Ross Douthat on Man’s Inability to Destroy the Catholic Church

During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

Ross Douthat – New York Times

Adrian Fortescue on the disappearance of the Church founded by Christ

Further, the idea of a dead past in which the Church was united, and a present in which it is not, means really that the original Church, founded by Christ, has ceased to exist. A society that has become three or more separate societies no longer exists. This is so obvious that no one would think of disputing it, unless he had some controversial axe to grind. Consider the case of any other society, where no one has anything at stake in his view of what happened. In 1914 there was an Austro-Hungarian State. Now, that state broke up into a German-Austrian Republic, a separated Hungary, a Czecho-Slovak Republic, part of Poland, a kingdom of Southern Slavs. What was the result? Where is the original Austro-Hungarian State? It no longer exists.

The Early Papacy – Adrian Fortescue