Numbers 30:25-29
Psalm 19:8-14
James 5:1-6
Mark 9:38-48

One Shepherd

Who does not take notice when the Gospel lesson explicitly raises the two issues that are most on the minds of the Roman Catholic faithful during this time of crisis?

This past week, one of the Sisters asked me to listen to homilies being offered from Roman Catholic parishes, something I rarely have time to do. I admired the candor of one homilist, in particular, as did many others, for this link had been widely shared through email and text. But I was not consoled or edified when he began bullying the people sitting before him in the pews. "Where else can you go?!" he demanded. "As St. Peter said to the Lord," he continued, "'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.'" His implication was painfully clear: to seek a different Church from the Roman Catholic Chursh was to abandon Jesus. But he did not settle for implication. Instead, he trotted out a sentence that I never thought I would hear in the twenty-first century: "This is the Church that Jesus Christ founded!" If ever there were a time to draw back in humility from triumphalism, this is that time.

Without intending to do so, he turned his own fears into the master subject. Certainly, friends and relatives have contacted me on this subject. The underlying and real question is "Where is the Church?" or more to the point, "What is the Church?" I have have served either Roman or Anglican Communions full-time under a vow of poverty for about a quarter century, and I prepared for priestly life with twenty-three years of university study. Devoting my life to the Church, and growing up in a family of Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics, I have tried to ignore lines of division. For the Lord Jesus, as John Paul II has written, calls us to be one: ut unum sint! That's a command.

Sadly, we cannot call the balkanized Church one. But the Church is united in the sense that she is Catholic and Apostolic. Moreover, the Catholic spirit, as Henri Cardinal de Lubac has written, is both-and, not either-or. The word Catholic itself insists on a prismatic wholeness and completeness: κατα 'ολον (kata holon). The word Catholic comes from two words: kata + holon. "according to the whole."

May I pause to make a side point? I am a sacramental realist. My faith life is inseparably joined to and fed by the sacraments. The Lord Jesus founded the Church, not in terms of real estate or stone buildings, but within and upon humans, which are the only permanent thing that He created on the earth and the only earthly thing that has capacity for holiness, which is nourished in and by the sacraments. I, therefore, do not address the subject of the Protestant traditions or the large segment of the Anglican Communion which is Anglo-Protestant, often called the "Low Church," or Anglicans called the "Broad Church," which has developed in the direction of an ethical culture society during the last half-century. To me personally Anglican means Anglo-Catholic, which is the expression of the ancient Church in the British Isles and Ireland. It begins with the arrival of the Celts (or Galatians) from the Continent including St. Columba, who resisted the Roman Church. And it has continued for fifteen hundred years to the present and throughout the world. The widely read and respected Bishop Kallistos Ware has said that he has met countless Anglicans with whom he would not hesitate to offer terms of communion within the Eastern Orthodox Church, but the Anglican Communion is a wild and woolly world including clergy, and I emphasize bishops, who have rejected basic Christian doctrine. It is not a simple matter to go to an Anglican parish (the sign outside usually says "Episcopal" in the U.S.) because you do not know what you will find when you get there.

I do not in any way imply that hundreds of millions of sincere Protestant and Evangelical Christians are not heard in their prayers to God. On the contrary, these traditions have defined themselves in terms of prayer. That is what they do on Sunday mornings: they pray and enjoy fellowship with one another. And this is how the ecumenical documents of Vatican II view them: communities of prayer. Who does not believe that the prayers of sincere Protestants are heard? Who does not believe that Billy Graham has gained Heaven?

The reason I am Catholic is simple: it is the ancient Church. These Catholic prayers — I think of the Phos hilaron, the Gloria in excelsis, and the Words of Institution — are the prayers that were offered by the Beloved Disciple and the Blessed Virgin Mary at their Community every morning and evening. (And by the way, they prayed them in Greek, not in Latin.) These are the prayers St. Paul offered during his missions across Asia Minor and southern Europe. And one prayer in particular, the beating heart of holy worship, is the encounter with God: the Great Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ, truly and really Present under species of the Blessed Sacrament. Only by seeking the Church that is Catholic and Apostolic does one participate in the holy Sacraments, or the Mysteries, as they are called in the East.

