Quotes about Catholicity

The church's holiness must not be sacrificed for its catholicity, and the church's catholicity may not be surrendered in favor of its holiness. For in denying either, we lose both. Both attributes by nature characterize the one Christian church.

America means above all toleration, catholicity, welcome, freedom--a concern for Europe, for Asia, for Africa, along with its concern for America. It is something quite peculiar, hardly to be stated--evades you as the air--yet is a fact everywhere preciously present.

Every kind of integralism, open or disguised, is contrary in principle to true catholicity, which can win to itself and comprise all things only if it delivers itself up and dies like the seed to rise again.

But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.