Is the True Catholic Church Distinct From the Institutional Church?

One sometimes encounters Catholic writings that introduce a distinction between the institutional Church and the true Catholic Church. One will find terms like “the conciliar church,” “the official church,” “the hierarchy,” “the institutional church,” or simply “Rome” that are set in opposition to terms like “the true Church,” “the Catholic Church,” “Eternal Rome,” or “the Church of Tradition.”

For example, before his excommunication, Archbishop Viganò said “the ‘conciliar church’…has replaced the Catholic Church.” Then, in response to his excommunication, he asserted, “Bergoglio’s ‘church’ is not the Catholic Church”—a clear affirmation that the visible institution headed by the Roman pontiff is not the same thing as the true Catholic Church.

One finds soft forms of this ecclesiology even among those who still recognize the pope.

This notion of the “two churches” posits that the visible Church with its visible structure, dioceses, offices, government, laws, etc. is a separate entity from the “Church of Tradition” or “True Church,” though they do overlap some. According to this way of thinking, the true Church exists in some places within the institutional structure headquartered in Rome, but it also exists outside of that structure—essentially, wherever Catholic faith and sacraments are found. In other words, the true Catholic Church and the juridical structure are not coextensive.

In this understanding of ecclesiology, the Catholic Church would be composed of all the groups, wherever they might be, who maintain traditional Catholic faith and sacraments, even if those groups are juridically distinct from one another. By the same token, the true Church would exclude large portions of the juridical structure headquartered in Rome.

The proposed distinction results from an understandable frustration with the shortcomings of the Church’s hierarchy and the direction of post-Vatican II theology and liturgy.

However, to propose a distinction between the visible body of the Church—her institutional, hierarchical, and juridical structure—and the “true Catholic Church” completely contradicts traditional Catholic ecclesiology.

The Institutional Church and the Mystical Body of Christ—Two Sides of the Same Reality

This anti-institutional error of “two churches” is a perennial one, rearing its head anew in every age, from the Donatists of St. Augustine’s time to the Petite Église of the 19th century. Popes have warred against the error for centuries, whenever institutional woes have driven some to an extreme reaction. For instance, in his 1318 condemnation of the Fraticelli, Gloriosam Ecclesiam, Pope John XXII wrote:

The first error which breaks forth from their dark workshop invents two churches, the one carnal, packed with riches…stained with crimes which they declare the Roman prefect and other inferior prelates dominate; the other spiritual, cleansed by frugality, beautiful in virtue, bound by poverty, in which they only and their companions are held…The second error…cries out that the venerable priests of the Church and other ministers of jurisdiction and order are so devoid of authority that they cannot pass sentences, nor perform the sacraments nor instruct nor teach the subject people, imagining that these have been deprived of all ecclesiastical power, whom they see are free of their own heresy; because only in themselves (as they themselves vainly think), just as the sanctity of a spiritual life, so authority remains; and in this matter they are following the error of the Donatists.

More recently, respected theologian Msgr. Joseph Fenton tried to correct the same error in his 1958 book, The Catholic Church and Salvation, in which he writes,

During our own times, prior to the issuance of the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, there was a manifest tendency on the part of some Catholic writers to teach the existence of a so-called “invisible Church,” in some way distinct from the organization over which the Roman Pontiff presides, and to ascribe to this imaginary entity the necessity for salvation. The closing sentence of the Unam sanctam had long ago rendered this position absolute[ly] untenable…the Church outside which there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins is, in fact, the society over which the Roman Pontiff presides as the Vicar of Christ and as the successor of St. Peter.

Fr. Fenton makes clear that, contrary to what the Fraticelli and the Donatists held, the institutional structure headquartered in Rome is the Catholic Church, full stop.

