4.      “Arcanum Dei” (1922). St. Augustine delights to describe this Church authority as a ministry of love. cf. Praesunt non ut praesint, sed ut prosint (Contra Faustum XXII, 56). Sic praeest fratribus, ut eorum servum se esse meminerit (Contra ep. Parm. III, 3, 16).

Chapter IV: Through the Church to Christ

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. xviii, 20).

Behind our inquiry into the nature of Catholicism, there lie necessarily the question of the living God and the question of the mystery of Christ.

It is of course impossible to set forth even roughly, still less to solve, the whole mass of problems connected with these questions. Let it be sufficient to show clearly and simply the way by which the Catholic comes to the living God and to Christ. In this process we shall find that further light will be thrown on the nature of Catholicism, so as to illuminate its manner of seeing, thinking and feeling.

The structure of Catholic faith may be summarized in a single sentence: I come to a living faith in the Triune God through Christ in His Church. I experience the action of the living God through Christ realizing Himself in His Church.

So we see that the certitude of Catholic faith rests on the sacred triad: God, Christ, Church.

How does the Catholic attain certitude about God, and achieve his “I believe”? He comes thereto finally by the way of revelation and grace, but in the first instance and preparatorily by the way of natural reason. The Vatican Council lays it down that God, as the beginning and end of all things, can be certainly known, by the natural light of reason from the visible world. This knowledge of God will be more easily attained, the more clearly we are conscious that the quest after God, the religious inquiry and investigation, is specifically different from any profane inquiry, as for instance an investigation into the habits of insects. The conditional, finite, imperfect character of our being gives the religious inquiry this specific character. If I consider my own nature I readily discover that I am not an absolute being, but utterly and entirely conditioned. Everywhere I find bounds and limits. Everywhere are lines which suddenly break off short. The fact that there is an Absolute is not the laborious product of speculative philosophy, but rather the mediate consequence of a dispassionate consideration of my being. For when I recognize that I am a conditioned being, by that very fact I affirm the existence of the Absolute. Thus I reach without more ado the practical judgment that my utterly conditioned being is ordinated to and postulates an Absolute. I do not stand on the same level with the Absolute. And so my mental attitude towards this Absolute must have a moral and religious character, that is to say that it must be characterized by humility, reverence, purity and love.