The Spirit of Catholicism

Karl Adam

The Spirit of Catholicism

Forward

Analytical Contents

Chapter I: Introductory

Chapter II: Christ in the Church

Chapter III: The Church the Body of Christ

Chapter IV: Through the Church to Christ

Chapter V: The Foundation of the Church in the Light of the Teaching of Jesus

Chapter VI: The Church and Peter

Chapter VII: The Communion of Saints

Chapter VIII: The Communion of Saints

Chapter IX: The Catholicity of the Church

Chapter X: The Church Necessary for Salvation

Chapter XI: The Sacramental Action of the Church

Chapter XII: The Educative Action of the Church

Chapter XIII: Catholicism in Its Actuality

Forward

Karl Adam, one of the greatest of living theologians, was born in Bavaria in 1876, one of a family of ten. He received his education at the Classical Gymnasium at Amburg; the Philosophical and Theological Seminary at Regensburg; and received his Doctorate at the University of Munich in 1904. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1900 and spent the following two years doing parish work. His scholarly and theological interests soon became apparent and it was to this field that he naturally turned. In these early years his writing was specialized and was concentrated on the history of dogma. These earlier specialized works have never been translated but have been described by scholars in the field as outstanding.

In 1915 he became a professor at Munich and two years later assumed the Chair of Moral Theology at Strasbourg. In 1919 he went to the University of Tuebingen to take over the Chair of Dogmatic Theology. It was at Tuebingen that he delivered the famous lectures on the Church which brought him world-wide fame. He is also considered an outstanding authority of the theology of St. Augustine and is known for his great love for tradition and the Fathers of the Church.

His eminent position in the field of theology has been recognized for many years but his unswerving fidelity to his beliefs has often led him into great difficulties. A man of great dynamic force and personality, his style captivates readers and listeners alike, but any attempt to compromise or transmute his faith results in a forceful roar of protest.

In 1934 his integrity compelled him to deliver an outspoken denunciation of the so-called German religion in an address on “The Eternal Christ” which led him into difficulties with the Nazi government. He was threatened with physical harm, his house was riddled with bullets, his life was threatened and his right to lecture was denied him. So strong were the feelings that he aroused that he was forced to flee to the Bishop of Rottenburg for protection. Despite all such threats and attempts at intimidation he steadfastly clung to his position, refusing to compromise what he believed were basic truths.

His writings have all revolved around the necessity for an understanding of our relationship with Christ Himself with particular stress on the doctrine of the Mystical Body. He feels strongly that the doctrine of the Mystical Body is particularly suitable to the problems of our modern day, when mankind is desperately seeking a principle of unity. He constantly stresses this approach for a solution of world problems and just as categorically condemns mankind’s reliance on purely human or material bonds of unity.

It is this stress upon the common meeting place of all mankind which has resulted in his strong appeal to non-Catholics. For years he has been tremendously interested in and has been working tirelessly for a union of Christian faiths in one faith. This theme runs through all of his books. Even his earlier limited works such as “Tertullian’s Conception of the Church” and “Eucharistic Teaching of St. Augustine” reflected this concern. His later books, “Christ Our Brother,” “The Son of God,” “The Spirit of Catholicism” and “One And Holy” were increasingly preoccupied with this all important phase of man’s life on earth.

Of all his books “The Spirit of Catholicism” has probably been his most influential. Originally published in Germany in 1924, it has been translated into French, Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Hungarian, Latin, Chinese and Japanese. Since publication in the United States it has appeared in eleven printings.

“The Spirit Of Catholicism” was written to provide a calm, dispassionate, clearly written consideration of the fundamental concepts of the Catholic faith which would explain to all, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, exactly what the Catholic Church is. Karl Adam has brilliantly succeeded in achieving his purpose and “The Spirit of Catholicism” now stands as one of the finest introductions to the Catholic faith written in this century.

Analytical Contents

Chapter I: Introductory

An investigation into the fundamental nature of an infinitely various yet unitary thing. Not to be achieved without genuine sympathy and Catholic experience. Remarkable present-day interest in Catholicism. Two reasons for it: the imposing fact of the Church, the moral and intellectual needs of the modern man. Influential Protestant writers plead for a better understanding of Catholicism. Aim of this book to promote this understanding, in all truthfulness and charity.

