How Big is the Catholic Church?

May 15th, 2009 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Undoubtedly we must answer:  she is enormous but her dogmas wield the precision of a razor.  It would be fallacious to say that this sort of exactness in thought were a Western peculiarity or confined to Roman Christianity as if the largeness of truth could rid this point of its power.  We might as well say that the law of non-contradiction is a Greek trait or that apple pie is confined to America as if Brazilians might freely contradict themselves or Mongolians could not appreciate the delicacy of apples baked inside sweetened bread.

The Catholic Church is much larger than Latin Christianity or Eastern Orthodoxy.  Don’t get carried away with that though – it’s also bigger than Eastern Mysticism or Western materialism. And to affirm the monstrous breadth of Catholicity is not to admit that the East is partially right in their rejection of the Papacy nor that the West made a mistake at Trent any more than it means that Shintoism falls under the umbrella of divine truth or that Hollywood has something insightful to teach the Church.

Yes, we say that the Church is big and that Catholicity cannot be pinned down under mere human opinions but we err greatly if we fail to balance this truth with the fact that the Catholic dogmas are as narrow as a mathematical theorem.

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