St.John the Baptist Catholic Church Kansas,USA
The 15 Marks of the Catholic Church
Developed by St. Robert Bellarmine,1542-1621, Doctor of the Church
- The Church’s Name, Catholic, universal, and world wide, and not confined to any particular nation or people.
- Antiquity, in tracing her ancestry directly to Jesus Christ.
- Constant Duration, in lasting substantially unchanged for so many centuries.
- Extensiveness, in the number of her loyal members.
- Episcopal Succession, of her Bishops from the first Apostles at the Last Supper to the present hierarchy.
- Doctrinal Agreement, of her doctrine with the teaching of the ancient Church.
- Union, of her members among themselves, and with their visible head, the Roman Pontiff.
- Holiness, of doctrine in reflecting the sanctity of GOD.
- Efficacy, of doctrine in its power to sanctify believers, and inspire them to great moral achievement.
- Holiness of Life, of the Church’s representative writers and defenders.
- The glory of Miracles, worked in the Church and under the Church’s auspices.
- The gift of Prophecy found among the Church’s saints and spokesmen.
- The Opposition that the Church arouses among those who attack her on the very grounds that Christ was opposed by His enemies.
- The Unhappy End, of those who fight against her.
- The Temporal Peace and Earthly Happiness of those who live by the Church’s teaching and defend her interests.