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Incarnational theology and the Church.
Church - assembly, meeting, convocation. The Kingdom of God on earth governed by apostolic authority.
Jesus Christ, as is strinkingly evident on every page of the Gospel, represented Himself to the world as the founder of the kingdom of God, which in its earthly phase is ordained to gather together all men (cf. the parables of the kingdom): the people.
As rulers of the kingdom He appointed the Apostles (cf. Luke 6:13; Matthew 18:15-18; John 20:21; Matthew 28:18-19 etc.): the clergy in the people.
As head of the Apostles He constituted St. Peter (cf. Matthew 16:18-19; John 21:17): the primacy of the clergy.
With these elements our Lord instituted a real society, hierarchically constituted (with subjects and superiors), visible to the eyes of all, but with a non-political and religious end (cf. Matthew 4:3-10; 5:3-12; 6:33; 16:26,27, etc.), assigning it the functions of applying, through the centuries, the fruits of the Redemption.
From this we clearly understand that the Church is the prolongation of the Incarnate Word, His Mystical Body (Romans 12:4-16; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 4:4), which actualizes in each individual as in all humanity the work of the Redemption, through the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass and the exercise of the triple ecclesiastical power - teaching, ministry, jurisdiction.
As its founder is a Person subsisting both in the human and in the divine nature, so the Church is at the same time a human and divine society; the human element visible, perceptible to the senses, consists of the multitude of men and women socially organized; the spiritual, invisible, divine element is furnished by the supernatural gifts which put the human aggregate under the influence of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, Soul and unitive Principle of the whole organism. The Church is therefore, the union of man with Christ in a social form, the social synthesis of the human and the divine.
If the Church is the union of humanity with Christ in a social, hierarchically organized form, it has to be necessarily one, since Christ is one and the human race is race; it has to be holy, because contact with Christ is sanctifying; it must be catholic, i.e., universal, since the union of humanity in Christ embraces (in tendency) all the individuals of the human species; it must be apostolic, because, since it is a union in hierarchical form, it is necessarily based on Peter and the Apostles and their successors, who constitute the hierarchy.
One, holy, catholic, apostolic: These are the four properties of the Spouse of Christ: its individual characteristics which become also marks of identification; when considered in historical reality they appear to the eyes of all as distinctive signs of the true institution of Jesus Christ.
Being human-divine, visible and invisible, the Church operates in a way corresponding to its nature: through a teaching body which transmits the divine thought in the clothing of human words; through a ministry which, by means of sensible rites, the sacraments, infuses supernatural life; through government which makes known the laws of the spirit in a form perceptible to the experience of the senses.
Since the Church is the prolongation of Christ in time and space, there is a very striking analogy between the Christological and the ecclesiological errors. Just as some erred with respect to Christ by denying His divinity (Jews, Gentiles, rationalists), His humanity (Docetae), or others by separating the two natures (Nestorians), or by absorbing one nature in the other (Monophtsites); so also with respect to the Church, some deny her divinity or divine mission in the world (Jews, pagans, rationalists), her humanity or visibility (Wyclife, Huss, Protestants), her social, external perfection hinged on the Roman Pontiff (Eastern Schismatics, Gallicans, Febronians, etc.); others separate her from the civil society (liberals).
