1. The visible signs of the true Church.
When Christ founded His Church He gave it unmistakable signs that will distinguish it from other religious bodies, specially from other Protestant sects who are closely akin to her.
The official visible marks of the true Church of Christ are: One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic. These are enumerated in the NICENE CREED and repeated by all Catholics during Sunday Mass for their instructions.
Christ made certain that all men can easily recognize these visible signs so all men can effortless know which is the true Church. Only God can make these signs and they are found in Divine Revelation; ordinary men cannot make it up.
2. The Church is faced with many questions today. What is going on with the Church today? Why is there so many voices shouting different instructions? What are all these accusations that are filling up the air with poison? Why are the bishops playing opposite tunes in their horns? Is this Pope doing his job? If not, who, then, is the true Pope? And who is this sitting on the throne of St. Peter? There are thousand more questions that are being asked with many laymen joining the chorus; ‘what is going on?’ It is the same question even politicians are asking because the state of a nation simply reflects the state of the Church; just as the spiritual state of a monastery, according to St. John Chrysostom, reflects the state of the whole Catholic Church.
3. To answer all these questions is enough to drive anyone crazy. But if we just sit down for a while, keep silent and think, all the questions can be answered if we answer one basic question; ‘who is a true Catholic?’
Who is the true Catholic? We have seen the answer in the Nicene Creed; it is the community that has the visible signs of ‘Oneness,’ ‘Holiness,’ ‘Catholic,’ and being ‘Apostolic.’ There is no other answer to this question; and this answer is the answer to all the questions being asked today.
We can answer all the questions being asked today if we only answer the question; Is the Pope Catholic? The answer will, also answer the question ‘are our bishops and priests Catholic.’ It will answer the question ‘are our parishes and dioceses Catholic?’ And we can just go on; ‘are our catholic schools catholic.’ Are our Masses valid? Are the inhabitants of our tabernacle Christ or just mere bread? Who is residing in the Vatican right now? Should we obey our bishops and priests? Let me stop here for a while otherwise there will be no end to these questions.
Let us go to the one and only answer we need. Do our pstidhrd snf and dioceses have the four visible signs of the true Church of Jesus Christ as mentioned in the Nicene Creed; namely, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic?
4. The Four visible signs.
Even in the Old Testament, but more specially in the New Testament, Christ gave His Church four visible signs. No other church or religion has these signs. They were made so by God precisely to differentiate the true Church from the rest of the other so-called churches. These signs are God-made and cannot be duplicated by men. God saw to it that with ordinary sincere effort all men can know these signs and use them to identify the true Church of Christ.
5. These four visible signs emanate from the very supernatural essence of the Catholic Church. And as such cannot be understood by men. So God placed these signs outside the supernatural level just at the border line between the supernatural and the natural. As such they are still difficult to understand unless one is assiduously seeking the truth. These signs are called visible signs, not because they emanate from the essence of the Church, but because they are the historic footprints of the Catholic Church in the sands of time as she travels through the centuries. We can know the Church by her footprints she has made in the past as she walked through the history of men. The four visible signs mentioned in the Nicene Creed are historic footprints. In other words, how did the true Church behaved in the past 2000 years? That is how she should behave today.
6. Those with Faith can understand the very essence of the Catholic Church so they can easily see how the visible signs are the results of the dynamics on how the Church works. It is an almost impossible task to understand the Church and her signs when people do not have Faith. ‘Almost impossible’ but possible when souls have the proper disposition instilled by a life of repentance.
7. Ratzinger’s ‘Crisis of Faith.’
With Ratzinger’s ‘Ratzinger Report,’ a best seller in the 1980’s where he described the state of the Church as undergoing a ‘crisis of Faith,’ we saw that bishops and priests are already ignorant on how the Church works and how the visible signs mentioned in the Creed are visible outpouring of the essence of the Church.
From Pope Francis down to the cardinals, bishops, priests and lay men, it has become even more evident that they do not know the four visible signs of the true Church though they recite the Creed every Sunday. And though St. Robert Bellarmine’s 15 Marks of the Church had been translated a few months ago into English, no one had even noticed that they do not have the true Marks of the Church.
