The Cathedral Close

The voice of the Catholic Church in each division of it is thus not a dead but an authoritative and a living voice. It is a living and continuous utterance. Her conciliar decisions, for example, are not like those of a secular ourt. What she declared of old at Nicaea and elsewhere she has continued, day by day, at thousands of altars and by hundreds of millions of her children, to declare. As one approaches Niagara, the traveller gradually recognizes the deep undertone of the falls, solemn as the judgment, unfailing as eternity. But the ars of the townspeople become paralyzed to the awful utterance and only the attentive ear hears the deep diapason of the water’s voice. So it is with the Catholic Church. She is ever proclaiming, in the midst of the world’s tumultuous babel of contending utterances, the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, and the wise and humble-minded listeners hear her living voice. It is a voice coming up from behind and yet as present with them, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

The Christian soul comes with increasing clearness of vision and certainty to know the truth. Drawn by prevenient grace to accept Christ, the newly baptized becomes united to the Church and so becomes a living stone in that spiritual temple which is filled with the Holy Spirit. As a member of this temple and so spiritually illuminated, the Christian soul hears the voice of the Spirit speaking in and through it. At first, like a child it believes what it is told to believe. As it advances in light under the Church’s paternal authority, the Holy Scriptures are seen to corroborate the Church’s teaching and the proficient is able to give a reason for the faith that is in him. As he acts on the faith, he becomes gradually transformed by it. He then not only holds certain truths, but the truth takes possession of him. He advances from belief based on authority and reason to the certainty that comes from possession. He knows in whom he believes. For Christ dwells in him and he in Christ.

This is the Catholic rule of faith, the rule Christ established when he told us to “hear the Church,” and “if any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine.”
The Rt. Rev. Charles C. Garfton
From The Works of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton (Volume 1),
edited by B. Talbot Rogers, New York: Longmans, Green, 1914

Christian and Catholic