The Spotless Bride of Christ is Indefectible
Born from the Water and Blood of the Most Sacred Heart, Christ's love for His Bride is neverending and unconditional.

    Editor's Note: This series is an effort to return to basics since too often we all make the holy Faith complicated, whereas in reality the truths and traditions of the Catholic Faith are quite simple. God doesn't complicate things, man does. Realizing the fact that, for many generations indoctrinated by conciliar ambiguities, it all seems so confusing, we are introducing this series which is an adaptation of an earlier series titled "Appreciating the Precious Gift of the Faith" in utilizing a combination of the excellent compendium of the late Bishop Morrow's pre-Vatican II Manual of Religion My Catholic Faith and Dom Prosper Gueranger's incomparable The Liturgical Year as well as the out-of-print masterpieces The Catholic Church Alone The One True Church(1902) and the Cabinet of Catholic Information (1903). Through prayer and discussions, we've decided to employ this revised series to simplify the tenets of the Faith for those who continue to wallow in what they think is the 'Catholic Church' out of obedience to a man and his hierarchy who long ago betrayed Christ and His flocks. This then, is an affirmation of the basic truths the Spotless Bride of Christ has always taught and cannot change or evolve as "living documents" for truth is truth. As we say every day in the Act of Faith, "We believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived." If you have been deceived, and the vast majority have been, then realize what you've been indoctrinated with over the past 50 years cannot be from God but from His adversary. Our advice: flee the conciliar confines as well as other man-made religions which do not teach these truths without compromise. Seek out a traditional chapel nearest to you. There is a list of churches you can absolutely trust at Traditional Latin Masses

"Here we have the doctrine of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as far as regards the principle upon which it rests. In this its primary and essential notion, the devotion is as old as the Church herself, for it rests on this truth, which has been recognized in every age: that Christ is the Spouse, and the Church is His bride."

    By the indefectibility of the Catholic Church is meant that the Church, as Jesus Christ founded it, will last until the end of time. The Archangel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary that Christ “shall be king over the house of Jacob forever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1: 32-33).

    Christ meant His Church to endure to the end of the world. It is to be indestructible and unchanging, - to possess indefectibility. Christ, God Himself, could scarcely have come, and with such incredible pain and labor have founded a Church which would die with the Apostles. He came to save all men. Those to live in future ages needed salvation as much as the people of Apostolic times.

    Christ said too Peter: “Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (St. Matthew 16:18). By the “gates of hell”, He meant all the power of the devil - all kinds of attacks, physical violence as well as false teaching. Christ promises here that the Church would be assailed always, but never overcome. This promise of Our Lord has been proved for almost 2000 years by the facts of history. Not one of the persecutors of the Church has prevailed over it. On the contrary, many of them have come to a fearful end. There will always be Popes, bishops, and laity, to compose the Church; the truths taught by Our Lord will always be found in His Church.

    3. After telling His Apostles to teach all nations, Christ said: “Behold, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world” (St. Matthew 28:20). As the Apostles were not to live to the end of the world, Christ must have been addressing them as representatives of a perpetual Church.

    The Apostles themselves understood Christ to mean that His Church should endure. After organizing Christian communities, they appointed successors in their place, to live after them and carry on the Church. The Apostles instructed these successors to ordain in turn other bishops and priests. All these acts were to assure the perpetuity of the Church.

    Christ intended the Church to remain as He founded it, to preserve the whole of what He taught, and the shining marks which He gave it in the beginning. If the Church lost any of the qualities that God gave it, it could not be said to be indefectible, because it would not be the same institution. Indefectibility implies unchangeability. Our Lord promised to abide by the Church, to assist it, and to send the Holy Spirit to remain in it. God does not change: “Behold I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world” (St. Matthew 28:20).

    Because of its indefectibility the truths revealed by God will always be taught in the Catholic Church. Saint Ambrose said: “The Church is like the moon; it may wane, but never be destroyed; it may be darkened, but it can never disappear.” Saint Anselm said that the bark of the Church may be swept by the waves, but it can never sink, because Christ is there. When the Church is in greatest need, Christ comes to its help by miracles, or by raising up saintly men to strengthen and purify it. It is the bark of Peter; when the storm threatens to sink it, the Lord awakens from His sleep, and commands the winds and waters into calm: “Peace; be still!”

    The Catholic Church has, throughout its long history, proved itself indefectible, against all kinds of attack from within and without, against every persecution and every heresy and schism. As its Founder was persecuted, so the Catholic Church has been and ever will be persecuted. “You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake” (St. Matthew 10:18). “And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake” (St. Matthew 10:22). “No disciple is above his teacher, nor is the servant above his master” (St. Matthew 10:24). “They will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues” (St. Mark 13:9). “They will arrest you, and persecute you” (St. Luke 21:12).

