Church (4) catholic
| You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians3:26-28 |
We talk about someone having a "catholic taste in music." This doesn't mean that they like church music, but rather that they like all kinds of music.
To affirm that the church is catholic is to say that it is inclusive and welcoming - that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. (It's a little like the African idea of Ubuntu.)
Paul makes this point powerfully in Galatians 3. The church is not about race, status or gender, but about the fact that we are clothed in Christ and therefore one in Him.
This is a vital truth to embrace. We are not the same, but we belong to One Church. When we talk about the Church we are talking about all who belong to Christ: protestants, roman catholics, orthodox, pentecostal, charismatic, baptist, etc - it doesn't matter as long as we own Christ as our Lord and Saviour. We are one in Him.
It has been nice, over the last 25 years to see the boundaries between denominations coming down and see all the branches of Christ's Church working together. It has also been nice to see how our congregations are made up of people of different cultures and races. That's what being catholic is all about.
So... why not use the word "universal" if "catholic" is misunderstood? Well, "universal" doesn't quite capture the sense of inclusivity (wholeness) that "catholic" does. And at the end of the day, we must remember Jesus' prayer for us in John 17 - "That they may be one..."
