407. The things which pertain to the constitution of the Church must be unfolded and demonstrated in the whole series of this disputation. Yet it will be helpful to propose its idea summarily in advance, so that the treatment may proceed more clearly. But if the character of any society whatsoever cannot be rightly defined unless one inspects the fact from which it was, as it were, born, this must be said a fortiori of the Church, which is a supernatural institution, and as a whole depends upon the free will of her Founder. Wherefore the assertion of Kant is evidently absurd (Religion within the Limits of Reason, trans. Trullard, Paris, 1841, page 174), who on the contrary contends that it is impossible to attain the genuine nature of universal religion unless we prescind from fact. Compare Taparelli (Essay, etc., volume 2, nn. 1410 ff.).
408. Therefore, first, it is established not only among Catholics but even among the Innovators that the Church contains something invisible of herself, and is a spiritual and supernatural society. She is indeed a society: 1) spiritual, namely insofar as she has been made and prepared divinely for this purpose, that proximately she sanctify her members according to the appointed norm, and then, which is its fruit and crown, bring them to eternal beatitude; and in this way finally promote the external glory of God. 2) She is supernatural, namely she is a society whose origin, means, and end, having passed beyond every exigency of human nature, are owed to God, who, just as moved by His goodness He advanced the human race from the beginning to an undue or supernatural state, so moved by His mercy He wholly willed to restore it, fallen, to that same state. Compare Schrader (On Roman Unity, book 1, page 16).
409. But secondly, it is no less certain, as will be proved below, that some sensible element belongs to the Church, and that therefore she is a visible society. For it was established by Christ, to touch upon some things already: 1) the mode of aggregation, baptism; 2) the principal condition was prescribed, faith; 3) the object to be believed and done was proposed: whatever I have commanded you; 4) an authentic magisterium and tribunal was instituted, in whose possession would be the integrity of doctrine and the supreme power of making laws, judging, and punishing: teach, I am with you; the keys of loosing and binding were conferred; and unless he shall hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican; 5) twelve were called and chosen, in whom there would be every power of teaching and ruling the Church, and from whom, with the hierarchical form determined, the ministry to be continually carried on would perpetually flow down into the following doctors and pastors. Compare Schrader (work cited, page 12).
410. From this it has come about that Theologians now commonly teach that the Church is constituted, as it were, by soul and body: they call the visible element the body, and the spiritual and supernatural element the soul. That this is most aptly said is established: 1) from analogy. For the assembly of the faithful, or society, exhibits to us the idea of a moral body, or of a moral person, which exists and acts after the likeness of a living human individual. Therefore just as in the physical human individual body and soul are distinguished, so in the moral individual body and soul can be considered. Now in man the body is the material, visible, determinable element; but the soul is the invisible, informing, determining element or principle. Therefore rightly the visible element of the Church is called the material part or body; but the spiritual and supernatural element is called the formal part or soul. 2) This same appellation of body and soul of the Church has a foundation in the Scriptures. For, to select a few passages, the Apostle says (Colossians 3.15): “Let the peace of Christ exult in your hearts, in which also you were called in one body.” And (1 Corinthians 10.17) he writes: “Because there is one bread, we, being many, are one body, all who partake of one bread.” Namely, just as there is one Eucharistic bread, of which we all the children of the Church partake, so we all associated with one another effect one body of the Church; just as from many grains one bread is made, so from many faithful there is made one sacred and living bread, namely one mystical body. And (12.13): “In one Spirit we all were baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free; and we all were made to drink in one Spirit.” Clearly by one Spirit or His gift, as by the same informing soul, from the beginning in baptism we have grown together into one body; and afterward, refreshed in the Eucharistic participation of one spirit, as by the continual influence of the vital soul, we are conserved and grow in one body.
