The Facticity of the Church

Christianity went screaming into the Ancient World proclaiming not an ethic, not a philosophy, nor even really a religion, not even first a person, but simply a fact: that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead.

That Christianity rests entirely on a purely empirical claim–the person named Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead–is very important. It is an epistemological roll of the dice.

It is also an assertion that something is the case. What Christianity asks is not that you evaluate the teachings of Jesus Christ and, if you find them to your liking, decide to follow them. Whether or not you like or don’t like this or that that Jesus said has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether he rose from the dead. Christianity inelegantly careens through the delicate scaffoldings of erudite discourse with all the weight of a stubbornly factual claim: it is a fact that this is so.

If we Christians lend credence to the testimony that makes us believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, how much more so, then, should we lend credence to the very same testimony that indicates that He founded a Church, which is His Body, with the authority to teach, with an apostolic structure, and with a visible head. A Church which the Spirit will guide into all Truth; a Church which is the pillar and foundation of Truth. A Church which today subsists in the Roman Catholic Church.

That the Roman Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ is not a theological proposition; it is merely a fact. It does not depend on whether one agrees with a particular dogma or doctrine. Like the Resurrection, the reality of the Church asserts itself upon us with all the unstoppable immediacy and simultaneous humility of simply being the case that it is so.