The Church is an inseparable unity of visible and invisible elements. The invisible elements of the Church—grace, truth, faith, charity, tradition, and the Holy Ghost Himself—can never vacate the visible, juridical structure. “These elements [visible and invisible] inseparably constitute the nature of the Church just as the union of the soul and body forms the nature of man,” explains Fr. Stanislaus Grabowski in his 1957 work, The Church: An Introduction to the Theology of St. Augustine. Fr. Grabowski continues,

According to the will of the Founder of the Church, these two aspects are indispensable, indissoluble, and complementary to each other. Pope Pius XII, speaking to the seminarians of Rome on June 24, 1939, said: “It is wrong to distinguish a juridic Church and a Church of charity…The juridically established Church, which has for its head the sovereign pontiff, is also the Church of Christ, the Church of charity, and of the whole Christian family.”

The pope elaborated further on these reflections in his celebrated encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi:

We deplore and condemn the pernicious error of those who dream of an imaginary Church, a kind of society that finds its origin and growth in charity, to which, somewhat contemptuously, they oppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction which they introduce is false.

The true Church, then, is a juridical, human society animated by the spiritual gifts of the Paraclete. It is not some Platonic ideal existing in an abstract realm (with perhaps a few visible trappings), which one adheres to solely through faith and piety; it is a concrete, legal society on this earth that carries the privilege of indefectibility in spite of the failures of the men who compose it. It is Incarnational, mirroring the Incarnation of the Word, who really lived and walked and breathed on this earth as a man with a visible body.

In Satis Cognitum, Pope Leo XIII taught the same thing as Pius XII:

Those who arbitrarily conjure up and picture to themselves a hidden and invisible Church are in grievous and pernicious error: as also are those who regard the Church as a human institution which claims a certain obedience in discipline and external duties, but which is without the perennial communication of the gifts of divine grace, and without all that which testifies by constant and undoubted signs to the existence of that life which is drawn from God. It is assuredly as impossible that the Church of Jesus Christ can be the one or the other, as that man should be a body alone or a soul alone. [Emphasis added]

According to Pope Leo, the invisible elements of the Church—the things that some Catholics associate with the “true Catholic Church,” such as faith, the life of grace, the presence of the Holy Ghost, etc.–will always remain united to the visible, legal structure of the Church:

The connection and union of both elements is as absolutely necessary to the true Church as the intimate union of the soul and body is to human nature…The union consequently of visible and invisible elements because it harmonizes with the natural order and by God’s will belongs to the very essence of the Church, must necessarily remain so long as the Church itself shall endure.

The Church’s Visibility and Indefectibility

Fr. Grabowski notes that St. Augustine refuted the Donatists in part by asserting that the Church is a visible society; and “this concrete, visible Church was held to be identical with the body of Christ.”

What is this visible aspect of the Church? The visible side of the Church refers precisely to its juridical and social elements. As Fr. Sylvester Berry explains in The Church of Christ (1927),

When we say that the Church of Christ is visible, we mean, primarily, that it is a society of men with external rites and ceremonies and all the external machinery of government by which it can easily be recognized as a true society.

Because the visible and invisible dimensions of the Church are inseparable, as explained above, it follows that the promise of indefectibility applies to the institutional Church itself. Msgr. Van Noort writes in Christ’s Church, “all the promises which Christ made to His Church refer to a visible Church.”

Since one of those promises is indefectibility, we can conclude that indefectibility does not apply solely to some invisible or abstract component of the Church, or some faithful yet scattered remnant, while the visible, institutional component of the Church falls into hopeless corruption and loses the faith. Rather, indefectibility applies precisely to the visible institutional structure, led by the apostolic hierarchy, which is the Catholic Church. This means that the institutional structure will never lose the invisible gifts of the Church nor become so corrupt that it can no longer fulfill its mission of teaching, governing, and sanctifying the faithful and conducting them to eternal life.