411. To examine more deeply the intimate constitution of the Church, some, progressing further, have seemed to themselves to see in the Church a kind of continuation of the Incarnation. This idea, set forth and developed by Mohler (Symbolism), Perrone proposes briefly thus (chapter 2): “Christ, God-Man, willed to leave in [the Church] a perfect image and likeness of Himself, in which and through which He Himself would seem in some way to live and to converse with us even after His visible ascension into heaven. Therefore this society, displaying Christ before itself, as they say, is divine-human, subsisting in unity of person with communication of each nature. Whence it comes about that the element, as they call it, divine pervades and penetrates the human element, and rules and directs it, nourishes it and as it were informs it, and constitutes unity from both. What they say is divine in this moral person or society constitutes its intimate part or soul; but what they call human constitutes its exterior and visible form or body, by which, as by an organ, the soul outwardly brings forth and manifests itself. From this it comes about … that the Church is one, as Christ is one; holy, as Christ is holy; indefectible, as Christ is indefectible; infallible, as Christ is infallible, who willed her to be a living and perfect image of Himself, indeed through her in some way established that He would perpetuate Himself on these lands until the consummation of the age, so that what Christ had and has by His nature He communicates by grace and privilege to this daughter or spouse of His.”
412. But these things, if they are rightly understood, namely insofar as Christ instituted the Church after the likeness of the Incarnation, and she therefore is His mystical body, are handed down in the Scriptures and by the Fathers. And 1) indeed in the Scriptures. For it is said (1 Corinthians 12.27): “But you are the body of Christ,” which, as is plain of itself, must be understood of the whole Church of Christ; nor does the Apostle there speak of the Corinthians taken separately. And (Ephesians 1.22 ff.): “He gave Him [Christ] as head over the whole Church, which is His body.” And (ibid., 4.11 ff.): “He gave some indeed as Apostles… unto the building up of the body of Christ.” And (ibid., 5.30): “We are members of His [Christ’s] body, of His flesh and of His bones.” And (Colossians 1.24): “I fill up those things which are lacking of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church.” 2) The same things are handed down by the Fathers, among whom St. Athanasius (On the Incarnation, section 21) writes: “And when Peter says, ‘Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ,’ he does not say concerning His divinity that He made Him Lord and Christ, but concerning His humanity, which is the universal Church, which in Him rules and reigns after He Himself was crucified, and which is anointed for the kingdom of heaven, that it may reign with Him who emptied Himself for her and who, having put on the form of a servant, assumed her.” And St. Augustine (sermon 86 on Easter, n. 2) says: “Behold, the disciples both saw Christ after the resurrection, and heard from His own mouth that this would be in the holy Scriptures. We have not seen Christ present in the flesh, but the Scriptures, by which they too were confirmed, we hear daily as they are read. And what did He say concerning the Scriptures? That penance and remission of sins should be preached in His name through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. The disciples were not seeing this; they were seeing Christ speaking of the future Church. Therefore, when Christ said what they were not seeing, they believed. They saw the Head; they did not yet see the body. We see the body; we believe concerning the Head. There are two: bridegroom and bride, head and body, Christ and the Church. To the disciples He showed Himself and promised the Church. To us He has shown the Church and commanded us to believe concerning Himself. The Apostles saw one thing; they did not see the other. And we see one thing; we do not see the other. As they believed concerning the body from the present Head, so let us believe concerning the Head from the present body. Or shall we deny? But Truth itself crying out will not allow us to deny. For we see the Church of Christ from the rising of the sun even to its setting praising the name of the Lord.”
413. Once these things have been established, it will not be difficult to judge what constitutes the soul and what the body of the Church. For whatever is primarily spiritual, and determines the Church in her being, and in her is the principle of life and motion, must be said to pertain to her soul. Hence there pertains to the soul of the Church: 1) sanctifying grace, which is the formal principle of supernatural life; 2) Faith, Hope, and Charity, which cannot be absent where sanctifying grace is, and which are the principal proximate principles of the operations of supernatural life; 3) the other supernatural virtues, and also interior actual grace, without which supernatural operation is impossible; 4) all the remaining internal gifts of the Holy Spirit, by which supernatural sanctity and activity is amplified and rendered more efficacious.
414. To these gifts, which, unless actually possessed by all members of the Church, are nevertheless ordered to all, there must be added those which are conferred only upon some for the utility of others. By this kind of gifts we comprehend not only the nine graces gratis given which the Apostle enumerates (1 Corinthians 12), and concerning which we treated in the treatise On Grace (n. 19 ff.), but also the power of order and jurisdiction, for baptizing, for remitting sins, for offering sacrifice, for preaching the word of God, for making laws, etc., etc. All these regard one common end, namely the conservation and increase of the Church, the sanctification and perfection of her members. For the life and sanctity of the Church consists not only in this, that she has holy members and is, as it were, passively holy; but, if taken adequately, it also imports supernatural activity and energy, by which she teaches, rules, and advances her own members in supernatural life for obtaining eternal life, and calls, instructs, and converts outsiders in order to the same end. But for accomplishing this, gifts gratis given, the grace proper to the sacrament of orders, the perennial assistance of the Holy Spirit, etc., contribute especially; and therefore, under this respect, they are rightly said to pertain to the soul of the Church.
