Continuing in the reading of Cardinal Manning's excellent book on the Holy Spirit and the Church, one can pick out a few more points in the Introduction, before moving on to Chapter One.
The Attribute of God as One, which I have written about on this blog, is that Attribute of Unity. Cardinal Manning wrote that as an Anglican, he could understand the Trinity as One, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as One. However, he had denied that the Church, was, therefore, as the Mystical Body of Christ, also One.
The external expression of Oneness in the Catholic Church revealed the internal, intrinsic Unity of that institution founded by the One God.
His illumination came after many years of living in the fog of denial that the extrinsic sign of unity, the papacy, was a necessary element revealing the internal, intrinsic unity.
That Christ is One and that Christians have the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit cannot be ideas separated from the Oneness, the Unity of the Catholic Church.
God's Attribute of Oneness is, therefore, expressed in the Church.
Manning noted that he had to write the book in reparation for erroneous ideas which he has stated earlier in his career. His reparation had to be made to Truth, Who is the Divine Person of Christ.
The organic unity of the Church belongs to the intrinsic essence of the Church, which is perfection.
As I noted in the last post on Manning, this unity involves the eternal unity of the Holy Spirit, Who is in the Church. Therefore, to deny the working of the Holy Spirit through, for example, infallibility, is to deny the Holy Spirit-the most serious of sins.
Much to ponder...
More later...
