Robert Haddad

Robert Haddad is the Convenor of the Sydney University Catholic Chaplaincy and is an internationally recognised apologist (defender of the Faith). 

Objection: “All Churches that believe in Christ and the Bible are the same. In any case, I don’t need to attend any church to worship God. All I need is a personal relationship with Christ which I can have by praying and reading the Bible on my own.” 

The Protestant Reformation introduced new and radically different concepts concerning the nature and role of the Church. In contrast to long held doctrines such as the Communion of Saints and the corporate view of the Church as the Body of Christ, Protestantism asserted an individualistic Christianity that focused on one’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ to the exclusion of any need for a Church or other visible organization. One modern-day anti-Catholic sums up the Evangelical approach to the Church as follows: 

“salvation is found, not in a Church and its sacraments, but through a personal relationship with Christ himself. Salvation is given directly by Christ to an individual, without the need for any other mediation.”1 

However, faith in Jesus Christ not only obliges the Christian to have trust and commitment in His person, but to believe in and follow what He taught and established to continue His work of salvation in the world. That Our Lord Jesus Christ intended to establish an authoritative Church of His own is clear from Sacred Scripture: “and on this rock I will build my Church” (St. Matt. 16:18). 

The Church belongs to Christ as He founded her while still on earth. Being her founder He is also her head: “Christ is the head of the church, his body” (Eph. 5:23). Those baptized in the name of the Trinity (St. Matt. 28:19) are incorporated into Christ’s Body, that is, the Church. In no way is the Church simply a man-made institution established centuries later bearing the name of the particular heresiarch who spawned its existence. Rather, she is a divine institution which requires the membership of all those who claim the title of Christian. 

Denying the absolute necessity of the Church in the economy of salvation, Protestantism also denies the visibility of the Church, insisting instead that it is simply the collection of the “true believers” or “saved” whoever and wherever they may be. However, the visibility of the Church is implied in St. Matt. 5:14:“A city built on a hill cannot be hid.” Furthermore, rather than being only a nebulous collection of “true believers,” Christ established His Church with a hierarchical authority to govern it (St. Luke 6:13; St. Matt. 18:17-18), invested it with His own mission (St. John 20:21), the power to sanctify the faithful (St. John 15:16) and to forgive sins (St. John 20:23), as well as the authority to teach (St. Matt. 28:20) and to baptize (St. Matt. 28:19). 

As head of this visible and hierarchical Church, Christ appointed St. Peter as His Vicar, or representative:  

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (St. Matt. 16:18). 

As Vicar and head of the Church on earth, St. Peter is invested with Christ’s own authority to rule and govern:  

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (St. Matt. 16:18-19).  

St. Peter and the Apostles, as rulers of the Church on earth, are to be obeyed: 

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account” (Heb. 13:17).

To obey St. Peter and the Apostles, and logically their successors, is to obey Christ: 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives any one whom I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (St. John 13:20).  

The Scriptures themselves show that the Apostles handed on their office through the laying of hands to subsequent generations as their successors (Acts 13:2; 1 Tim. 4:14; Tit. 5-10). To believe that the written New Testament replaced the authority of the Apostles after the death of St. John, is to deny historical reality and believe erroneously that the Church founded by Christ subsequently changed in her essence. 

Those who ignore the legitimate leaders of Christ’s Church through their own disobedience no longer belong to her unity: 

“if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (St. Matt. 18:17). 

To ignore the leaders of the Church, one effectively ignores Christ: 

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (St. Luke 10:16). 

It is the Church that guarantees that the faithful are taught truth, assisted by the Holy Spirit: 

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” (St. John 14:16). 

“if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). 

The Protestant assertion that Christians need only pray and read the Bible privately in their own homes or in fellowship groups has only resulted in the birth of over 35,000 different Protestant denominations all claiming to be “Bible-believing,” yet agreeing on little more than their anti-Catholic tenets. They fulfil the very words of St. Peter himself who warned of the “ignorant and unstable” who “twist” the Scriptures “to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16). 

Despite the disobedience and protestations of its enemies and the rebellious, Christ will protect His Church until the end of time: 

“the gates of hades will not prevail against it” (St. Matt. 16:18).  

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (St. Matt. 28:20). 

Second objection: “So Christ did found a Church. But that Church is definitely not the apostate Church of Rome!” 

Not only did Our Lord establish a Church, but he also made that Church identifiable according to certain marks. To qualify as a mark the means of identification must possess two aspects: (i) it must be an outwardly visible sign objectively evident to everyone, including non-Christians; (ii) it must be an essential characteristic without which the Church would not be the Church of Christ. 

According to the Presbyterian minister Loraine Boettner,  

The marks of a true church are:

1. The true preaching of the Word of God.

2. The right administration of the sacraments. And,

3. The faithful exercise of discipline.”2 

One obvious difficulty with Boettner’s marks is that they do not include a test to determine whether the church in question was actually founded by Christ. Furthermore, his criteria (based on Calvin’s) do not aim to discover “the true Church” but “a true church.” Any man-made institution could therefore claim to be a true church so long as it fulfils the three above outlined points. We would soon end up with the absurd situation of having many true churches each considering themselves to be teaching the truth concerning the word of God, the sacraments and discipline, while having no unity of belief, government or discipline between themselves. This absurd situation is what some hope to replace the Catholic Church with.