Chapter II: Christ in the Church

Intimate union of the Church with Christ. Manifested in her dogma which centers round Christ, in her moral teaching which aims at making men like to Christ, in her worship which is performed through Christ. The sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Altar, a working of Christ among His people. The same union of the Church with Christ shown in her pastoral and teaching office, in her sacramental doctrine, in her disciplinary authority. The whole structure permeated and bound together by Christ.

Chapter III : The Church the Body of Christ

The Church not merely an invisible kingdom, but also a visible community. Fundamental importance of the community idea. The solidarity of mankind in sin and in redemption a basic conception of Christianity. The organism of the Church represents and enforces that solidarity. A unitary organism with inner differentiation of function. And possessing, of necessity, a visible expression of its unity, a visible head. Essential character of papal and episcopal authority Objections to it on the ground that it is inconsistent with our Lord’s teaching. In reality a service of the community in His name.

Chapter IV: Through the Church to Christ

The genesis of Catholic faith. Three cardinal points: God, Christ, the Church. The existence of God discernible by natural reason, but His love to be learnt only from revelation. Full faith in God attained by faith in Christ. How is faith in Christ attained? The apostles attained it preparatorily by His personal teaching, fulfillingly by the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit. So we also: preparatorily by the teaching of His living, apostolic Church, fulfillingly by the operation of His grace. Not from lifeless records, but from the living witness of a living organism sustained and animated by Him, from immediate contact with Christ living in His Church. Christianity more than a system of thought: a living stream of divine life flowing out from Christ and bearing His truth and His life, pure and uncontaminated, down the centuries.

Chapter V: The Foundation of the Church in the Light of the Teaching of Jesus

Was the Church founded by Christ Himself, or is it the creation of His disciples? The objection, that our Lord’s attitude towards Jewish religion and ecclesiastical authority is inconsistent with His foundation of a Church, scientifically untenable. The objections of the eschatological school. Examination of our Lord’s teaching concerning the coming of the Kingdom and concerning the end of the world. Chronological misconceptions of some of His disciples. The plain teaching of His parables. The foundation of the Church in the direct line of His thought: a Church in gradual process towards perfection and ever ordinated towards a supernatural and other-worldly goal.

Chapter VI: The Church and Peter

Special position of St. Peter among the twelve attested not only by the history of the primitive community, but by the witness of St. Paul. Unsatisfactory theories advanced in explanation of this pre-eminence. The all-sufficient explanation to be found in Matthew XVI, 13-19. This passage no Roman forgery or anti-Pauline interpolation. Significance of its details, especially of Simon’s new name with its immediate and universal success. Certain that he was given a special authority by Christ Himself. But does this appertain to his successors? The divine intentions of our Lord, the witness of history. The Church based on Peter the only guardian of genuine faith in Christ and the only hope for our civilization.

Chapter VII: The Communion of Saints

The meaning of the doctrine. The three-fold Church: the Church Militant, the Church Suffering and the doctrine of Purgatory, the Church Triumphant. The life of the saints in heaven one of infinite variety and fruitfulness. They co-operate effectively with the Head in the organic life of the Body of Christ. Variety of type and of glory. The special privilege and incomparable sanctity of Mary the Mother of God.

Chapter VIII: The Communion of Saints

Three vital movements within the Communion of Saints. (1) The communion of the Church Triumphant and Militant: veneration of the saints, their intercession for us and application of their merits to us, the doctrine of indulgences. (2) Communion of the Church Suffering and Militant: prayers and masses for the dead. (3) Communion of the members of the Church Militant among themselves: in the priesthood of Christ, in prayer, in faith (and the influence of this communion on the development of doctrine), in love.

Chapter IX: The Catholicity of the Church

The catholicity of the Church follows from her essential nature, and is based not only on the express injunction of our Lord but on the universal spirit which is manifest in His teaching. Falsity of the view which maintains that He had no universal aim. The Church of her nature international and supra-national. Her external catholicity based upon her internal catholicity which is manifested in two ways: in a complete acceptance of the full revelation of scripture and tradition, and in a complete acceptance and understanding of human nature. Reverencing the body and defending human reason, she provides for the whole man. Finally, she treasures all genuine values wherever they are to be found.

