Excerpt from Trinitarian Ecclesiology
April 4, 2024
Venerable Fulton Sheen once famously said that “there are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be—which is, of course, quite a different thing.” This is true for people of every nation of the world throughout history since the Church’s founding by Christ. Although the Catholic Church exists in the world and is encountered by people of every nation and tongue, her true nature and mission is nevertheless opaque to most, especially in our modern world that rejects not only divine revelation but even natural knowledge of God obtainable by reason. Rather than perceiving a mystery that contains the presence of God and provides us with the means to attain our perfect happiness in him, many see the Church as an outdated human institution that limits, and even threatens, our freedom. This raises the question of the proper understanding of the Church. What is the nature of the Church and what is her mission? Charles Cardinal Journet, who authored a scientific and sapiential treatise on the Church in the last century, L’Église du Verbe incarné, outlines three different ways of perceiving the Church that correspond to how one regards Christ.