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To: bobjam
It's true that the Church is a community of believers. It's probably also true that all faithful Christians are in some way members of the Church, whether they know it or not.

However, it doesn't follow that any community of believers is "the Church". My family is a community of believers, but we don't have the right to separate from the wider Church.

Kolokotronis is absolutely right that the a "church" properly so-called is the community of the faithful, together with the elders and the bishop of the diocese.

You know, Ignatius of Antioch knew St. Paul personally (probably St. Peter, too). He ended up as a lion snack in the arena in Rome in AD 110. Before his death, he wrote in one of his letters that to celebrate the Eucharist behind the bishop's back was equivalent to devil worship. Just something to think about.

16 posted on 06/01/2005 10:02:15 AM PDT by Campion (Truth is not determined by a majority vote -- Pope Benedict XVI)
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To: Campion

One of the items on St Paul's list of gifts for the various members of each community of saints is leadership. He wrote to St Timothy that each community should have an overseer (in Greek, episcopos). You can no more have a functioning community made up entirely of healers than you can have a functioning human made entirely of eyeballs. One of the tasks for each community is to start new communities of such believers in neighboring towns and villages. As time progresses and communities start new communities nearby, a chain forms linking each one back to Jerusalem.


19 posted on 06/01/2005 3:51:09 PM PDT by bobjam
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