The real marks of the true Church, which are visible and essential, number four. They are: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. These marks are found in Scripture, are based on reason and can be defended by it.

One 

“I will build my Church” (St. Matt. 16:18). The true Church is founded and built by Christ. Christ founded one Church, not many. Protestantism is not one united body in doctrine and discipline, but a series of disparate organizations antagonistic not only to Catholicism but also often to each other. 

“One flock, one shepherd” (St. John 10:16). The central authority of the Pope of Rome has kept the Catholic Church united in doctrine and discipline since the days of the Roman Empire. Protestantism continues to splinter with the advent of each new self-appointed “prophet” or minister who claims to hold the true meaning of Scripture.

Holy 

“And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth” (St. John 17:19). 

The true Church will be holy in her founder, teachings and worship. There is no guarantee that all its members will practise what she preaches as is gathered from Our Lord’s images of the sower of the seed (St. Matt. 13:18-23), the net enclosing the fish (St. Matt. 13:47-52), and the sheep and the goats (St. Matt. 25:31-46). The survival of the Catholic Church—despite the examples of half a dozen bad Popes (out of 265), and other scandals—only reinforces the fact that the holiness of the Church derives from Christ and Him alone. In any case, Protestantism is far from free when it comes to scandal, and none of its founders can claim to match the holiness of any Catholic saint, let alone Christ Himself.

Catholic 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (St. Matt. 28:19). 

Remaining essentially one and the same, the Church adapts to all times, places and people. No nation or race is excluded from her fold, no language from proclaiming her Gospel. Those who assert that the true believers are only white and Anglo-Saxon limit the redeeming power of Christ’s Precious Blood. Christ opened His arms on the Cross for all peoples and nations, hence the true Church must be universal, not simply a national church based on race, or subject to a particular king or parliament.

Apostolic

The true Church will trace its history, episcopal succession and doctrine right back to the Apostles themselves: “I am with you always” (St. Matt. 28:20). It was not established in 1517, 1534, 1540, in the nineteenth century, or last week in California. It must have existed since the Apostles, exist now, and continue until the end of the world. 

Only the Catholic Church can show herself to be One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.  
 

The Fathers 

St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 42, 1 (c. 98 AD)

“The Apostles received the Gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God’s will. Receiving their instructions and being full of confidence on account of the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the word of God, they went forth in the complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the good news that the Kingdom of God is coming. Through countryside and city they preached; and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty: for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. Indeed, Scripture somewhere says: ‘I will set up their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith’.” 

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3, 4, 1 (c. 180 AD)

“When, therefore, we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek among others the truth which is easily obtained from the Church. For the Apostles, like a rich man in a bank, deposited with her most copiously everything which pertains to the truth; and everyone who wishes draws from her the drink of life. For she is the entrance to life, while all the rest are thieves and robbers. That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them, while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth ... In the Church, God has placed apostles, prophets and doctors, and all the other means through which the Spirit works; in all of which none have any part who do not conform to the Church. On the contrary, they defraud themselves of life by their wicked opinion and most wretched behavior. For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God, there is the Church and every grace.” 

Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 7, 17, 107, 3 (ante 217 AD)

“From what has been said, then, it seems clear to me that the true Church, that which is really ancient, is one; and in it are enrolled those who, in accord with a design are just ... We say, therefore, that in substance, in concept, in origin and in eminence, the ancient and Catholic Church is alone, gathering as it does into the unity of the one faith which results from the familiar covenants––or rather, from the one covenant in different times, by the will of the one God and through the one Lord––those already chosen, those predestined by God, who knew before the foundation of the world that they would be just.” 

St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter to Florentius Pupianus 66 (69), 8 (254 AD)

“There speaks Peter, upon whom the Church would be built, teaching in the name of the Church and showing that even if a stubborn and proud multitude withdraws because it does not wish to obey, yet the Church does not withdraw from Christ. The people joined to the priest and the flock clinging to their shepherd are the Church.”  

St. Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity 7, 4 (c. 357 AD)

“The Church, instituted by the Lord and confirmed by the Apostles, is one for all men; but the frantic folly of the diverse impious sects has cut them off from her. It cannot be denied that this tearing asunder of the faith has arisen from the defect of poor intelligence, which twists what is read to conform to its opinion, instead of adjusting its opinion to the meaning of what is read. However, while individual parties fight among themselves, the Church stands revealed not only by her own doctrines, but by those also of her adversaries. And although they are all ranged against her, she confutes the most wicked error which they all share, by the very fact that she is alone and one.” 

St. John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God 3, 6 (c. 387 AD)

“You cannot pray at home as at church, where there is a great multitude, where exclamations are cried out to God as from one great heart, and where there is something more: the union of minds, the accord of souls, the bond of charity, the prayers of the priests.” 
 

Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566)

Pt. I, Ch. X:    The true Church is also to be recognized from her origin, which can be traced back under the law of grace to the Apostles; for her doctrine is the truth not recently given, nor now first heard of, but delivered of old by the Apostles, and disseminated throughout the entire world. Hence no one can doubt that the impious opinions which heresy invents, opposed as they are to the doctrines taught by the Church from the days of the Apostles to the present time, are very different from the faith of the true Church.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) 

“Outside the Church there is no salvation” 

No. 846: How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Reformulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body: 

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.  

No. 847: This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: 

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.