The Catholic spirit

the long version

What is meant by "Catholic"? Does it mean universal in the sense of geographic extension and number of adherents, or is there a deeper spiritual meaning? The author answers these questions by showing these quantitative properties to be the visible sign and efflorescence of a more hidden property, a qualitative catholicity, a spiritual universalism from which all particularism from which all particularism is excluded. The history of the Church is show to give evidence of its continuing catholicity. Thus, while it welcomes all kinds of character, all forms of culture, all nations; it remains its true self, identical in all esentials with what it was on the day of Pentecost, or in the time of Charlemagne.