Describing those who err against Catholic ecclesiology, Cardinal Camillo Mazzella, S.J., explains in De Religio et Ecclesia that they falsely “teach that the invisible Church cannot fail, but for the visible Church it is otherwise.” In genuine Catholic ecclesiology, on the other hand, indefectibility applies equally to the visible, juridical society, not merely to the Church’s invisible elements. Cardinal Mazzella explains:

The indefectibility of the Church pertains to her constitutive essentials (soul and body, whatever is in the nature of such a visible society: magisterium, ministry, government); and to her properties (unity, sanctity, etc.); and finally to her other endowments and prerogatives (infallibility etc.)…This kind of indefectibility applies to all times of the Church’s existence, so that at no time could she lack any one of her constitutive parts, or any of her properties or endowments. [Emphasis added]

The Church’s Threefold Unity

The Church possesses a threefold unity: of faith, sacraments, and authority. (Sometimes, this unity is described as twofold rather than threefold: unity of faith and government, with sacramental unity being considered as part of one or both of the other two unities.) Since the Church is a visible, unified society of men, she must be unified under a single, visible government.

A single governing authority—the papacy—is the foundation of the Church’s visibility and unity, which are properties the Church can never lose. Vatican I clearly taught that “In order that the whole host of the faithful may remain in unity of faith and communion [Christ] placed St. Peter over the other Apostles and instituted in him both a perpetual principle of unity and a visible foundation.”

The importance of this visible, governmental unity deserves special emphasis in order to refute the error of the “two churches.” Any theoretical “true church” that is not visibly gathered together under the Roman pontiff cannot possibly be the true Catholic Church. Fr. Berry elaborates,

Unity of government, known also as social unity, requires that the members of the Church and all its parts be so united under one supreme authority as to form but one single society. This excludes any division by which parts of the Church would have their own independent government; it also excludes any mere federation of independent churches.

Many Catholics make a mistake, then, when they define the Church simply as “all those who hold the true faith and the true sacraments.” This leaves out thecrucial element of the Church’s visible dimension, which is preeminently realized in the submission of all her members to the same governing authority—i.e., the unity of government.

Further, Fr. Berry notes that the other unities—of faith and sacraments—actually depend on unity of government: “Unity of government is by far the most important of the unities, because without it no other form of real unity could be maintained for any length of time.” Similarly, Fr. Ludwig Ott explains in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, “without an authoritative teaching office there is no certain norm for the purity of doctrine or for the administration of the Sacraments. The rejection of the hierarchy inevitably led to the doctrine of the invisible Church.”

Among those who rejected the visible hierarchy of the Church and adopted some form of an invisible “true” Church are the Protestants. In point of fact, the idea that the Church exists simply “wherever true faith and sacraments can be had”—whether or not that aligns with the Church’s visible governmental structure—is strikingly similar to Protestant ecclesiology. For example, the Protestant Augsburg Confession teaches, “The Church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered.”

And the Protestant theologian Reinhard asserted,

The visible or external Church is the universal society of those who profess the Christian religion publicly; the invisible Church is the society of those who, through the doctrine of Christ, are truly regenerated. The visible Church is broken up into many societies, to any one of which a man may join himself, as he sees fit. (Quoted in Berry)

Here again, we see an inappropriate distinction introduced between the visible and invisible Church—and, as a consequence, a denial of the Church’s visible unity of government.

This comparison with Protestant ecclesiology helps us see how this position is incompatible with Catholic ecclesiology. One cannot hold that juridically distinct groups—who are not united under a single ecclesial government—could collectively form or be part of the Catholic Church. Various sects not in communion with one another cannot possibly compose the undivided Body of Christ.

This is confirmed by yet another theologian, M.J. Rhodes, in his 1870 work, The Visible Unity of the Catholic Church—Maintained Against Opposing Theories. Rhodes writes,

There can be no society of individuals, no corporate body of Christians, which can possibly be united with the Church of Christ, without visible intercommunion. This is evident from the very nature of the case. We have seen that our Lord prayed for permanent visible unity, as a mark of His Divine mission. Now two separate societies, each claiming to be His, and neither of them in outward communion with the other, would present the spectacle of visible division, and therefore His words would not be verified if both of them belonged to His Church…No society of Christians on earth which is not in outward communion with this one visible Church of Christ, can possess authority to dispense the sacraments, or to preach the faith.

