the same page with that and yet both of us call ourselves Christians, we really need to figure out who who's who here. Uh and so to use that category of a denomination, we would say within the Catholic tradition that that category does not apply to us uh in the same way that we mean it when we apply it to others. uh and that I don't say that with with arrogance or disrespect or disregard for other Christian denominations, but they are denominated precisely because distinctions have been made between them among themselves that we do not control. We're not part of that. Whereas such denominations within Catholicism do exist but all still remain equally attached to the church. So we have 23 unique Eastern Catholic churches uh which have their own code of canon law and their own lurggical tradition and their own language and their own bishops but they're in union with the bishop of Rome. And so our unity is safeguarded with those with whom we do not share that and who do not believe in apostolic succession and do not have a sacramental economy that is the one we believe has been revealed to us by Christ. We just have something that separates us from each other that's quite substantial and therefore requires a lot more working out what it would mean for us to be brought back together in unity. So to refer to other Christian communities as denominations is not technically accurate. It's accurate if we are referring to them from within the Catholic Church. But we would not consider Catholicism just another denomination among all of the denominations of Christianity for the very reason that in the history of the church there was not there was a time when you would would not distinguish between being a Christian and being a Catholic. Christians were Catholics and that was it. And I'm not just talking about for a few decades after the death and resurrection of Christ. I'm I'm saying for a thousand years. Literally a thousand years. If you were Christian, you were Catholic. If you were a Catholic, you were Christian. They were interchangeable with each other. The word Christian began to be used in the first century. We hear in the book of the Acts of the Apostles that in Antioch after Peter left from evangelizing that community and had established a church there, an ecclesia, an assembly, a gathering of those who were united through baptism that they first began to be known as Christians. So Christians were sort of like it was sort of like an adjective. It was a description of a kind of person. Kind of person are you? I'm a Christian person which meant I am a follower of Christ. And to be a follower of Christ meant some pretty specific things. Uh and one of those things meant that you were through baptism part of his body which is the church as St. Paul describes in his letter to the Romans. And so there wasn't a distinction to be made among what kind of Christian were you within the church. If you were in the church, you were a Christian. If you were a Christian, you were in the church. Period. Mhm. And so there was no denominationalism to speak of. So in the modern context, when somebody asks a non Catholic Christian asks a Catholic, what church do you belong to? the I think usually they are meaning you know do you where is your church who is your pastor because I think that's something it's a generalization but the I've sort of picked up like I belong to the the 8th Street Pentecostal church or the the Circle Drive Alliance Church or like you know and they they name a physical location sometimes associated with a a name or stream of of Christianity you know, Anglican or the evangel evangelical church or the Pentecostal church, but typically it's I belong to the church and it's a a physical location with a pastor when for a Catholic when we say we belong to the church, what are we saying? Mhm. Uh that's yeah a very important question because that's why we we refer to in in our both what we call our ecclesiology which means our study of and understanding of what being church means our ecclesiology uh incorporates within it categories of participation. So the church when we speak about it in that sense means the entirety of the institution made manifest most specifically through her visible head on earth which is the holy father the the the bishop of Rome, the vicor of Christ, the pope. And so he becomes this visible source of unity that manifests the church. But of course the church is bigger than just the pope. He is not the church in himself. He becomes that most poignant visible reminder to us of the church. But he would cease to be relevant were there not everyone else incorporated with him. And so then we have him surrounded by the college of bishops and the college of bishops are who they are because they are the heads of what we refer to as local churches. And so the local church becomes a particular manifestation of the universal reality. And our most commonly used word for that local church is a dascese. And so the entire globe is divided into these geographical areas of Catholic parishes. And so then the parish becomes an even more particular manifestation of the global reality because contained within the parish should be a cross-section of all of what you can be as a Christian. So you have men and you have women. You have married people. You have single people. You have young, you have old. You have people of any ethnic background. Doesn't matter what ethnicity they are. It doesn't matter what language they speak. The parish is the most tangible experience you have of what being the whole church means. And it fits itself into this bigger hierarchical structure. So you have the parish that is part of the dascese and you have the dascese that is part of something we refer to as an ecclesiastical province which is an even bigger circumscription of a geographical area of several dasceses around an arch dascese. And so that grouping becomes its own province. And then you have ecclesiastical provinces that are represented by an archbishop who is meant to be uh that witness of his more perfect union with the vicor of Christ who is the universal pastor of the entire church. And the foundation of all of that is what you're the pastor of which is the domestic church. And the domestic church is the family. And I am a pastor of a parish that is filled with young, vibrant, growing families of varying ages and varying numbers of children, which might mean zero children because a husband and wife are a family to five, six, seven children. And the domestic church then becomes the building block of the parish. the parish is what it is because of every manifestation of the domestic church that lives in that little region. That that is the brilliance of what Christ has founded in the church. this big global massive organization and institution with one supreme head, but with all the way down to rural Alberta or rural Saskatchewan, a house with a husband and wife who bring their children for baptism and now they are the domestic church. One of the key things that you said that stood out to me