415. But whatever is external, visible, and as it were determinable must be counted in the body of the Church. Hence: 1) the very men who are plainly visible and pertain to the Church, insofar as they form an assembly from which the material fellowship of the Church results, belong to the body of the Church, in almost the way in which the persons of soldiers, insofar as they are considered as aggregated together, constitute the body of an army. 2) Hence the government by which those persons are contained in unity, and from which they receive impulse for exercising social operation, likewise pertains to the body of the Church. 3) By the same reasoning, all external means are recalled to the body of the Church: preaching, the administration of the Sacraments, rites, etc., which are employed for pursuing the end of the Church herself. 4) To these must be added the external manifestation itself of interior gifts. Certainly the aforesaid theological virtues are manifested in innumerable ways, both through the acts of individuals and through the public worship of the Church; spiritual power also, whether of order or of jurisdiction, appears in the various ways in which it is both conferred and exercised; finally, that vigor of the apostolic ministry, which according to the words of Christ is to remain perpetually in the Church, daily brings itself forth in the confirmation of the just, in the conversion of sinners and non-Catholics.
416. From all these things it is already permitted to infer certain points which more clearly exhibit this summary idea of the constitution of the Church. And first, the controversy of gravest moment which is conducted between Catholics and Protestants concerning the nature and definition of the Church consists especially in this: namely, which is the Church to which many privileges were immediately conceded by Christ, and which the promises of Christ concerning her perpetuity, infallibility, etc., directly affect. All these things heretics, as we hinted, attribute to the invisible Church. But this error, to be refuted everywhere in the course of the treatise, can already be sufficiently uncovered and rejected. For if the Church consists of soul and body, or if she is the body of Christ, a Church which is only invisible cannot be admitted; nor can a twofold Church be admitted, one invisible and the other visible. For just as body and soul do not constitute a twofold man, but are two essential elements constituting one man, and if one of them, for example the body, is lacking, man is no longer had; so the visible and invisible element constitute not two Churches, but one Church. If one of them, for example the visible, is lacking, the Church of Christ is no longer had. Therefore the Church of the promises is the visible Church.
417. Secondly, it is gathered that the Church, although she consists of human individuals as matter, is nevertheless a society intrinsically, essentially, and in her own kind supernatural. For she is supernatural not only in origin, end, and means, but also in intrinsic form and vivifying principle, which itself, from what has been disputed, is essentially supernatural. But because a supernatural element of this sort does not merely exist in the body of the Church, but constitutes it in the being of such a social body, permeates it in every direction and informs it, and produces and administers every motion and action of it, hence the body of the Church itself, material in itself, puts on a certain true elevation and supernaturalness, and therefore the whole society, or Church, obtains a supernatural dignity and order.
418. Hence thirdly, since the gifts of grace by appropriation are attributed to the Holy Spirit, to whom we are intimately joined through sanctification (compare On Grace, n. 1032 ff.), the Church is rightly called: 1) the dwelling place of God, according to that text (Ephesians 2.20 ff.): “Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, constructed, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” 2) She is called the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, “since it appears that an intimate communication is given between Him and the Church; that the same Church is cherished and nourished by the continual breath of the Holy Spirit, and is the immediate and adequate subject of the outpouring of all charisms which the Holy Spirit perpetually confers upon her. But on her part the Church hands herself over wholly to be fixed and ruled by the Holy Spirit; she rightly and holily administers His gifts to the faithful committed to herself. Finally, fecundated by the Holy Spirit, she does not cease to beget sons for God, whom she also embraces with maternal solicitude beyond the very limits of mortal life.” 3) Indeed the Holy Spirit is called the Heart of the Church. “The head,” says St. Thomas (3 p., question 8, article 1, ad 3), “has manifest eminence with respect to the other exterior members; but the heart has a certain hidden influence. And therefore the Holy Spirit is compared to the heart, who invisibly vivifies and unites the Church; but Christ Himself is compared to the head according to His visible nature, according to which man is preferred to men.”