Rhodes adds that those who deny the Church’s visible unity are generally also forced to deny her continued infallibility of doctrine. For if the Church is no longer one, she also no longer speaks with one authoritative voice. Thus, he highlights for us why a visible, living, teaching, and governing authority is absolutely essential to the Church:

The maintainers of the theory of suspended unity hold that the infallible voice of the Church is suspended likewise, and that men must now seek it as best they can by ascertaining what it was that she taught at the time when she was visibly and wholly one. Yet they do not point to any authority which can declare or explain that teaching with divine certitude. So that, according to this doctrine, the Church’s mission as the infallible teacher of the nations is in abeyance also, and her note of Apostolicity has become as invisible as her other notes.

Such an abeyance is, of course, impossible given the Church’s indefectibility and infallibility. Rhodes has harsh words for the theory: “Thus does the aforesaid theory tend directly to dissolve the Church, Christ’s body…it would rob us of our Emmanuel, our ‘God with us,’ of ‘Christ come in the flesh.’—This, St. John warns us, is the mark of Antichrist.”

Identifying the True Church: Don’t Start With Doctrine

When trying to identify the true Church, it’s tempting to begin with the common-sense question, Which group (or groups) teach the true faith and offer true sacraments? However, as we saw in the previous section, these two criteria alone are not sufficient. In fact, starting from that point gets the cart before the horse.

In reality, we actually have to start from the other end: we have to first identify the true Church by means of apostolic succession, mission, and government—which is objectively verifiable and generally acknowledged by all—and then we can trust that this Church is still teaching the true faith in virtue of Christ’s promise of indefectibility.

In On the Marks of the Church, St. Robert Bellarmine explains why this is the case:

The marks [of the true Church] ought to be proper, not common…To be sure, sincere preaching of truth is a mark common to all sects, at least in their own opinion…Without a doubt what the true Church may be is more knowable than what the true preaching of the word might be; for we learn this from the Church, as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine and all the Fathers teach…[F]irst the guardian of the treasure ought to be known, rather than the treasure; and the teacher more than the doctrine, although doctrine is sought from a teacher, not the other way around. Therefore, the Church is a mark of true preaching, rather than true preaching a mark of the Church.

Cardinal Mazzellaagrees with Bellarmine, and he also notes that the two marks of  “true doctrine and true sacraments” are not sufficient because those can exist within the sects of schismatics who obviously are not part of the Church. He adds,

Nor are those same two marks better known to us than the Church itself…For who will easily judge the authenticity of manuscripts, the fidelity of versions, the truth of interpretation, etc.? This is why the Fathers teach that the truth of doctrine is not to be judged, but by the Church.

Twentieth-century theologians Joachim Salaverri and Michaele Nicolau responded to the Eastern Orthodox position that “she is the true Church, which truly and without change preserves the infallible teaching of the ancient universal Church and remains faithful to it in all things.” They answered,

It is without doubt that the true Church necessarily and always will teach the doctrine in harmony with the doctrine of the ancient Church, but this agreement cannot be said to be a Note of the Church, because it is not visible, nor easily recognizable, nor better known than the Church herself; for, when a new heresy appears, only from the already known true and infallible Church can it be known with absolute certainty whether or not the new opinion is in harmony with the doctrine of the ancient Church.

So, if we do not identify the true Church primarily by means of who is teaching true doctrine and offering true sacraments, then how do we find the true Church? The answer is through apostolicity. The old Catholic Encyclopedia says,

Apostolicity is the mark by which the Church of today is recognized as identical with the Church founded by Jesus Christ upon the Apostles. It is of great importance because it is the surest indication of the true Church of Christ, it is most easily examined, and it virtually contains the other three marks, namely, Unity, Sanctity, and Catholicity…Apostolicity of doctrine requires that the deposit of faith committed to the Apostles shall remain unchanged. Since the Church is infallible in its teaching, it follows that if the Church of Christ still exists it must be teaching His doctrine. Hence Apostolicity of mission is a guarantee of Apostolicity of doctrine.[Emphasis added]

Apostolicity—which has its keystone in the unity of government and succession guaranteed by the papacy—is thus our lodestar for finding the true Church.