The church must be catholic or she is not the church. But this begs the question, "What is it to be catholic?" Of course, we are confronted by Rome's use of the term. When the church became most fully Roman, that is directed by the Roman Pontiff, she became much less catholic. Already in the eleventh century the Roman pope excommunicated the eastern half of the church, a breach that still remains today. Unfortunately, catholicism became defined by legal claims about authority and obedience to the Pontiff, and the addition of legal requirements burdening Christians, often without even a patina of biblical warrant. This legalistic definition was calcified by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, when the breach with Luther was made a permanent feature of the western church's landscape.

The early church's faithful bishops did not think that catholicism could be narrowed to a local possession or the possession of one person. The church could not be circumscribed by what was Roman or what belonged to the Roman pope. The church could not be reduced to a legal definition. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) famously said that the church is as tangible as the Republic of Venice. In other words, because of her connection with Rome, the papacy, and the hierarchy, the church is as easy to define as any political entity. Against this the Nicene Creed says, "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church." The note in the Lutheran Service Book rightly says, "the ancient text reads 'catholic,' meaning the whole Church as it is confesses the wholeness of Christian doctrine" (LSB, 191). The church catholic is the whole community of those who confess the divine truth through time. The church remains an article of faith, that is, believed by the faithful, not proven by walls, decrees, or tall hats and big buildings. The church must be believed because the vast majority of her children now reside in the church triumphant (but still in the church!). She can only be seen "where" and never in specific people or places. Place and people never possess her, but she them. She is where the specific confession of the apostolic truth is preached and her sacraments are administered. That is where Christ is among His people, where His Word is delivered, a speech which creates believers and therefore creates the church, His body of which He is the Head.

This is why Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 313-386) says that the church that is catholic "teaches universally and completely one and all the doctrines which ought to come to men's knowledge." The church's catholicity and universality have to do with what she teaches to create and recreate herself as the body of the Lord. The Lord's own teaching is what makes and re-makes her. This is how He can be her head. He is still her teacher; unseen, yet truly present in preaching and sacraments. She cannot exist in any other way than by His teaching and in that way she is ever and always catholic, because He is Lord of all. Her children must live by faith. She cannot exist in any other way than as a catholic existence, if she is to be the church.

Cyril of Jerusalem