Posting on Behalf of LW

Exploring this week’s subject of the “The Marks of the Church” I immediately saw the effort as an opportunity to investigate Church history. I began by reading on the subject matter as discussed in Chapter 7 of the book entitled: “Towards A Truly Catholic Church” by Thomas P. Rausch. I came away from the reading impressed with the quality of Mr. Rausch ability to expound upon some of the keys facets of the design and structure of the Church as more of a spiritualized entity. The facets I found of greatest value to the exposition were the sub-parts of “The Church is One” and “The Church is Holy”. These aspects of the writing tend to give a vivid depiction of not only the marks of the Church, but, more of what I conclude as defining features of the Church. The exposure of this fact is highly important to me and to Christians everywhere regardless to denominational affiliations. 

Another truly interesting aspect of the writing was opening reference to the gathering of bishops at the First Council of Constantinople, which I researched further at: http://papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum02.htm. Exploring the website increased my curiosity and I also began to examine the historic background on the Council of Nicene at: http://www.livescience.com/2410-council-nicea-changed-world.html. Even though each of these events was profound and directly ties in with defining the ‘marks of the Church’, my curiosity was not completely satisfied with the emergence of the term “Catholic” as a dominant term for identifying all true believers and adherents to the doctrine of Christianity; which remained the status quo until the emergence of the movement of Protestantism. My mind becomes flooded with various questions at this point in which I will leave for addressing at a later time. For now, I conclude in a spirit of gratitude for this week’s required readings and look forward to more of such quality as the semester proceeds.