If you define “visible church” as an organization…we disagree…if “visible church” is comprised of very real people who share new life in Christ and who work together regardless of the organization they represent…I too believe in a very very “visible church”…made one by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.
From
This Rock:
Let us examine the Church as we find it in the New Testament. What kind was it? Our Lord began by speaking of it as a kingdom that was at hand. “Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). When he sent the Twelve to preach to the Jews only he told them: “Going preach, saying: The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 10:7). We must not consider these phrases “the kingdom of God” and “the kingdom of heaven” indiscriminately as referring directly and immediately to the Church. They have various shades of meaning, but they may be summed up by saying that they refer to God’s rule in our hearts, the principles that separate us from the kingdom of the devil, the world and the flesh, the rule of grace and the Church as a divine society through which we are certain of attaining Christ’s spirit and winning the kingdom of heaven after death. This kingdom would be transferred from the Jews to the Gentiles: “Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). Christ’s Church was to replace the synagogue, which was an organized religious society. So we would expect the Church to be likewise an organized society. Many of our Lord’s parables make it clear that he was referring to the kingdom in this world and not only to the heaven of the future, for example, the parables of the sower, the wheat, the net, the leaven, and the mustard seed.
…
We must think particularly of the significance of an incident related by Matthew:If thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between him and thee alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them, tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican. (Matt. 18:15–17)Those words “tell the Church” are important. We might translate even more accurately “appeal to the Church.” You cannot appeal to what you cannot see. Therefore any idea that the Church consists merely of those who make an act of faith in Christ, whose number is known to God alone, cannot be sustained in the light of this text. Moreover, the Church is a visible body with jurisdiction. You cannot appeal to the Church in case of a dispute if the Church has no power to make a decision. Our Lord is definite: Those who deliberately reject the authority of the Church must be cut off from communion. That is what a Jew would have understood by “let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.” There is no question here of the Church referred to being any other than the Church that Christ founded. This is a clear statement by our blessed Lord himself, God, of the authoritative power of his Church. Paul acted upon it in the case of the incestuous Corinthian (1 Cor. 5:1–8). Although he was absent he bade them carry out the sentence he had pronounced in his name and that of Christ. On this passage St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the Corinthian “is thus separated from the society of the faithful, deprived of the sacraments and the suffrages of the Church, by all of which things a man is defended from the assaults of the devil.”