419. Similarly fourthly, if the Church is the body of Christ, who is the Head of the Church, there must be a perpetual union between Christ and the Church. Hence Christ Himself (John 15.1 ff.) exhibits all the faithful as so many branches adhering to Himself as to the one vine, and drawing vital juices from the one vine. But St. Thomas (same place, corpus) splendidly explains this notion of Head, saying: “Just as the whole Church is called one mystical body by likeness to the natural body of man, which according to diverse members has diverse acts, as the Apostle teaches (Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12), so Christ is called the head of the Church according to the likeness of a human head, in which we can consider three things, namely order, perfection, and power. Order indeed, because the head is the first part of man, beginning from above; and from this it is that every principle is customarily called head, according to that text (Ezekiel 16.25): ‘At every head of the way you built a sign of your prostitution.’ Perfection, however, because in the head all the senses, both interior and exterior, are vigorous, while in the other members there is touch alone; and from this it is that it is said (Isaiah 9.15): ‘The aged and honorable, he is the head.’” “Power, however, because the power and motion of the other members, and their governance in their acts, is from the head, on account of the sensitive and motive power dominant there. Hence also a ruler is called head of the people, according to that text (1 Kings 15.17): ‘When you were little in your own eyes, were you not made head among the tribes of Israel?’ But these three things belong to Christ spiritually. For first, according to nearness to God, His grace is higher and prior, although not in time, because all others received grace with respect to His grace, according to that text (Romans 8.29): ‘Whom He foreknew, these He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.’ Secondly, He has perfection with regard to the fullness of all graces, according to that text (John 1.14): ‘We saw Him full of grace and truth,’ as was also shown above (preceding question, article 9). Thirdly, He has the power of influencing grace into all the members of the Church, according to that text (John 1.16): ‘Of His fullness we all have received.’ And thus it is plain that Christ is fittingly called the head of the Church.”
420. From this, fifthly, it further follows that just as in the human body not all members are of the same perfection, nor have the same act, although all concur toward the common good of man, so, if we consider gifts gratis given, not all members of the Church, which is the body of Christ, possess the same gifts, although they are ordered to the building up of the whole body; therefore the Church is an unequal society. The Apostle taught all these things more than once, but especially writes (1 Corinthians 12, from verse 12): “For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, although they are many, are nevertheless one body, so also is Christ. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say: Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say: Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them in the body, as He willed. But if all were one member, where would the body be? Now indeed there are many members, but one body. But the eye cannot say to the hand: I do not need your work; or again the head to the feet: You are not necessary to me… And if one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it. But you are the body of Christ, and members of member. And God has placed some indeed in the Church, first Apostles, secondly Prophets, thirdly Doctors, then powers, next graces of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches. Are all Apostles? Are all Prophets? Are all Doctors? Are all powers? Do all have the grace of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?”
421. Indeed, sixthly, even if we inspect the gifts which are ordered to all, since not all who are in the Church possess them in the same measure, nor do all always possess all, not all are joined to Christ the Head with the same perfection or reasoning, and therefore not in the same way are they members of the Church. “Christ,” says St. Thomas (3 p., question 8, article 3), “is the head of all men, but according to diverse grades. For first and principally He is the head of those who are actually united to Him by glory; secondly, of those who are actually united to Him by charity; thirdly, of those who are actually united to Him by faith,” etc. And Bellarmine (On the Militant Church, book 3, chapter 2) says: “But it must be noted from Augustine in the brief of the conference, conference 3, that the Church is a living body, in which there is soul and body, and indeed the soul is the internal gifts of the Holy Spirit, Faith, Hope, Charity, etc. The body is the external profession of faith and the communication of the Sacraments. From this it follows that some are of the soul and of the body of the Church, and therefore united to Christ the Head internally and externally; and such are most perfectly of the Church. For they are like living members in a body, although even among these some participate life more, some less, and some even have only the beginning of life and, as it were, sensation but not motion, as those who have faith alone without charity. Again, some are of the soul and not of the body, as catechumens or the excommunicated, if they have faith and charity, which can happen. Finally, some are of the body and not of the soul, as those who have no internal virtue, and yet, either from some temporal fear, profess the faith and communicate in the Sacraments under the rule of pastors; and such are like hairs, or nails, or bad humors in the human body.” But all these things must be asserted and unfolded below through their parts.