The few who recalls what the Nicene Creed says cannot explain or describe the meaning of each sign.
8. Lack of knowledge and understanding of the visible signs of the True Church.
This lack of knowledge and understanding of the visible signs of the true Church mentioned in the Creed had already been noted before the Council of Trent c. 1500. It was to address this sin against Faith that the Council of Trent was convened. But Councils cannot solve problems of Faith. It can only verbalize the problem and the Catholic solution.
The problem persisted and grew worse c. 1800 when like cancer it burst openly into ‘modernism.’ The French revolution was God’s chastisement for a nation that has, not only lost its Faith, but has gone against the Faith. The deterioration of men was unstoppable. Vatican I was a futile attempt to stop the descent; it became worse because of the war that postponed the continuance of the Council.
Pope John XXIII’s Vatican II, as he clearly stated on November 13, 1960 after a Mass in the Byzantine-Slav Rite was the last Conciliar attempt to preach the dogmatic truth on the four visible signs of the true Church as enumerated in the Nicene Creed. Pope John described the four visible signs one last time and instructed the Council to enhance these signs in the Church and never to forget there four signs while proceeding with the Council. Otherwise……..
Pope John passed away and together with him was the goal and primary reason for the Council…….to make sure that the Catholic Church have the four visible signs mentioned in the Creed. A coup d’ etat occurred. All the distinguished chairmen of the committees appointed by Pope John were removed and changed with ‘modernists’ tainted chairmen. The Council was derailed and instead of enhancing the four visible signs of the true Church in the present Church, every effort was exerted to erase the four visible signs from the Church.
Vatican II ended with the Catholic Church looking like just another Protestant sect or just an NGO with no priest, bishop or even the Pope knowing anything about the four visible signs of the true Church.
9. Because of this ignorance and inability to learn the four visible signs mentioned in the Nicene Creed we are in this state:
We cannot find any of the four visible signs of the true church in practically all the parishes and Dioceses. We cannot find them in religious organizations, ecclesial communities, religious communities and even in Pope Francis.
We occasionally find one visible sign in a handful of priest and bishop but the visible signs cannot be found in their own parishes and dioceses. Showing that the visible sign in the priest or bishop is not sipping down to the parishioners and members of the Diocese. A clear example is the African Bishops who showed one visible sign by defending orthodox doctrines against Pope Francis’ unorthodox proposals. When the Pope went to Africa, we could not find the four visible signs in the African Liturgy.
10. Present findings.
We used the four visible signs mentioned in the Nicene Creed to check if our Catholic surroundings are truly Catholic. Because Vatican II distorted the original definitions of these four visible signs, our analysis went haywire. We could not resolve the Catholicity of our Catholic institutions.
Fortunately, a work of St. Robert Bellarmine, Jesuit saint and Doctor of the Church was recently translated into English recently. It described into 15 Marks the original four visible signs of the Church. It was a blessing in disguise; or we can more properly call it Divine Providence. It immensely clarified everything. It became evident that most Catholic institution did not have even a single Mark of the true Church……from the Vatican down to the smallest convent of men, down to the lay family with their children.
Dioceses, Parishes, religious communities, catholic associations cannot present their Catholic credentials in the form of the four visible signs. Even the defenders and spokesmen of the Holy Father, the Pope, cannot prove that Pope Francis is a Catholic.
With the uncertainty that Pope Francis is a Catholic, everything Catholic became uncertain. Even our own salvation. With the four visible signs of the true Church unapplied to all Catholic institutions, all the problems of the Church will remain and grow worse. But if we just answer this one question; ‘who is Catholic’ then we can proceed to answering all the rest of our questions; like, should the orthodox church and the Pius X group unite with the Vatican? Otherwise it would be jumping from the prying pan into the fire for them. Should we close the Franciscans of the Immaculate or better still the Jesuit order. Should we obey Pope Francis or Cardinal Burke….etc, etc. etc.
If we master the 15 visible Marks of the true Church according to St. Robert Bellarmine, look for the man or the community who has all of them. Then follow them, stick with them, treasure them and die with them. For as the Psalm says; as you close your eyes in death, you will see the face of God.