But let us return to the year 2018 and try to understand the siege mentality that characterize so many Roman priests today. We can well understand this fearfulness. We can understand their defensive state of mind. But in that state of mind, one must draw back from making rash statements. So let us be clear about something which every Catholic theologian, including the last three popes, believes to be true:

As for Matthew 16:18, "On this rock," Jesus says of Peter in the very same passage, "Get thee behind me, Satan ... you are not on the side of God but of men." And the next day Peter professes to believe that Moses and Elijah are also gods. offering to construct booths (such as the ones he saw in Caesarea Philippi), so they can be worshiped. The point about Peter, Jesus enunciates clearly, "Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you." And he reminds Peter that he is the son of Jonah, the one who ran. He has named Simon bar-Jonah Cephas, which means rock, in gentle humor: Peter can be dense at times. At other times, he can be unsteady and changeable. The message is plain: if Peter can be faithful to the end, then we can, too.

But let us cut to the quick. Where does one find the Church that Jesus founded? The Church is Apostolic. He founded the Church on the Apostles through prayers and the laying on of hands. Bishops are explicitly mentioned in the New Testament (as are deacons). Where did they come from? From the Apostles when they created more Apostles through prayers and the laying on of hands. In the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was St. John's disciple,

The Church is also Catholic. From the beginning, bishops were styled "authentic teachers." In particular, the bishop is responsible for practicing, teaching, and defending the ancient Catholic faith. Which Catholic faith? It is most reliably found during the first ten centuries of the Church's existence and certainly in her first seven ecumenical councils (actually, eight counting the Council of Jerusalem, c. 50 A.D.). These represent the belief and teachings of the Undivided Church. If a Church does not place these teachings above all others as the norm of faith, her claim to Catholicity is a doubtful one.

In summary, any bishop who can demonstrate unbroken descent from the Apostles and who practices and teaches the ancient Catholic faith is a valid bishop. Around him is a valid diocese. As the Roman Church herself teaches, each diocese is an instance of the Church. Where is the Church? It resides in these dioceses, called particular Churches — Roman dioceses, Eastern Orthdox dioceses (eparchies), and Anglo-Catholic dioceses.

Most people live in the secular world. It is natural, therefore, to think of the Church in terms of multi-national corporations. Most people are familiar with the structure of workers, managers, senior executives, and CEOs. It is natural for them to see the Church in terms of district managers called pastors, vice presidents called bishops, and a CEO known as "the pope." Nonetheless, theologically the Church is not a vertical, multi-national structure, and the pope is not a CEO. Each bishop is styled "The Most Reverend," for no one is senior to a bishop. A bishop cannot be removed except for cause. For this reason, all bishops are required to offer their resignations at age seventy-five as a check on their absolute power.

What then of the universal Church? The universal Church is not a legal entity, such as a corporation but consists in terms of communion .... among dioceses, which are the only instances of the Church. That is, the particle of God placed within us at Mass by a priest is also the relationship we enjoy across many parishes and dioceses. — not a vertical organization, but an organic one, a living, breathing body: "living stones ... built into a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5).

Sadly, there are multiple communions, the largest being the Roman Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Churches joined through the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Anglican Communion. (As I have said, most Anglicans are either Protestant or secular humanist in the ethical culture tradition.) Anglo-Catholics, the original Anglican Church, have shrunk to a small minority. You cannot go into an Anglican (or Episcopal) Church expecting it be Anglo-Catholic, theologically or liturgically.

Which one is the real Catholic Church? They all are ... so long as their bishops descend from the Apostles and they practice and teach the ancient Catholic faith. When Pope Benedict XVI was pressed to declare that the Roman Catholic Church was the Church, he demurred preferring to say that the Church Jesus founded subsiste in the Roman Catholic Church. He also would have told you if you asked him that it subsists in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, in the Russion Orthodox Church, in all the valid Catholic Churches. He affirmed that the sacraments of the Society of St. Pius X are valid. And he had similar warm feelings toward certain Anglo-Catholic constituencies.

Where does one find the fullness of Catholic faith? The answer is, where one is offered valid sacraments, where one finds a holy and reliable priest (for the priest's right intentions are necessary for a sacrament to be valid), and where one's children are safe. Whatever we do, we must be cautious not to offend the Lord Jesus Christ when he said,