“From the beginning, this one Church has been marked by a great diversity which comes from both the variety of God’s gifts and the diversity of those who receive them. Within the unity of the People of God, a multiplicity of peoples and cultures is gathered together. Among the Church’s members, there are different gifts, offices, conditions, and ways of life.”1 This is the nature of the Catholic Church, unified and universal. A Church that has existed for two thousand years, spanning countries and cultures. A Church that is made up of all different types, and is welcoming to all repentant sinners.
This fact about the Catholic Church’s universal nature is strictly contrary to what we find in the secular modern world. In the United States, we are divided almost endlessly. We find ourselves at war with one another over race, sex, politics, morality, and even things so trivial as sports teams. Not only do we dispute these things amongst ourselves, we dehumanize each other over them. Certainly in the West, we have lost the unifying principles laid out for us by Christ and his Church, for “he called together a race made up of Jews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit.”2
This is what Christ is calling us to, “For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”3 While diverse in our individual nature, we are united in Christ and in his Church. All serving different roles within the Body of Christ, we are oriented towards the same end. This is well represented in the Saints. On the surface there could not be two more different women than St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. Joan of Arc, and yet they are completely similar in their unwavering love of Christ. We in the West would do well to bring these principals into our discourse, as Mother Teresa said “It is not enough for us to say: “I love God,” but I also have to love my neighbor. St. John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live?”4
1The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Double Day, 2003), 814.
2The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Double Day, 2003), 781.
3 Romans 12:4-5 RSVCE
4 Mother Teresa, An address at the National Prayer Breakfast (Sponsored by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives) February 3, 1994.