If only the RCC is the body of Christ, then where was it in the book of Acts? Christians were known as the “people of the way”. Was there no body? This does not make sense.
I never said the Roman Catholic Church. I said the Catholic Church. The RCC is the Latin Rite of the one Catholic Church. Even in the first years of the Church they identified as Catholic because people did back then what they do today. They split from the church. They are still Christian because of the basic common beliefs. Referring to the church as Christ’s mystical body is common language in the Catholic faith. When we are baptized we are taken up into his mystical body. We cannot enter heaven except through Him, with Him and IN Him. We are once entered into Him through baptism. We alone merit nothing however when we stay “in Christ” that also entails us to live in a “state of grace”. Living righteously as he did and rejecting sin. When we do these things we raise up His mystical body because we are in Him. When we sin we raise evil up and allow evil to enter the Church. Also the book of Acts and the Bible in general is not the only place to look for facts because it does not say that in the Bible. Perhaps 1 Corinthians can help.
One Body, Many Parts.
12*As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.
13*For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.
14*Now the body is not a single part, but many.
15*If a foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
16*Or if an ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
17*If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
18*But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended.
19*If they were all one part, where would the body be?
20*But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21*The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.”
22*Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary,
23*and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable we surround with greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety,
24*whereas our more presentable parts do not need this. But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,
25*so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.
26*If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.
Application to Christ.
27*Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.
