The strange survival value of
the Catholic Church has intrigued many attentive minds that have been watching
it from outside. The Church appeared to them very different indeed from
any other institution in human history.
That difference should seem to pose a particular challenge in these modern times. An enormous store is set on novelties (so many differences) as keys to success and recognition. At the same time the process of democratization heavily promotes the leveling of all differences. Surely there is some incoherence in all that.
While the Catholic Church asserts itself to be very different, it does so in a coherent way, and has done so steadily for now two thousand years. Furthermore it claims that its difference from anything else is rooted in that greatest of all differences which is the difference of the supernatural from the merely natural. The differences of the Church are set forth as expressive of its four great notes: unity, catholicity, apostolicity, and sanctity