Yes, but we have a different definition of “universal” than protestants.
Well, a lot of modern Protestants don’t think about it very deeply.
Of course Catholics and Protestants differ on the nature of the Catholic Church. But they are’t talking about two completely different, unrelated things. Hence I dislike the typographical convention catholic/Catholic and no longer use it if I can possibly avoid it.
When the various protestant churches wanted to use the Creed, they had to re-define the meaning of the word “Catholic” to make it work.
No, that’s not how it happened. They didn’t “want to use the Creed.” They never stopped using the Creed. And they came to a different view of what the Catholic Church was not “in order to use the Creed” but because they didn’t think the evidence supported the prevalent, deeply hierarchical definition.
They came up with the idea that the “universal” church was the collective body of Baptized people, using Paul’s analogy of the mystical Body of Christ. This idea is a protestant invention.
Nonsense. For starters, Protestants don’t simply say “all the baptized” but typically “baptized believers.” In terms of the visible Church, this of course means profession of faith. That is to say, we all agree that open apostates aren’t part of the Church. The idea that the Church is made up of all the baptized who profess the Faith is not a Protestant invention at all.
The Catholic Church does not accept this interpretation. For one thing, it just doesn’t work - Paul was using the analogy of a body to stress the importance of unity within the Church. Coming along 1500 years later and saying that it somehow explains the validity of disunity is far-fetched. It’s really the opposite of what Paul was saying.
Insofar as Protestants do that, absolutely.
But, of course, the Protestant definition of the Church doesn’t have to do that at all. On the contrary, if the Church is made up of all the baptized who profess faith in Christ, including people who are currently separated from each other, then seeking for the unity of all Christians is an urgent priority.
If, however, the Church remains essentially and necessarily one no matter how many baptized believers in Jesus may be found outside her boundaries, as Catholicism traditionally claims, then it’s not so clear why unity is so urgent. And that’s why pre-Vatican-II Catholicism was pretty cold to the ecumenical movement. The Church, in this paradigm, is already one. That people remain outside it is a tragedy
for them but doesn’t harm the Church.
So it’s simply not true that the Protestant paradigm implies the validity of disunity. It can of course go along with an indifference to the importance of unity, via a spiritualization of the concept, or for that matter of the Church itself. And often it does. But if anything, it’s harder to explain why unity is such a big deal in the
Catholic paradigm, since unity is simply a given that cannot be compromised by heresy and schism.
The Catholic Church has always defined “universal” as meaning “for all people, in all places, at all times.”
I’m not sure the Catholic definition of “Catholic” can be reduced to that.
The Catholic Church uses the term Catholic exclusively to refer to Churches with Apostolic foundation who have not otherwise forfeited their legitimacy (as the Anglicans did).
Can you give me an authoritative source for this definition? You are saying, then, that the Orthodox are Catholic in the Catholic view? I thought not. I thought that to be fully Catholic, in the “Roman Catholic” view, you have to be in union with Rome. What you’re describing as “Catholicity” was, I thought, the requirement for having a “valid particular church,” which then might not in fact be in union with the Catholic Church.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I would like to see the evidence.
The Catholic Church does not consider protestants to be, in any way, Catholic.
I think you’re wrong about the “in any way,” just as I think you’re wrong that the Catholic Church considers valid particular churches in schism to be Catholic. See for example
UR 1: “For men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect.”
(Many protestant communities also had to redefine the word “apostolic.” Suddenly it means “preach an Apostolic (ie, Biblical) doctrine.”)
There’s nothing “sudden” about this meaning. What is new in the Protestant understanding is the idea that this can be separated from the need for apostolic succession in an institutional sense.
Yes we are. Catholics don’t have a definition of “Catholic” which would admit protestants. Protestants have a definition of “Catholic” which would admit both. You can’t say it’s the same concept.
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We may be arguing semantics. I’m not saying they have the same view of what “Catholic” means, of course. I’m saying that the two meanings are not unrelated–they are two rival definitions of the same basic theological concept.