    The Church survived three hundred years of incredible persecution under pagan Rome. Of the 33 Popes that ruled before the Edict of Milan, 30 died as martyrs. That mighty Empire, with its colossal strength, before whose standard the nations quailed, could not kill the infant Church or stop its progress. In a short time the Popes were ruling where the imperial Caesars had issued edicts against the Christian Church. The Roman Empire waged ten fierce persecutions against the Church, but could not destroy it. In the year 313 the Emperor Constantine was converted and granted the Church freedom by the Edict of Milan.

    Then for two centuries hordes of barbarians swept upon civilized Europe, destroying the old Roman Empire. The Church not only survived, but converted and civilized the barbarians. God’s ever-watchful providence brought about the conversion of the Frankish King Clovis, with a great number of his warriors. This was the beginning of the firm establishment of the Church in the Frankish kingdom, although missionaries had gone there from the first century. In the eight century Saint Boniface converted Middle and Northern Germany, until then the home of violent paganism.

    For nine centuries Mohammedanism threatened Christian civilization. It was the Church under the Popes that urged the nations to league against Islam. In the sixteenth century the Mohammedan menace was subdued for awhile. In recent decades it has made its rise again and we can see the threat in Iraq, in the Holy Land and East Timor.

    Not only non-Christians, but its own rebellious children have persecuted the Church. From the beginning heresy has attacked it from within. And still the Church lives greater than ever, changeless, indefectible. The long history of the Catholic Church is attended by schism and heresy, but each attack has only strengthened it. It has continued to live and spread in spite of everything and everybody.

    The Church is the Bride of Christ, cast into prison, starved, thrown to the beasts, trampled underfoot, hacked, tortured, crucified, and burned. But this fair Bride emerges from it all in the bloom and freshness of youth, serene, calm, immortal.

    The renowned liturgian and historian Dom Prosper Gueranger puts this all in such beautiful perspective.

        At the period of Jesus' coming upon this earth, man had forgotten how to love, for he had forgotten what true beauty was. His heart of flesh seemed to him as a sort of excuse for his false love of false goods: his heart was but an outlet, whereby his soul could stray from heavenly things to the husks of earth, there to waste his powers and his substance.

       To this material world, which the soul of man was to render subservient to its Maker's glory - to this world, which by a sad perversion, kept man's soul a slave to his senses and passions - the Holy Ghost sent a marvelous power, which, like a resistless lever, would replace the world in its right position: it was the sacred Heart of Jesus; a Heart of flesh, like that of other human beings, from Whose created throbbings there would ascend to the eternal Father an expression of love, which would be a homage infinitely pleasing to the infinite Majesty, because of the union of the Word with that human Heart.

        It is a harp of sweetest melody, that is ever vibrating under the touch of the Spirit of love; it gathers up into its own music the music of all creation, whose imperfections it corrects, whose deficiencies it supplies, tuning all discordant voices into unity, and so offering to the glorious Trinity a hymn of perfect praise.

        It is the one only organum, as St. Gertrude calls it, the one only instrument which finds acceptance with the Most High. Through It must pass all the inflamed praises of the burning Seraphim, just as must the humble homage paid to its God by inanimate creation. By It alone are to come upon this world, the favors of Heaven. It is the mystic ladder between man and God, the chanel of all graces, the way whereby man ascends to God, and God descends to man.

        The Holy Ghost, Whose masterpiece It is, has made It a living image of Himself; for although in the ineffable relations of the divine Persons, He is not the source of love, He is its substantial expression, or in theological language, the term; it is He Who inclines the holy Trinity to those works outside Itself, which produces creatures; and then, having given them being, and to some life, He (the Holy Ghost) pours out upon them all the effusion of their Creator's love for them. And so it is with the love which the Man-God has for God and Man: its direct and , so to say, material expression is the throbbing it produces upon His Sacred Heart; and again, it is by that Heart, that, like the Water and Blood which came from His wounded Side, He pours out upon the world a stream of redemption and grace, which is to be followed by the still richer one of glory.

        One of the soldiers, as the Gospel tells us, opened Jesus' Side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water. We must keep before us this text and the fact it relates, for they give us the true meaning of the feast[s] we are celebrating [Feast of the Sacred Heart and Most Precious Blood]. The importance of the event here related is strongly intimated, by the earnest and solemn way in which St. John follows up his narration...he adds, "And he that saw it hath given testimony of it, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also may believe; for these things were done, that the Scripture might be fulfilled." Here the Gospel refers us to the testimony of the Prophet Zacharias, who after predicting that the Spirit of grace would be poured out upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, says: "They shall look upon Him Whom they pierced."

        And when they look upon His side thus pierced, what will they see there, but that great truth which is the summary of all Scripture and of all history: "God so loved the world, as to give it His only-begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him , may not perish, but may have eternal life." This grand truth was, during the ages of expectation, veiled under types and figures; it could be deciphered but by few, and even only obscurely; but it was made known, with all possible clearness on that eventful day, when, on Jordan's banks, the whole sacred Trinity manifested Who was the Elect, the Chosen One, of the Father - the Son in Whom He was so well pleased. It was Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Mary.

