What does it mean for the Catholic Church to be inclusive?
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What does it mean for a Catholic Church to be inclusive?
The four marks of the Catholic Church are that she is one, holy, catholic (as in universal), and apostolic. Being inclusive is not one of the marks of the Church.
Being universal, the Church welcome all races of humanity. The Catholic Church is truly global. She includes people of every nation, ethnicity, race and culture. What could possibly be more diverse than the Catholic Church?
Inclusiveness nevertheless is not one of the marks of the Church given by Christ.
Back in the day, kiddie Catholics learned that the Church had four “marks”: The Church is one, holy, catholic (as in “universal”), and apostolic. These marks derived from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which we recite at Mass on Sundays and liturgical solemnities. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Church “does not possess” these “inseparably linked” characteristics “of herself”; rather, “it is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, and it is he who calls her to realize each of these qualities” (CCC 811).
You will note that “inclusive” is not one of the marks of the Church given by Christ, although “universal” is. Distinctions, as ever, are important.
Universality must characterize the Church’s evangelical mission, for the Lord commanded us to go and “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). And a certain kind of inclusivity denotes a crucial ecclesial reality: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Moreover, the Church is called by the Lord to serve everyone, not just the Church’s own; as historical sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out, paleo-Christian care for the sick who were not of the household of faith attracted converts in classical antiquity, when the sick were typically abandoned, even by their own families.
Those expressions of ecclesial inclusivity (or catholicity, or universality) are not, however, what contemporary woke culture means by being “inclusive.” As typically used today, “inclusion” is code for accepting everyone’s definition of self as if that self-definition obviously cohered with reality, were inherently unchallengeable, and thus commanded affirmation.
It is worth noting in this context that the Lord Jesus practiced some serious exclusion on occasion. Thus his exclusion from beatitude of one kind of sinner: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness” (Mark 3:29). And his condemnation of the pitiless: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). And the fate of the one who tempts the innocent: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea” (Luke 17:2). And his determination to cast “fire upon the earth” (Luke 12:49) and burn out all that was contrary to the Kingdom of God. - “Inclusion” and Catholicism
The concept of any valid definition of the term inclusivism is as yet to be standardized. It nevertheless must remain faithful to the mission of the Church established by Jesus Christ and it’s concepts on a philosophical and theological level of understandings and are to remain firm to the concept of truth, in the light of the Gospel to moral values taught by Jesus Christ, himself.
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