The Catechism of the Catholic Church drops this bombshell:

Christians of the first centuries said, “The world was created for the sake of the Church.” God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the “convocation” of men in Christ, and this “convocation” is the Church. The Church is the goal of all things, and God permitted such painful upheavals as the angels’ fall and man’s sin only as occasions and means for displaying all the power of his arm and the whole measure of the love he wanted to give the world: Just as God’s will is creation and is called “the world,” so his intention is the salvation of men, and it is called “the Church” [CCC, 760].

Not only is this paragraph an affirmation of the grandeur of our mission as members of the Church — to bring about communion with his divine life — it is also a rather profound commentary on the mystery of evil.

The Necessity of the Church

Antiquity was a perilous time, not unlike our own. The leaders of the Roman Empire, judging from the writings of the Church fathers, were suspicious of, and hostile towards, Christianity because they heard rumors that Christians were responsible for all manner of chaos and misfortune. The Roman Empire responded by harassing Christians, ordering many of them to be tortured and killed. This was despite the testimony of provincial governors, such as Pliny of Bythnia, who wrote to the Emperor Trajan that we were apparently a harmless group that gathered on fixed mornings, read scripture together, offered petitions, shared a meal, and chanted psalms invicem (Latin = in a call and response format) [1].

This, of course sounds very much like the structure of the holy Mass. The year was somewhere between 111 and 113 A.D.

Second century apologist Justin Martyr, a highly educated convert to Christianity knowledgeable of the methods of civil proceedings in the Roman Empire, argued that the Romans must stop persecuting Christians because, far from posing a threat to the Empire, their existence was necessary in order to sustain the cosmos itself:

Therefore God postpones the collapse and dissolution of the universe… because of the Christian seed, which He knows to be the cause in nature [of the world’s preservation]. If such were not the case, it would be impossible for you to do the [awful] things you do [to us] [Apologiae II, 7].

Justin is pleading to the government in a very matter of fact way that if they were to wipe out the young Church, the universe itself would fall into dissolution.

A contemporary of Justin Martyr, second century Christian apologist, Aristedes, was also well connected in the Roman Empire; he urged:

I have no doubt that the world stands by reason of the intercession of Christians, but the rest of the peoples are deceived and deceivers, rolling themselves before the elements of the world [Apologia 16, 6].

The theological basis of these arguments is sound and Scriptural. One need only read the prologue of the Gospel of John where the evangelist names Christ as the logos, which is the Greek word that we translate as Word. In the beginning was the logos. The word logos had deep roots in Greek philosophy, so it was clear to readers at the time what was being claimed: Christ is the creative reason that makes the universe intelligible and holds it together. He is the ground of everything, the principle of all order and understanding.

If Christ is the divine ground of the intelligible universe, and if the Church is the mystical body of Christ, it is no stretch of logic to infer that the Church itself holds the universe in check in some mystical sense. And if this convocation, this Church, is the means by which God accomplishes communion between the physical world and his divine life, it does indeed seem that the Church is in some sense “the goal of all things.”

The Mystery of Evil

The paragraph CCC 760 also says that the painful upheavals, the angels’ fall, and man’s sin, are only “occasions and means” for displaying “the whole measure of the love” he wanted to give.

There are not two sovereign powers in the world, one good, and one evil, both fighting for dominance. This is in fact a heretical view known as Manicheism. The Church teaches that God is the sole sovereign power who created everything, and everything He created is good. Evil is subordinated to good because evil is the absence or dissolution of good, and an “occasion” for the display of God’s almighty power. As St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed, there can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good. This is one of those principles I wish every Catholic would memorize. There can be no evil without good.

St. Augustine was himself a Manichean for a time before his conversion to the Catholic faith, and was instrumental after his conversion in clarifying our understanding of the mystery of evil. Like the early Church fathers, Augustine understood the universe to be susceptible to dissolution and chaos. He, too saw the Church as the means by which such dissolution was held in check. His masterful De Civitate Dei (The City of God) described this mystical tension as an ongoing narrative in history pitting the City of God against the City of Man.

Unlike Hollywood epics, however, there is no clear distinction between the two cities in this life. The world and the Church on earth are a mixture. It is impossible to discern the “wheat from the chaff” with certainty. All we can do is strive for holiness. St. Thomas Aquinas would later say that our status on earth as people on the way means that we have to acquire the appropriate virtues to help us. These include the supernatural virtue of hope, and the natural virtues of courage and prudence. Some of the corresponding vices to be avoided are presumption, despair, and pusillanimity (which means: contemptible fearfulness).

Let me close by citing eminent 20th century MIT Professor Norbert Wiener, founder and a major figure in the systems sciences who found deep insight in the isomorphism of physical dissolution and evil as described by the Church fathers.

Wiener said that St. Augustine was right (as were his predecessors) in recognizing this “random element” or dissolution in the universe as a significant thing. This “organic incompleteness,” said Wiener, “is one which without too violent a figure of speech we may consider evil; the negative evil which St. Augustine characterizes as incompleteness, rather than the positive malicious evil of the Manicheans” [2].

It is rather nice to see such a brilliant modern mind stand in admiration of our ancient tradition.

As the Body of Christ, we are on earth to live out our destiny as a royal priesthood to fulfill and uphold the grandeur and order of the universe which was created by God to communicate his love.

[1] Pliny, Letters 10.96-97.

[2] Norbert Wiener (1950). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Avon: Discus Edition, p. 19.