Chapter X: The Church Necessary for Salvation

Exclusiveness of the Church inevitable and a primitive conviction crystallized in St. Cyprian’s sentence: Outside the Church no salvation. Necessity of this exclusiveness to protect her being. The sentence not aimed at non-Catholic individuals, nor an unqualified denunciation of non-Catholic communions. Church’s belief in the validity of non-Catholic baptism and schismatical orders. Her belief also in non-Catholic piety and even sanctity. Pagans and the baptism of desire. No bounds to the operation of the grace of Christ. True meaning of the sentence, from the theological standpoint and the psychological. Persecution of heretics not to be attributed to the Church as such, but to the political temper and mental outlook of an age, and now forbidden by the canon law. Bona-fide non-Catholic a member of the soul of the Church. The invisible union of all true Christians must some day be a visible union.

Chapter XI: The Sacramental Action of the Church

Purpose of the Church the sanctification of men. This the work of grace, and therefore her chief duty the sacramental mediation of grace. Man not purely passive, but must cooperate with grace. His justification at the same time his sanctification, and the product the new man of supernatural charity. He has to grow continually in grace, and he may still fall from grace. This doctrine not responsible for the malady of scrupulosity. The seven sacraments give the Catholic a real and immediate experience of God’s action. Deep influence in Catholic piety of the Mass, of the Real Presence, of the practice of Confession. Skill with which the Church employs these sacramental realities, especially in associating them with the regular course of human life. Extends her sanctifying action to the whole framework of human life and pursues a constant effort to bring God down to men.

Chapter XII: The Educative Action of the Church

The Church has to raise men to God by her teaching and moral discipline. Fundamental means to this end is her divine authority. Relation of authority to the individual conscience. Possibility of serious conflict. Paramount rights of conscience, in and through which authority must work. Second great means the other-worldliness of her teaching. Produces a special Catholic temper, detachment from the world and asceticism, yet no denial of natural values. True meaning of asceticism. Celibacy and the monastic life. The comprehensive ideal of the Church the man of perfect love. Effects of her work on her children.

Chapter XIII : Catholicism in Its Actuality

The reality at variance with the ideal. In the first place man cannot adequately conceive and represent God, and the divine must necessarily suffer in its incarnation. The medieval Inquisition, the persecution of witches, corruption in head and members. In the second place there is the conflict between authority and human liberty, and between the claims of personality and the claims of the community. Thirdly there is the conflict between piety and formalism. These difficulties find their solution in Catholic eschatology. The Church of this world necessarily imperfect, yet the gates of hell will not prevail against it and truth will always ultimately triumph. The Church too has to struggle for the crown. God permits so much weakness out of His very goodness. Love of the Catholic for his Church.

Chapter I: Introductory

“The truth shall make you free” (John viii, 32).

What is Catholicism? By that question we do not merely ask what is that characteristic quality which distinguishes Catholicism from other forms of Christianity; we go deeper than that, and seek to discover what is its governing idea and what are the forces set in motion by this idea. We ask what is the single basic thought, what is the essential form that gives life to the great structure which we call Catholicism? Regarded from the outside Catholicism has the appearance of a confused mass of conflicting forces, of an unnatural synthesis, of a mixture of foreign, nay contradictory, elements. And for that reason there have been those who have called it a complex of opposites. The religious historian, Heiler, believes that he can discern as many as seven essentially different strata in a cross-section of this vast structure.[1] So enormously rich and manifold and conflicting do the particular elements of Catholicism seem to the student of comparative religion, that he supposes that he must at the outset discard the notion of an organic development of a primitive Christianity which was planted by Christ Himself, and must regard Catholicism as the coalescence of evangelical and non-evangelical elements, of Jewish and heathen and primitive constituents, as a vast syncretism which has simply taken up into itself all those religious forms in which men have ever expressed their religious striving and hope, and has fused them together into a unity. And so, for the religious historian, Catholicism becomes a microcosm of the world of religion.[2]

