— Pope Francis I, speaking during one of his weekday homilies, as reported by Vatican Radio and published on the RomeReports.com website dated 5th November, 2013 under the heading ‘Pope Francis: Christianity is like an invitation to a feast’ (the webpage I’m linking to includes a video excerpt)

1. The first. The Church is catholic because she is the space, the home in which the faith is proclaimed to us in its entirety, in which the salvation brought to us by Christ is offered to everyone. The Church enables us to encounter the mercy of God which transforms us, for in her Jesus Christ is present…. In the Church each one of us finds what is needed to believe, to live as Christians, to become holy and to journey to every place and through every age.

To give an example, we can say that it is like family life. In the family, everything that enables us to grow, to mature and to live is given to each of us. We cannot grow up by ourselves, we cannot journey on our own, in isolation; rather, we journey and grow in a community, in a family. And so it is in the Church! In the Church we can listen to the Word of God with the assurance that it is the message that the Lord has given us; in the Church we can encounter the Lord in the Sacraments, which are the open windows through which the light of God is given to us, streams from which we can draw God’s very life; in the Church we learn to live in the communion and love that comes from God. Each one of us can ask himself or herself today: how do I live in the Church? When I go to church, is it as though I were at the stadium, at a football match? Is it as though I were at the cinema? No, it is something else. How do I go to church? How do I receive the gifts that the Church offers me to grow and mature as a Christian? Do I participate in the life of the community or do I go to church and withdraw into my own problems, isolating myself from others? In this first sense, the Church is catholic because she is everyone’s home. Everyone is a child of the Church and in her all find their home.

2. A second meaning: the Church is catholic because she is universal, she is spread abroad through every part of the world and she proclaims the Gospel to every man and to every woman. The Church is not a group of elite; she does not only concern the few. The Church has no limits; she is sent to the totality of people, to the totality of the human race. …. To feel that we are in communion with the whole Church, with all of the Catholic communities of the world great and small! This is beautiful! And then, to feel we are all on mission, great and small communities alike, that we all must open our doors and go out for the sake of the Gospel. Let us ask ourselves then: what do I do in order to communicate to others the joy of encountering the Lord, the joy of belonging to the Church? Proclaiming and bearing witness to the faith is not the work of the few; it also concerns me, you, each one of us!

3. A third and final thought: the Church is catholic, because she is the “home of harmony” where unity and diversity know how to merge in order to become a great source of wealth. Let us think about the image of a symphony, which implies accord, harmony, various instruments playing together. Each one preserves its own unmistakable timbre and the sounds characteristic of each blend together around a common theme. Then there is the one who directs it, the conductor, and as the symphony is performed all play together in “harmony”, but the timbre of each individual instrument is never eliminated; indeed, the uniqueness of each is greatly enhanced!

It is a beautiful image which tells us that the Church is like a great orchestra in which there is great variety. We are not all the same and we do not all have to be the same. We are all different, varied, each of us with his own special qualities. And this is the beauty of the Church: everyone brings his own gift, which God has given him, for the sake of enriching others. And between the various components there is diversity; however, it is a diversity that does not enter into conflict and opposition. It is a variety that allows the Holy Spirit to blend it into harmony. He is the true “Maestro”. He is harmony. And here let us ask ourselves: in our communities do we live in harmony or do we argue amongst ourselves? In my parish community, in my movement, in the place where I am part of the Church, is there gossip? If there is gossip, there is no harmony but rather conflict. And this is not the Church. The Church is everyone in harmony: never gossip about others, never argue! Let us accept others, let us accept that there is a fitting variety, that this person is different, that this person thinks about things in this way or that — that within one and the same faith we can think about things differently — or do we tend to make everything uniform? But uniformity kills life. The life of the Church is variety, and when we want to impose this uniformity on everyone we kill the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

— Pope Francis I, speaking at a General Audience in St Peter’s Square October 9 2013

The Church is a family… equal in dignity

“The Holy Father here takes an image from the first Letter of Peter (1 Pet 2:5), in which Peter describes the Church as a household — an oikos in the original Greek. There are many beautiful images for the Church in Sacred Scripture and each image highlights something important about the Church. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. She is the People of God. She is the Bride of Christ. But she is also described as the ‘spiritual household’ of God, and that is a very significant image for us. The image of the household was a defining one in the Early Church. It is, of course, essentially a family image. …

Indeed, the Church is a family. Yes, there is a radical equality of human dignity in a family; no single member of a family is more a part of the family than any another. But equality of dignity does not mean identity of roles; a mother’s role is not the same as a father’s, nor a son’s the same as a grandmother’s. This is true for the Church as well. A married couple’s role in the Church is not the same as a consecrated religious sister. A priest’s role is not the same as an unmarried woman’s. There is equality of dignity, but diversity of roles. And the Holy Father’s point here is that there is a beautiful complementarity among these different roles — married people can help priests in their vocation to be holy and priests can help families in theirs. Our tasks are different, but our aim is the same — to live holy lives and prepare ourselves for ‘the life of the world to come.’ As Mother Teresa used to say: “You can do something I cannot do. I can do something you cannot do. Together let us do something beautiful for God”.

