"Christ did not establish any church. He attended the Synagogue and the Temple. He advised the people to listen to the occupants of the `seat of Moses'; and told the lepers, he is assumed to have cured, to `go show yourselves to the priests,' who were Jewish priests."

   All the objections you present, save regarding Christ having established a church, have been adequately covered in some of my former letters. I clearly stated that Jesus - the man - was a Jew. He claimed to be the Christ (the Messiah), the Son, that is the descendant, of the Jewish King David. He was born of a Jewish mother, the daughter of Jewish parents, Joachim and Anna. He conformed to the requirements of the Mosaic Law from the time of His circumcision until the Pasch, which He celebrated on the night before the Crucifixion. Christ conformed to the Law because it was binding upon every Israelite during the days of His life upon earth; because the then existing Church of God was the Jewish Church.
   Christ could not send the lepers He cured to Catholic priests, as the priesthood of Christ had not yet been instituted. The disciples had not been given priestly powers by Christ; the Sacrifice of the Mass had not been instituted; the power to forgive sins while preaching Christ to the whole world had not been conferred upon the apostles at the time the lepers were cured. The public work of the new Church under a new priesthood did not begin until the First Pentecost Day, the birthday of the Catholic Church.
   Only one thing more need to be said at this point. It is that you should look upon Christ more sympathetically by this time than you do; you should be proud enough of Israel to follow so great a Jew. Remember, I beg of you, that Christ is the "Prophet of the Nation and of thy brethren" whom Moses said "thou shalt hear" (Deut. 18:15). He is the Jew who said, "If you believed Moses you would believe Me also, for he (Moses) wrote of Me" (St. John 5:46-47).
   Before dealing directly with the question of Christ having established a Church, let us look at what Catholics as well as Jews understand a Church to be. This is necessary for a clear understanding of the question. Our start is easy, as both the Jews of old and Catholics have a God-made and not a man-made Church in mind.
   Jews hold that only a Mosaic-instituted, and Catholics a Christ-made Church has any legitimate right to command allegiance. The term church is traced to two Greek words, Kuriakon, translated "belonging to the Lord," and Ecclesia, an "assembly," meaning a religious assembly (though not originally given such an exclusive definition). The Hebrew equivalent is given by Moses when referring to the Church of Israel. The term synagogue is of Greek origin, meaning "congregation." Synagogues, as we understand them, came into existence long after the Jewish Church was instituted by Moses and Aaron, by command of God. Therefore while Moses speaks of congregations, the term in the synagogue sense does not appear in the Old Testament. The Aramaic equivalent - Keneshta - is used, which signifies "a people's house," a "house of prayer."
   While it was correct to refer to the Jewish spiritual society in pre-Christian times as the Church of Israel; it is not exactly correct to so designate it in Christian times, since the Church of Christ supplanted the Church of Moses, though it is a common thing to call any group of believers a church. Let me say again that Moses and Aaron did not institute synagogues, they came into existence centuries later than their day. The Church of Moses centered in their places of worship where sacrifices were offered to Almighty God as God ordered them to be offered. That was in the Temple. Before the Temple was built, the Church of Israel, composed of the circumcised under the headship of the High Priest, centered and worshipped where the ohel moed, the portable sanctuary, the tabernacle, the altar were located, such as the Israelites carried with them while in the wilderness. Synagogues have no altars, they are houses of prayer, not of sacrifices. Therefore during Christian times it is proper to contrast the Synagogue to the Church; one Jewish, the other Christian. Writing of these terms fifteen centuries ago, St. Augustine of Hippo said,

"By the Synagogue we understand the people of Israel, because synagogue is a word properly used by them, although they were also called the Church. Our congregation, on the contrary, the Apostles never called synagogue, but always ecclesia...," the Church.

The Jews of old, like Catholics, always looked upon the Church as designating a formal visible spiritual society of God's making. Isaiah refers to the Church as being on the top of a mountain, therefore ever visible,

"Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob..." (2:3).