is like what Christ instituted. That's a specific claim that the church has about herself. That's right. Right. The Pentecostals don't say that about themselves or the evangelical church ores the Anglican church. Like, can you speak to that uniqueness about our faith? Yes. that that incorporation into what we refer to as the mystical body of Christ, yes, is made possible through baptism. But we aren't meant to be individually part of the body of Christ. I am an individual who becomes part of the body of Christ. Which means now I take my place and my my identity as an individual is most realized by my being part of the body of Christ. But my personal and individual decision to be a disciple of Jesus is not the be all and end all. Uh but what ends up happening through all of the many distinctions that I don't even know what they number uh within Protestantism or or postreformation Christianity is you get these these endless manifestations of further and further and further individualized peoples who each just follow Jesus. And that might mean in their own way by their own means with their own traditions or practices or pieties. And is there's less about what it means to be incorporated into the whole. It's this individualism. And the individualism diminishes the concept of the body which though comprised of many parts functions as one unified whole. just get sick. You get sick and you realize that your whole body functions together. Rarely will you experience a kind of malady or illness that is contained strictly to just that one part of your body. It will have an impact in other parts of your body as well. Something that's wrong with your liver shows itself in your eyes. You you get a headache and you get nauseous. The body has all of the parts influenced by each other. That's what makes it a body because this one organism is dependent upon all of its parts working together to be functioning in its optimal way. And that's why St. Paul's analogy of the body is so important when he talks about being parts of the body of Christ because we understand what it means to be part of a body and we understand the tragedy of something going wrong where you might lose part of your body. If you have to lose part of your body that's that compromises the the functioning the way that it's supposed to. So you're saying that uh the Protestant faith post reformation Christianity is missing this concept. Yes. It understands it from the from the perspective of what baptism is supposed to do for us which is make us part of the body of Christ but it's content to keep itself in its individual manifestation. uh forgive a profane uh example, but there's an episode of The Simpsons where Bart and Homer decide to become Catholic because they've sent Bart off to a private Catholic school so that those good old nuns can whip him into shape and he becomes so taken by Catholicism that he decides he wants to be baptized. And then Homer says he wants to be baptized. And Marge, who is a a happy Protestant, goes for lunch with their pastor, Reverend Lovejoy, and tells him, you know, she's concerned that the these guys are going Catholic. And he says to her, "Well, Marge, it's time that Bart and Homer return to the one true church, the Western branch of the Presb Lutheran Alliance." Now that it's it's clear what's supposed to be a joke about that and and only the way the Simpsons could. But the point is we don't hear Jesus talk about the Western branch of the Presb Lutheran Alliance. We hear Jesus talk about his church. And then when you trace through the Acts of the Apostles in the early writings of St. All it becomes clear the one and only thing that the church meant and how it remained united and what kept it together which was the proclamation of the gospel and the sacraments administered by the apostles or their successors all of whom were organized under the leadership of the one apostle that Jesus put over the head of the other apostles. That is indisputably, undeniably clear from the history of the church. And that is what Catholicism continues to enjoy and participate in down the ages for 2,000 years. And any other branch and manifestation of Christianity than that is only doing so more or less remotely adjacent to that. regarding the claim of the church of the Catholic Church about herself that it was instituted by Christ that that's unique too like Jesus Christ instituted the church the Pentecostals down the street they don't make that claim about themselves right they they don't claim that Jesus Christ personally instituted the Pentecostal church this this this claim is unique to to our faith isn't Um, and it strikes me because I had a friend who was a Protestant youth pastor and he was struggling with issues that people were coming at with him. And what he would do is well, he would just open up scripture and he would point to a scripture to justify what he believed. Well, they would do the same thing and he would point they would point to a scripture that they to justify what they believed and there was a contradiction. And he says, "Well, in the end, why we just have to agree to disagree?" But I think in his thinking, as he continued down this road, he's like, "But don't these things matter?" Mhm. Like you I you say it this way, I say it this way. Use the same scriptures, but we're coming to different conclusions. And some of this actually matters, right? This actually matters. Who's right? And it started him starting to question who's right. And he he was reminded of this scripture passage. I believe it's in John. I I hope I'm not mistaken where Jesus says to his disciples that he will lead them in all truth u that he will lead them and so he's like but where is that and he his his realization was the only church that claimed to be the to have it all that that had that promise that Jesus had in scripture he would lead them in all truth was the Catholic church he said the evangelical church wasn't saying that he wasn't saying that and he thought well either this is completely arrogant or it's true or it's beautiful be or it's beautiful cuz if if this is true it's this is the a great gift and that was his conclusion of starting to explore Catholicism like what if the claims of the Catholic Church about herself are actually true he didn't want them to be true what if it is True. Um, and that's a remarkable claim. I think to the non-atholic Christian, it can appear that the Catholic position is incredibly arrogant. Mhm. Yeah. I don't know how else it could appear when you say such things about yourself. But we say those things because we don't know what else to say. Because we can't conceive of there being any other way for us to maintain what we maintain and to teach within our church to our members what we teach with the authority that we seek to teach it with. If that's not true of us, where does that authority come from? If we don't possess that authority, then we can't teach anyone anything inside or outside the church. And so it's the conviction that Christ has endowed this church with his authority