QUESTION AND ANSWERS

QUESTION: What is the correct statement "We are the CHURCH" or "We are just the MEMBERS of the Church"?
Answer: Let us Put this in NOTE: Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation.
In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church.
To be ONE with the CHURCH is to be a member of it. As validly Baptized Protestants they are already a members of the Church comprises of believers to the Mystical Body of Christ.
As long as Protestant Baptism is a VALID Baptism, Protestants are already a member of the CHURCH...
But it does not mean WE ourselves are the CHURCH, the CHURCH is the BODY of CHRIST which we comprise as members...
Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.
There is Only one true Church and it is the Catholic Church. This is a CHURCH which JESUS founded more than 2000 years ago...
Matthew 16:17-19
17And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18"I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. 19"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."…
"And He (Christ) is the HEAD of the body, the church (Col.1:18), "which is His body, the Fulness of Him the that Filleth all in all (Eph. 1:23)
In the Holy Scriptures the Church is repeatedly called the Body of Christ."Who (Paul) now rejoice in my sufferings for you, ... for His Body's sake, which is the Church (Col. 1:24), the Apostle Paul writes about himself.
This CHURCH is only one, w/c is AUTHORIZED, No ONE has the power to establish a CHURCH, only JESUS. Not yesterday today and forever...
So if we are the members of the Church. Will it mean 1 Cor 3:17 (people of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are ye.)
This verses are clearly misunderstood by protestant?
1 Corinthians 3:17
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
Here is another verse:
1 Corinthians 3:16
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?
What this verse means is that our BODY is the temple of the Holy Spirit but literally mean we are the TEMPLE the CHURCH it self.
All the members of the CHURCH received the HOLY Spirit and dwell on its Body from the moment of baptism...
1 Corinthians 6:18-20(RSVCE)
18 Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
As Peter teaches on Acts 2:38, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Now how could we say that this CHURCH is pertaining to the ONE Church Jesus founded and not an individual Church as like protestants.
Read it loudly " FOR YOU HAVE BEEN BOUGHT WITH A PRICE:" 1 Corinthians 6:20,"For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body."
Acts 20:28
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.
See how PAUL deliver the reminder..
Keep watch over:
1. YOURSELVES
2. ALL THE FLOCKS
3. Made you Overseers of the CHURCH
Overseers, a shepherd of the CHURCH of GOD which JESUS bought with his own BLOOD... The only single visible CHURCH which He himself founded and we are instructed to watch over it not watch over our own individual CHURCH ourselves but to all the members who is which comprises as members of the CHURCH, the Church founded by JESUS 2000 years ago...
So what about Protestants claim that they are the CHURCH the same Church that we Catholics Posses because we believe in the same JESUS?
Though we share the same experience during baptism that makes them as a member of the Church, it does not mean that we believe in the same CHURCH like Protestants view of it. Infact the Church that JESUS founded cannot have conflicting doctrines, the claim that we are members of the same body with them is true but to what we believe cannot both be right since they believe in different Doctrine and but we only follow what the CHURCH teaches us the authorized one the PILLAR and BULWARK of TRUTH unlike them that they only follow what they themselves believe and interpret.
1 Timothy 3:15
if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, THE PILLAR and BULWARK of TRUTH.
Now let us get it straight from our Church Teachings;
Catechism 816 "The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter's pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."267
The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism explains: "For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God."268
Also Read: LUMEN GENTIUM Paragraph 14-17