   No doubt Christ had the above text in mind when, in the Sermon on the Mount, He referred to "A city on the mountain (that) cannot be hid" (St. Matt. 5:14). To deny the visible character of a God-made Church, which many good-meaning people do, is an utter absurdity. Christ called His Church a "building" (St. Matt. 16:18); a "kingdom" (St. Matt. 16:19); a "city" (St. Matt. 5:14); a "flock" (St. John 10:16); and a "house" (St. Matt. 7:24). Only when buildings, kingdoms, cities, flocks and houses become invisible entities will the Church of Christ ever be an invisible spiritual society. There are invisible parts of Christ's Church. They are the Church Triumphant, made up of the souls in heaven; and the Church Suffering, made up of the souls in purgatory. Such a thing as an invisible spiritual society on earth of Christ's making, is of sixteenth century anti-Catholic origin. It was prompted by the realization that a Visible Church, a corporate body of Christ's making, would have to date back to the first century, back to Jerusalem instead of Germany where Protestantism was born. While intense divisions existed within Jewry, the sects, those groups that broke away from Israel, such as the Karaites and Samaritans, were refused recognition as Mosaic, though they held tenaciously to parts of the Law. The twelfth of the "Eighteen Benedictions" called upon God to "let there be no hope for the sectarians."
   The only thing a Church of God's making can consistently do is to condemn sects, as did the Catholic Church when she declared Lutheranism and Anglicanism to be no part of Christ's Universal Church, though she always asks God to let hope enter the hearts of the misguided adherents of them, that they may be one with Catholics in the Visible Fold of the Good Shepherd. While there is a wide difference between the Catholic and Protestant concept of the Church, they are one in holding that Christ did establish a Church.
   All this is preliminary to saying that when Catholics speak of the Church they mean a visible spiritual society, made up in the beginning of a teaching body of Twelve Apostles, selected by Christ Himself, that was commissioned to teach, preach, baptize, offer sacrifice, forgive sins, etc. in the name of Christ. It is a Divine Corporation with which Christ promised to remain until the end of the world. Though divine in origin, it was to be a living self-perpetuating human society, insofar as it was composed of persons who, through their successors, were to extend and continue its work throughout the world, during all ages. Pope Leo XIII, said,

"The Church is a society divine in its origin, supernatural in its ends and means, yet because it consists of human members, it is a human society."

   The Church of Christ is referred to in St. Matthew's Gospel no less than thirty times as "the kingdom," the "kingdom of heaven," the "kingdom of God." It is also referred to as Christ's "household" (St. Matt. 10:25); as the "flock" of the Shepherd (St. Matt. 26:31); its members being called "the branches of which Christ is the Vine (St. John 15:1-6). It is definitely spoken of, by Christ Himself as "the Church" He was about to build, in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, which alone is a refutation of your declaration that "Christ did not establish a Church." I herewith present the text, and also a detailed explanation of it as understood and believed by Catholics the world over. Christ begins by addressing Simon, afterwards named Peter,

"`But who do you say I am?' Simon answered and said `Thou are Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the living God.' Then Jesus answered and said, `Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but My Father in heaven. And I say to thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys to the kingdom of heaven; and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven'" (St. Matt. 16:13-20).

   I hope you will carefully study the above text, as it embodies much more than the announcement of Jesus Christ that He was to build a Church. It shows,
   1. That Christ commanded a public declaration of who He is, which includes a recognition of His mission.
   2. Simon unhesitatingly declared Jesus to be the Messiah expected in Israel.
   3. Simon proclaimed the divinity of Jesus, by declaring Him to be the "Son of the living God"; that is "Son" with a big S.
   4. No further questions were asked, as Jesus had received the proper recognition of His Messianic Lordship; the recognition that is desired of every Jew in the world today.
   5. Jesus called Simon "blessed," because his confession of belief, that Christ is true God as well as true man, was an illumination from on high. It is a confession of faith that every Catholic in the world has since made.
   6. Jesus rewarded Simon with a new name, Peter (rock), that signified the office he would henceforth occupy. This change of name meets no obstacle in Jewry, as history records the fact that God changed the names of Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of a multitude); Sarai ("contentious") to Sarah (princess); and Jacob (supplanter) to Israel (he that striveth with God), to signify the missions they were to fulfill in Israel. There is no misunderstanding of the statement, "thou art Peter," on the part of Jews who know that Jesus spoke the Aramaic dialect of the Jews in Jerusalem. Hence Jesus did not say "Peter" (the English translation of the Greek word petros, petra, which means a stone or a rock), but rather Kepha (Rock), thou are Kepha and upon this Kepha, etc.

   7. "Upon this rock I will build my Church."

A.   The Eternal Rock made Simon the Kepha, that earthly, solid human foundation of His Church.
B.   Jesus spoke in the first person singular, "I." The "I" is God, for only God could rightly assume to build a Church to take the place of an existing Church that was of God's making, and by His own fiat.
C.   Jesus says "My Church," not my churches; that is the Church. That means it was to be either in competition with the Church Moses established by direction of God, or it was to displace it. There is but one God, hence there can be but one Church of God. Two churches could only be established to teach two different doctrines, codes and practices, which would mean a contradiction.