The Purpose of the Church
by VP
Posted on Saturday June 19, 2021 at 12:28AM in Quotes
"By the will and ordinance of God, its Founder, it (the Catholic Church) is a society perfect in its kind, whose office and mission it is to school mankind in the precepts and teachings of the Gospel, and by safeguarding the integrity of morals and the exercise of Christian virtue, to lead men to that happiness which is held out to everyone in heaven. And since it is, as We have said, a perfect society, therefore it is endowed with a living power and efficacy which is not derived from any external source, but from the ordinance of God and its own constitution, inherent in its very nature. For the same reason it has an inborn power to make laws, and justice requires that in its exercise it should be dependent on no one. It must also have freedom in other matters pertinent to its rights.
But this freedom is not of a kind to occasion rivalry or envy, for the Church does not covet power, nor is she urged on by any selfish desire. This one thing she wishes, and this only she seeks: to preserve among men the duties which virtue imposes, and by this means and in this way to provide for their everlasting welfare.
Source: Pope Leo XIII, encyclical Praeclara June 20, 1894. The American Ecclesiastical Review
