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PARTISAN REVIEW
The fifth and last element of the Church's identity is its identifiable
beginning. This, of course, is the birth and baptism of Christ, as well as
the miracles he performed, his teachings, his transfiguration, his pas–
sion, and his resurrection. In this context it need not be established
when, precisely, the ultimate separation of the Christian community
from the Jewish temple took place; the question is irrelevant here, and
it is not one I am competent to discuss. What matters is the beginning
as perceived and accepted by the Church for centuries.
For all these reasons the Catholic Church retains, in spite of all the
changes it has undergone, a clearer, stronger, and better attested contin–
uous identity than any other collective body. The fact that all the ele–
ments of its identity are strengthened by or dependent upon the power of
faith is immaterial; self-perception is an essential element of continuous
identity, just as in the case of personal identity. I will not go into the ques–
tion of how and to what extent these criteria apply to other religious
bodies, Christian and non-Christian; none has such a well-grounded
identity. The position of Christian communities which broke away from
the Church of Rome in the sixteenth century or later is shakier with
regard to their apostolic legitimacy. Although their history from the
moment of the split is well known, they have often been accused of
breaking the continuity that is essential to the Catholic Church, for they
abolished the sacrament of the priesthood and denied the validity of tra–
dition as a separate source of doctrinal authority. The Jewish religious
identity does not meet all five of the criteria discussed above, but this is
compensated for by an insistence on the immutability of divine law,
which in Jewish religious communities is handed down uninterruptedly
from generation to generation. The great Oriental religions have their
sacred books, of course, but none of them has a well-defined body of
scripture endowed with the status of divine revelation, as in the case of
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Here, too, identity is a matter of degree.
It
is worth noting that the Church's recent expansion of ecumenical
spirit and increasing openness towards other traditions is perceived by
many as an erosion of its identity. And it is true that this trend to open–
ness (of which the Church's decision to stop condemning heresies is also
part), however laudable, might blur the borderline which makes the
Catholic Church distinct from other churches. But acceptance of toler–
ance and religious freedom can coexist with the Church's persistent will
to assert its distinctness and its unique place in the world.
Since the Devil, as theologians used to teach, is the ape of God, there
is nothing astonishing in the fact that some more recent, secular ideo–
logical bodies also appeal to similar criteria of identity. The communist
