Okay. Can we talk about Catholic Church as being a visible, living, organized structure? Exactly how is the Protestant church not visible and living and organized? …
But Catholics don’t believe the Church is a building either, right?
Right. I think when Protestants say this, it is because they really do have a tendency to identify their building with their church, whether or not they want to say that.
To illustrate, I just asked a teenager who was chatting with me, what church she belonged to (after she asked me what church I “attended”). Her answer surprised me, but I see that it is a protestant answer. She answered with the location of the church building. I still don’t know what denomination or constitution or faith content she embraces. I took it from her, instead, that that building is where her whole church meets, and so the building and the group of people become identified with each other.
When you ask a Catholic what church he belongs to, he says, the Catholic Church. If you ask him where he attends church, he will answer with the location of the building where he goes most often, or maybe with a couple of locations, depending on what day and time he is catching Mass. If he’s on vacation, on the road, he will just be going to Mass wherever he finds a building!
I further think that the Catholic Church is visible as a body to the world in a way no protestant congregation/church can be. For we have the visible head of Christ on earth. We have Christ’s Prime Minister, and he is the bishop of Rome. Our current Pope was born Joseph Ratzinger, of a no-doubt nice Bavarian lady. He is visible from the balcony over St. Peter’s square on Wednesdays for everybody to see. He is the successor to St. Peter, and he has St. Peter’s Keys and Authority. He and the rest of the bishops when they act together with him, are the extension of the Apostles themselves into our Catholic church buildings over the world.
This is more concrete, visible and organized than the protestant model, right? Then don’t forget the Eucharist–we see Our Lord in That, as we receive him substantially, literally. The Sacraments are all very visible or, in the case of Confession, audible. Our Church, and her Sacraments are palpable to the senses; the head of our church keeps us together in one body till Our Lord comes again! We all believe the same truths, receive the same sacraments, obey the same church laws, are under the authority of the same pope.
As far as living, maybe we can say that the Catholic church is more properly alive than our protestant counterparts because, we count our “family tree” all the way back to the Peter and the Apostles, and therefore to Christ, who founded our Church and breathed into them and into her the Holy Spirit, to animate and sanctify Her til the end of time.
