Dom Prosper Gueranger:
This Church, founded and maintained by Christ, is it nothing more than a society of minds that know, and of hearts that love, the truths revealed to it by heaven? Have we adequately defined it when we call it “a spiritual society”? No, most assuredly, for we are told that it was to spread, and actually has been spread, throughout the whole world. Now, how could such progress and conquest have taken place if the spiritual society founded by our Redeemer had not also been exterior and visible? On earth souls cannot hold inter-communication without the bodies. “Faith comes by hearing,” says the Apostle, “and how will they hear without a preacher?” (Romans x. 17, 24).
When, therefore, our Risen Jesus says to His Apostles: “Go, teach all nations,” (Matthew xxviii. 19), He distinctly implies that the word of God will be heard, that it will resound throughout the world, and that its sound will be heard both by them that obey, and by them that reject, the teaching of his ministers. Has this word a right to circulate thus freely independently of any permission from earthly powers? Yes, for the Son of God has said: “Go, teach all nations!” He must be obeyed. The word of God cannot be fettered (2 Timothy ii. 9).
The word, then, the exterior word is free, and being free it obtains numerous disciples. Will these disciples live isolated? Will they not rather group around their apostle, the better to profit by his teaching? Will they not look on one another as brethren and members of the same family? And if so, they must hold their assemblies. Thus, the new people is brought before the notice of the world. It was necessary that this should be, for if this people which is to attract all others to itself be not visible, how can it do its work?
But the people thus assembled must have their buildings, their temples. Therefore do they erect houses of preaching and prayer. The stranger — that is, he who is not a Christian — seeing these new places of worship, asks: “What means all this? From where come these people who pray aloof from their fellow-citizens? Would not one be inclined to say, that we have a nation within the nation?” The stranger is right: there is a nation within the nation, and it will continue to be so until the whole nation itself have passed into the ranks of this new people.
Every society stands in need of laws. The Church therefore will not be long without giving outward proof of her internal government. There are her festivals, her solemnities, which denote a great people. Her ritual rules, forming a visible bond of union between the members of her society, and this not merely during the hours of divine service. There are commandments and orders made by the various degrees of the hierarchy, which are promulgated and claim obedience. There are institutions and corporations existing within the great society itself, and they add to her strength and beauty. In a word, there is everything that is needed, even penal laws against offending and refractory members.
But it does not suffice to the Church that she have places where her children can assemble together; provision must also be made for the support of her clergy, for the expenses attendant on the divine worship, for the necessities of her indigent members. Aided by the generosity of her children, she enters into possession of certain landed properties which become sacred by reason of their use, as also because of the superhuman dignity of her who owns them. Nay more, when the princes of this earth, tired of their vain efforts to stay the Church’s progress, will ask to be admitted as her children, a new necessity will arise from this: the supreme Pontiff can be no longer the subject of any temporal sovereign, and he himself must become King. The Christian world hails with joy this crowning of the work of Christ to whom all “power has been given in heaven and in earth,” (Matthew xxviii. 18) and who was one day to reign, with temporal power, in the person of his vicar.
Such is the Church: a spiritual, but, at the same time, an exterior and visible Society, just in the same way as man is spiritual because of his soul, and yet is material because of his body, which is an essential part of his being. The Christian, therefore, should love the Church such as God has made her: he should detest that false and hypocritical spiritualism which, with a view to subvert the work of Christ, would confine religion within the exclusively spiritual domain. We never can admit such a limitation. The Divine Word has assumed our flesh. He permitted His creature man to hear and see and handle Him, (John i. 1) and when He organised his Church on earth He made it speaking, visible and, so to say, palpable. We are a vast State. We have our King, our magistrates, our fellow-citizens, and we should be willing to lay down our lives for this supernatural country whose excellence is as far superior to that of our earthly country, as Heaven is better than the whole earth. Satan has an instinctive hatred for this country, which is to bring us to the Paradise from which he has been driven. He has used every means in his power to ruin it. He began by attacking the liberty of the word which is preached to men, and leads them to the Church. Did not his first agents forbid the Apostles to speak at all in the name of Jesus to any man? (Acts iv. 17, 18) The strategy was shrewd enough, and although it failed to arrest the progress of the Gospel, it has ever been resorted to by the enemy, even to this very day.
The powers of the world have always been jealous of the Christians assembling together. The jealousy began early, and has periodically manifested its fury during these [twenty] centuries. Frequently during a fit of persecution we have been obliged to flee to caves and forests, and seek the hours of night for our celebrations of the mysteries of light, and for our singing the praises of the Divine Sun of Justice. Our dearest churches, which had been erected by the piety of our ancestors, and were sacred by innumerable memories, how many times have they not been made ruins! Satan’s ambition is to efface every vestige of Christ’s kingdom on earth, for that kingdom is his defeat. The laws promulgated by the Church, and the communications of the pastors with one another and with the Sovereign Pontiff — these also have excited the most tyrannical jealousy. The right of self-government has been denied to the Church. Servile men have aided emperors and kings to fetter the Spouse of Christ. Her temporal possessions, too, have tempted the avarice of sovereigns. These possessions procured her independence. It was therefore considered necessary to rob her of them, that she might become the creature of the State. Wicked as the attempt was, and one which has brought the most terrible chastisements upon the countries where it was perpetrated, yet there is one more wicked still, which is even now being plotted, and aims at depriving of his Throne, venerable by its thousand years’ duration, the Pontiff who holds in his sacred hands the keys of the Kingdom of God. Meanwhile, the most detestable errors are being propagated. Among these we would mention one, which in spite of its impious absurdity, finds favour with thousands: we mean the doctrine that the Church should be purely spiritual, or, if it is to be a visible Church, that it should be an instrument in the hands of government for political purposes. Let us hold such doctrine in execration. Let us think of those countless martyrs who have shed their blood in order to the maintaining and securing to the Church of Christ her position as a society, visible, external, independent of every human power, in a word, complete in herself. It may be, that we are the last inheritors of the promise, and if so, it would be an additional reason for our proclaiming the rights of the Spouse of Christ, upon whom He has conferred the empire of the world, which only exists because of her, and will be destroyed as soon as it refuses her a resting place.