We Catholics do not quarrel with the methods of the religious historian, so long as he keeps within his proper limits, within the limits of historical data and proved historical fact, and so long as he does not claim in his classification of religious types to pass decisive judgment upon the essential nature of the religious structure which he has under examination. We Catholics acknowledge readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the Gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn. There is no mechanical identity, but an organic identity. And we go further and say that thousands of years hence Catholicism will probably be even richer, more luxuriant, more manifold in dogma, morals, law and worship than the Catholicism of the present day. A religious historian of the fifth millennium A.D. will without difficulty discover in Catholicism conceptions and forms and practices which derive from India, China and Japan, and he will have to recognize a far more obvious complex of opposites.” It is quite true, Catholicism is a union of contraries. But contraries are not contradictories. Wherever there is life, there you must have conflict and contrary. Even in purely biblical Christianity, and especially in Old Testament religion, these conflicts and contraries may be observed. For only so is there growth and the continual emergence of new forms. The Gospel of Christ would have been no living gospel, and the seed which He scattered no living seed, if it had remained ever the tiny seed of A.D. 33, and had not struck root, and had not assimilated foreign matter, and had not by the help of this foreign matter grown up into a tree, so that the birds of the air dwell in its branches. So we are far from begrudging the religious historian the pleasure of reading off the inner growth of Catholicism by means of the annual rings of its trunk, and of specifying all those elements which its living force has appropriated from foreign sources. But we refuse to see in these elements thus enumerated the essence of Catholicism, or even to grant that they are “structural elements of Catholicism” in the sense that Catholicism did not achieve historical importance save through them. For the Catholic is intimately conscious that Catholicism is ever the same, yesterday and to-day, that its essential nature was already present and manifest when it began its journey through the world, that Christ Himself breathed into it the breath of life, and that He Himself at the same time gave the young organism those germinal aptitudes which have unfolded themselves in the course of the centuries in regular adaptation to the needs and requirements of its environment. Catholicism recognizes in itself no element that is inwardly foreign to it, that is not itself, that does not derive from its original nature.

And so, with this consciousness, Catholicism finds in-adequate all those descriptions of its essential nature which are based merely on the study of comparative religion. For such descriptions are superficial, they touch only the hem of its garment. They are in some sort like the naive, childish, not to say silly conceptions of certain heated controversialists, for whom Catholicism is lust of power, saint-worship and “jesuitry.” Such people have not discerned that deep source whence its life in all its manifestations flows forth, and which gives the whole an organic unity. “He has the parts within his hand, but not, alack! the spirit band.”[3] The attempt of the religious historian is at its best like an attempt to explain the life of a living cell by mere enumeration of all the material that forms it. To describe a thing is not to explain it fully. And so this purely descriptive research calls for something beyond itself, for a scientific investigation into the essential nature of Catholicism.

The Catholic of a living faith, and he alone, can make this investigation. Our investigation goes only so deep as our love goes. An attitude of mere neutrality, or a cold realism is of no use here. Or, rather, only the man who himself lives in the Catholic life-stream, who in his own life daily feels the forces which pulsate through the vast body of Catholicism and which make it what it is: only he can know the full meaning and complete reality of it. Just as the loving child alone can truly know the character of its beloved mother, and just as the deepest elements of that character, the tenderness and intimacies of her maternal love, cannot be demonstrated by argument but only learnt by experience, just so only the believing and loving Catholic can see into the heart of Catholicism, and feeling, living, experiencing, discover with that “esprit de finesse” of which Pascal speaks, that is with the comprehensive intuition of his innermost soul, the secret forces and fundamental motive powers of its being. And so an investigation into the nature of Catholicism inevitably becomes a confession of faith, an expression of the Catholic consciousness. It is nothing else, and seeks to be nothing else, than the simple analysis of this consciousness, and becomes of itself an analysis of the Church’s self-consciousness. It is the answer to the question: How does the Catholic experience his Church, how does it work on him, where lie for him the creative forces of Catholicism, the intimate center of its creative being?

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