As we say in the Creed, “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” In the first semester of my MDiv, this idea of catholicity has repeatedly come up, which has forced me to consider its meaning more intensely. What does it mean for the Church to be catholic? The easy answer: “universal”. The word “catholic” comes from the Greek word katholikos (καθολικός), which means “universal” or “all-encompassing”. So, that’s it, right? Problem solved? Wrong.

What makes catholicity so complicated? Precisely the fact that the Church is also “one”. We are to be one universal Church, which strictly speaking, isn’t the case to begin with. The Catholic Church is, in fact, made up of 24 sui iuris churches, the largest of which is the Latin Church, while the other 23 are all Eastern Catholic churches. These churches have many different liturgical practices and traditions, which are expressed through a wide variety of cultural norms. When you really think about it, the Catholic Church is perhaps one of the most diverse institutions on Earth, yet it is one church. The Catholic Church is, at once, both a unity and a disunity: how can this be?

Thinking about it this way, the Church, in some ways, resembles the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is one God in three consubstantial, coeternal, coequal persons. The Church is one church in twenty-four churches: each church is the Church, yet it is distinct from another church that is also the Church. Even as we are told to “be imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1), surely one does not mean that we are all to become carpenters! Rather, we are to express that Godliness as our authentic selves. This idea of “differentiated unity,” as one author puts it (cf. Richard Gaillardetz), is the titular theme of Catholicism. It certainly seems a paradox, but it exists in reality.

I bring this to your attention, dear reader, on account of a discussion I was having just the other day. We were discussing the liturgical controversies taking place in the Latin Church today, and it dawned on me that this division that exists (between the Old Rite and New Rite) is not unlike the divisions that already exist in the Church between Rites today. In a similar way, perhaps what needs to happen—to put an end to the “liturgical wars”—is for people to realise the “differentiated unity” that is already a defining feature of Catholicism.

I believe this idea is worth exploring for a multitude of reasons, not only for the sake of peace within the Church. Thinking about it, being able to achieve a meaningful unity while difference persists is one of the defining problems of Western nations in the present day. It is, essentially, the problem suffered by multicultural societies, which might feel quite fragmented at times. And dare I say that there are some incredibly divided democracies at the moment, which would benefit from a sense of differentiated unity?

How can we retrieve some sense of fraternity, even while we diverge from one another? Perhaps this has always been a good question, but it certainly seems to be the question of our times, one which I would need to think about more deeply. But I wanted to call attention to this idea because I believe that a mature understanding of this slippery, antinomous idea bears relevance to us all, be it as a catholic, a concerned citizen, or simply a fellow human being.