— Archbishop Charles J Brown, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland in a homily while on a pilgrimage to Knock 23rd June 2012 as reported by St Joseph’s Young Priest Society in their Autumn 2012 newsletter The Sheaf

1. Because it is not good to be alone (… church, by definition, is walking to God within a community)
2. To take my rightful place humbly within the family of humanity (… at the point when adulthood is reached, something else is asked of us, not just by God but also by nature. Our task now is no longer to try to emerge but to merge–to go back into community, to lose our separateness, not to stand out, to become naked again. This is the real meaning of humility…. The Church gives us the place to die to élitism. To join a church is to give up élitism. That is both perhaps the greastest obstacle to church participation and the greatest benefit of it.)
3. Because God calls me there (… Spirituality is not a private search for what is highest in oneself but a communal search for God)
4. To dispel my fantasies about myself (Away from actual, historical church community, whatever its faults, we have an open field to live the unconfronted life, to make religion a private fantasy that we can selectively share with a few like-minded individuals who will never confront us where we most need challenge.)
5. Because ten thousand saints have told me so (I go to church because by far the majority of good and faith-filled persons that I know go there. Moreover they tell me that whatever goodness and faith they carry is, in an essential way, fostered there.)
6. To help others carry their pathologies and to have them help me carry mine (Anthropologists tell us that one of the primary functions of any family is to carry the pathologies of its members…. Simply put, I go to church so that other people might help me carry what is unhealthy inside of me and that I might help them carry what is unhealthy inside of them.)
7. To dream with others (Alone, I am pretty powerless, able to make a splash, but not a difference. A very large group of people watching the news together could change the world. The Church is that group…. It is far from perfect, but it is the best of a bad lot and it offers positive hope.)
8. To practise for heaven (Heaven, the Scriptures assure us, will be enjoyed within the communal embrace of billions of persons of every temperament, race, background, and ideology imaginable. A universal heart will be required to live there…. When we gather with only persons of our own kind, the heart need not and generally does not stretch. Going to church is one of the better cardio-vascular spiritual exercises available. 
9. For the pure joy of it… because it is heaven!” (page 127-132)

— Fr Ronald Rolheiser, in his book ‘Seeking Spirituality,’ chapter 6, of the 1998 Hodder & Stoughton (London) edition

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“… and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down.

This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in her.”

— Vatican II document Dei Verbum (Section 8), 1965, as published on the Vatican website

“… Francis looks like a radical break with the past, but he is right: He represents an essential continuity in the Roman Catholic Church’s mission.

In Victorian times, Pope Leo XIII (in office, 1878-1903) was also denounced as a “socialist” when, in 1891, he issued the Catholic Church’s first formal statement on economic and social issues. In “Rerum Novarum,” he called for a living wage, opposed child labor and (a little belatedly) supported the idea of trade unions. Leo’s strong defense of private property in the same letter did not seem to win over critics.

Even Pius XII (1939-58) — one of the least-loved popes, thanks to the Vatican’s ambiguous wartime role — insisted that when fighting unjust social conditions, “Charity is not enough, for in the first place there must be justice.” In the late 1940s, it was a future pope (John XXIII, 1958-63) who, as the Vatican’s ambassador to France, helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations.

…

The educational role of the church in the developing world has been powerful and often controversial. “All we want is a labor force,” a colonial governor lamented to missionaries in Madagascar a century ago, “and you’re turning them into human beings.”

The most visible arm of the church’s social mission is a network of humanitarian and development agencies known as Caritas (Latin for “charity”), which is the largest private organization of its kind after the International Committee of the Red Cross. Its total budget, $3 billion, is barely as much as the World Bank lends to large countries like Turkey or Brazil in a single year, but its reach and impact are unmatched.

In some African countries, as much as half of basic education and health services are provided by the church. Catholic hospitals and clinics around the world distribute about a third of all the antiretroviral drugs received by people living with H.I.V. and AIDS, and in India, where Catholics are no more than 2 percent of the population, the church is the second-largest care provider in this area after the government.

As a result of its work in basic health and education — and despite its obtuse views on birth control — in the last 50 years the church has probably lifted more people out of poverty than any other civic institution in history.”

— Robert Calderisi in the NY Times of December 30th 2013 under the heading ‘Radical Pope, Traditional Values’, (Calderisi is listed as “a former director of the World Bank and the author of ‘Earthly Mission: The Catholic Church and World Development'”)

 

In the Church is where you’ll find courage and support to walk the way of the Lord

“… the Pope puts mercy first, then the rules; he has a broad vision of church that includes, not excludes, that accompanies people rather than condemns them…. a church where there is more grace, less lace…. He is making the church relevant and exciting.”

— Fr Gerard Moloney, CSsR, in his editorial entitled ‘The Francis Effect’ in the November 2013 Issue of the ‘Reality’ monthly magazine published by the Redemptorists in Ireland