to teach that which empowers us to say albeit it probably sounds trit but with all humility that the fullness of truth subsists within the Catholic Church. that is the formulation that was used by the council fathers of of the second Vatican council that the fullness of truth that doesn't mean that there isn't manifestations of truth outside of Roman Catholicism and we would go so far as to say even outside of of uh Christianity. There are those who we still do believe have what are referred to as seeds of truth or the grains of truth by virtue of human reason. God has made it such that all by natural law can come to know him. And so the extent to which every human being participates in the natural law means that they participate in to some degree in the truth. But the fullness of it, all of what we are meant to receive and know for the sake of salvation is found within and has been entrusted to the Catholic Church. I want to go back to something that you said earlier about the um the difference between how a Protestant sees their faith and the Catholic regarding that individualistic viewpoint whereas the Catholic side is more you belong to and I don't know how you word it but belonging to the body of Christ. Can you give some concrete examples on the difference of how that shows up in a person's faith liturgy? So when you come to the holy sacrifice of the mass, you are not there to have your own personal time of prayer and encounter with the Lord. You will pray, you will encounter the Lord, but you will do so within the context of something bigger than yourself. that welcomes your participation but does not require it. That puts you in union with everyone else that is there with you and which hands to you a form of worship that we believe God has asked to be given back to him. So that's key. What does that mean? Say that again. Our worship is giving back to God what he has given us to give him. I I may have even used this analogy on your channel before in our other conversations about the liturgy, but parents have the experience of going out to the store, buying something that they want or need, wrapping it up, writing their own name on it, giving it to their child, and saying, "Tomorrow is daddy's birthday, and so you can give this to daddy tomorrow for his birthday present." And then tomorrow they come running into your room and say, "Happy birthday, daddy." and give you this thing and you say, "Wow, thank you." And you open it up and you enjoy it. And the real joy comes from looking at the joy on your child's face who just participated in something they have absolutely nothing to do with. But your love as a father has been multiplied by getting to watch the joy of your child believe he has just participated in something that was worth giving you. That is the worship that we offer God in the holy mass. We give him something he gave us to give him. And what is that? The sacrifice of his son. The the representation of the crucifixion and suffering and death of Jesus Christ on Calvary that we give back to the father through the offering of the Holy Eucharist. He gave that to us to give him so that he could rejoice over seeing us think we had something to give him. That we do everything in our power to make as beautiful as we can because we want to give him beautiful things. And we couldn't possibly give him something worth him having unless he gave it to us to give back to him. We have a beautiful prayer in our mass that is probably not used very often. It is a part of the mass referred to as the preface. And it is that part of the mass where we begin by saying the Lord be with you and with your spirit. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. That's speaking to my point about this is a corporate action that we are all in participating in together. And then it is right and just. uh let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right and just. And then the priest proceeds in one called common preface number four in the in the new mass to say though you have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift since our praises add nothing to your greatness but profit us for salvation. Through Christ our Lord. Such a beautiful articulation of what we are doing in the holy mass. You have no need of our praise. God is doing just fine whether we worship him or not. But our desire to thank you is itself your gift. You've inspired within me a desire to thank you, a desire to worship you. You made me want to do that because you knew that it was good for me to do that. You have no need of our praise. Yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift because our praises add nothing to your greatness but profit us for salvation. And so that's what we are part of in our worship as Catholics in the liturgy. Notice it had nothing to do with my personal relationship with Jesus. what I got out of the sermon, whether or not I liked that music, I don't matter in that. God matters. We are here to worship him, not get anything. But because he's so good, he still gives us something. And what he's given us is the opportunity to worship him because that's good for us. And so our worship, our lurggical worship is uniquely structured to do that. In other Christian denominations, it's about what you get out of it. Such that if you don't like what you're not getting, the board of the group of whatever the elders or whoever they are, they can take a vote. Oh, we're going to let this pastor go and we'll put an ad out and see if we can get a a new applicant and we'll interview you and if we think you're going to bring our congregation what we're looking for, then we'll hire you. We just we can't even conceive of that uh in the Catholic Church because that dynamic is not what is meant to be at play here. Beautiful, beautifully said. I I appreciate that so much. We'll wrap it up here, but is there any final comments you want to give? I think it's important that I would conclude by sincerely expressing my my love for and my admiration of of all of my brothers and sisters in Christ irrespective of their Christian denomination because there is something of the essence to say I know and love Jesus Christ. If we can say that that that means more than than we can really actually measure in this life and that we can say that in common I hope and pray would motivate us to say now how else can we live in common what else can we say we can share and believe uh that we can be one that was Jesus's prayer for us in John chapter 17 that they may all be one as you father are in me and I am in you that's That's a oneness that we really need to be striving for. And so I hope that none of what I have said today uh is is taken at all to be offensive or an insult to those sincere Christians who are not Catholic. But in all sincerity and love, I I invite you to consider what it would mean to be a Catholic and to worship in that mystical body of Christ that is made one by the gift of the church that Jesus Christ has instituted. Thank you.

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