The Church that Christ came to found was to teach truth. From this central idea it is possible to show that in consequence the Church of Christ must be holy, for else the purpose of truth is vain (moreover, the Master prayed His Father to sanctify His children in truth); it must be Catholic, for it is the very glory of truth that it knows no boundaries, nor divisions of intelligence nor of language nor of race; it must be apostolic, for it has not only to show its possession of truth, but that it was commissioned by Christ also to teach that truth; and, finally, it can be shown that for the self-same reason the Church that Christ came to found must be one and the same all the world over. Once, indeed, it is granted that to teach truth is the proper purpose of the Church, then the unity of the Church is self-evident. For if it is certain that there can be no boundaries to the limit of the empire of truth, if there can be no language or race or age that can escape its power, thin assuredly it must be one and undivided also. If it is to reach over all the world, then over all the world it must be one. If it has to break down the artificial or natural partitions raised up by man's division of the earth, it can do this only at the expense of being the same everywhere. Truth may be many-sided, as the philosophers of the last generation loved to explain, but it can afford to be many-sided only because it means one thing only from one point of view. But truth as truth must be one and the same always. If it is true that Christ is God, this does not mean that He is not also man; but it does mean that He must be recognized as God always and every where. No doubt in His death He died as man -simply, for God as God could not die; yet for all that we must say that it was God who died. Because He is God, He is God always. Hence the Church of Christ that is really faithful to His name will always preach the same doctrine.
Here, then, oddly enough, or rather quite rightly, we come on the ordinary accusation against the Catholic Church, namely, that she never will change. Her opponents, whose name and whose quarrel is legion, at least agree in this, that it is characteristic of Catholicism to be found the same in all the world. In every place where she has set up her altars, she comes with one single faith and she demands its acceptance by all her children. There cannot be one teaching for those who are clever, and one for those who are rich, and one for those who are in revolt against the con ditions of their life. For all there must be some one message that comes out of eternity, from the lips of God who dwelleth in eternity, and therefore which will be above all the restless ebb and flow of changing time. Centuries may vary in their ideas of what is graver and what is lesser evil. Men may have one custom today and another tomorrow; they may declare that a rate of wage which troubled no man's conscience in the generation that is gone would be scandalous to the next; but through it all there must be one only truth. The traditions may alter, but the truth remains. This, then, is just what the Church has always clung to. When, for example, a new question comes to be discussed, it is her way to find out what has been the teaching of the past upon it, or rather upon some similar aspect of truth, so convinced is she that she must hold fast to that which was, for since it was true yesterday, it is true today as well. In whatever land she is found, she teaches the same doctrine; and in her faith, her sacraments, and her head she is one and the same the whole world over.
It is this that should give me a truer notion of my faith. There is always the temptation especially when I mix, as indeed I cannot help doing, with people who have no fixed teaching at all to wish that I could alter some of the things I have learnt as a child. I seem to see that it would make for the spread of the Church if I could only throw over one point or another, go back upon this doctrine or that, explain away some decision of some Pope in some bygone age. The dead weight of the past seems to lie heavy on the Church. Of course, if the thing in question is merely some disciplinary matter, I may advocate and work for its being set aside; or if a doctrine is merely propounded without the decisive voice of the Shepherd and Teacher of the flock, I may hope that the straitness of the teaching may be modified. But if the question concerns some definite matter that has been decided by the infallible decree of the Vicar of Christ, then I can only bow my intelligence. I am of eternity; I am of truth. Eternity cannot change; nor can truth be other than it always is. The Church is one because she teaches the eternal truth of Christ; and I must submit myself loyally to that unity, without which I should find myself in the midst of the chaos and confusion that is of man, but cannot be of God. Always, then, I must bring myself back to the spirit of our Blessed Lord when He prayed for the unity of His disciples and of all who should through their word believe in Him, that upon us all should descend the very oneness of God. I am one in faith with Catholics over all the world. Let me endeavour by holding fast to truth to bring others too into that one fold, conscious that unity built on any other foundation than truth cannot survive.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.