All credit to Frank Weathers for this jewel-ous find, where the intent over there is to substantiate the doctrine of infallibility but where the intent over here is to validate my personal embrace of the Catholic faith.
Monsignor Robert Benson was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury who was ordained as an Anglican priest more than 100 years ago and to the certain chagrin of his father and his family, converted to Catholicism just 8 years after that ordination.
From Frank's piece, we get this excerpt from Benson's book Christ in the Church:
For the Catholic, Jesus Christ still lives upon earth as surely, though in another and what must becalled a ” mystical” sense, as He lived two thousand years ago. For He has a Body in which He lives, a Voice with which He speaks. As two thousand years ago He assumed one kind of Body by which to accomplish His purposes, so He has assumed now another kind of Body in which to continue them; and that Body consists of an unity of myriad cells — each cell a living soul complete in itself — transcending the sum of the cells and yet expressing itself through them. Christianity, then, to the Catholic is not merely an individual matter — though it is that also, as surely as the cell has individual relations with the main life of the body. But it is far more: it is corporate and transcendent.
The Catholic does not merely as a self-contained unit suck out grace through this or that sacramental channel; the priest to him is not just a vicegerent who represents or may misrepresent his Master; a spiritual life is not merely an individual existence on a spiritual plane. But to the Catholic all things are expanded, enlarged, and supernaturalized by an amazing fact: He is not merely an imitator of Christ, or a disciple of Christ, not merely even a lover of Christ; but he is actually a cell of that very Body which is Christ’s, and his life in Christ is, as a matter of fact, so far more real and significant than his individual existence, that he is able to take upon his lips without exaggeration or metaphor the words of St. Paul —” I live — yet it is no longer I that live; it is Christ that liveth in me “; he is able to appreciate as no separatist in religion can appreciate that saying of Christ Himself, that unless a man lose his life, he cannot save it.
called a ” mystical” sense, as He lived two thousand years ago. For He has a Body in which He lives, a Voice with which He speaks. As two thousand years ago He assumed one kind of Body by which to accomplish His purposes, so He has assumed now another kind of Body in which to continue them; and that Body consists of an unity of myriad cells — each cell a living soul complete in itself — transcending the sum of the cells and yet expressing itself through them. Christianity, then, to the Catholic is not merely an individual matter — though it is that also, as surely as the cell has individual relations with the main life of the body. But it is far more: it is corporate and transcendent.
How may times have we heard that as Christians, we are the body of Christ, we are His hands and feet.
Benson takes it to a micro level. We're actually a cell of that very Body, which is Christ's.
Fascinating.
From there, you can, I'd think see where the infallibility of the Church is inevitable but from here, it simply puts meat on this notion, this need, this necessity, to be seen as Christ and to see Christ in others.
Excellent stuff.
Carry on.