        But there was another revelation, of deepest interest to us, which had still to be made: it was - how, and in what way, would the eternal life brought by Jesus into the world, pass from Him into each one of us? This second revelation was made to us, when the soldier's spear opened the divine source, and there flowed from it that Water and Blood, which, as the Scripture tells us, completed the testimony of the blessed Three. "There are three", says St. John, "Who give testimony in Heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are One. And there are three that give testimony on earth: the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood: and these three are one" that is, they are one, because they concur in giving the one same testimony. "And this", continues St. John, "is the testimony: that God hath given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son."

        These words contain a very profound mystery; but we have their explanation in today's feast, which shows us how it is through the Heart of the Man-God that the divine work is achieved, and how, through that same Heart, the plan which was conceived, from all eternity, by the Wisdom of the Father, has been realized.

        To communicate His Own happiness to creatures, by making them, through the Holy Ghost, partakers of His Own divine nature, and members of His beloved Son - this was the merciful design of the Father; and all the works of the Trinity, outside Itself, tend to the accomplishment of that same. When the fullness of time had come, there appeared upon our earth He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. The Spirit, Who, together with the Fatehr and the Son, has already on the banks of the Jordan given His testimony, gives it here again, for St. John continues: "And it is the Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the truth; and that He spoke the truth when He said of Himself, that He is Life."

        The Spirit, as the Gospel teaches us, comes forth with the water from the fountains of the Savior, and makes us worthy of the precious Blood, which flows together with the water. Then does mankind, thus born again of water and the Holy Ghost, become entitled to enter into the kingdom of God; and the Church, thus made ready for her Spouse in those same waters of Baptism, is united to the Incarnate Word in the Blood of the Sacred Mysteries.

        We, being members of that holy Church, have the same union with Christ; we are bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh; we have received the power to be made adopted sons of God, and sharers of all eternity, of the divine life, which He, the Son by nature, has in the bosom of the Father.

        Oh, then, thou Jew! though ignorant of the nuptials of the Lamb, give the signal of their being accomplished. Lead the Spouse to the nuptial bed of the cross; He will lay Himself down on the most precous Wood, which His mother, the Synogogue, has made to be His couch; she prepared it for Him, on the eve of the day of His alliance, when from His Sacred Heart His bride is to come forth, together with the Water which cleanses her, and the Blood which is to be her dower. It was for the sake of this bride, that He left His Father, and the bright home of His heavenly Jerusalem; He ran, as a giant, in the way of His intense love; He thirsted, and the thirst of desire gave Him no rest. The scorching wind of suffering which dried up His bones was less active than the fire which burned in His Heart, and made its beating send forth, in the agony in the garden, the Blood which, on the morrow, was to be spent for the redemption of His bride.

        He has reached Calvary, it is the end of His journey; He dies; He sleeps, with His burning thirst upon Him. But the bride, who is formed for Him during this His mysterious sleep, will soon rouse Him from it. That Heart, from which she was born, has broken, that she might come forth; broken, it ceased to beat; and the grand hymn which, through it, had been so long ascending from earth to Heaven, was interrupted; and creation was dismayed at the interruption. Now that the world has been redeemed, man should sing more than ever the canticle of his gratitude: and the strings of the harp are broken! Who will restore them? Who will reawaken in the Heart of Jesus the music of its divine throbbings?

        The new-born Church, His bride, is standing near that open side of her Jesus; in the intensity of her first joy, she thus sings to God the Father: "I will praise Thee, O Lord, among the people, and I will sing unto Thee among the nations." Then, to her Jesus, "Arise, Thou, my glory! my psaltery, my harp, arise." And He arose in the early morning of the great Sunday; His Sacred Heart resumed its melody, and, with it, sent up to Heaven the music of holy Church, for the Heart of the Spouse belongs to His bride, and they are now two in one flesh.

        Christ, being now in possession of her who has wounded His Heart, gives her, in return, full power over that Sacred Heart of His, from which she has issued. There lies the secret of all the Church's power. In the relations existing between husband and wife, which were created by God at the beginning of the world, and (as the apostle assures us) in view of this great mystery of Christ and the Church, man is the head, and the woman may not domineer in the government of the family. Has the woman, then, no power? She has power, and a great power; she must address herself to her husband's heart, and gain all by love. If Adam, our first father, sinned, it was because Eve used, and for evil, her influence over his heart, by misleading him, and us in him. Jesus saves us, because the Church has won His Heart; and that human Heart could not be won, without the Divinity also being moved to mercy.

        Here we have the doctrine of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as far as regards the principle upon which it rests. In this its primary and essential notion, the devotion is as old as the Church herself, for it rests on this truth, which has been recognized in every age: that Christ is the Spouse, and the Church is His bride.

    We can see by the prose of the esteemed Abbot and the wordmastery of his translator, Dom Laurence Shepherd how the Church is indefectible; something no other church can claim and proof that the sole claim of the spotless Mystical Bride must be indefectible because She is one with Christ Who is perfect in every way for He is the God-Man, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. God does not and cannot make mistakes! Man does and can.