Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost

by Henry Edward Cardinal Manning

Published in 1865, five years after his book on confidence, Cardinal Manning’s The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost explains afundamental truth about the nature of the Church that is frequently forgotten in our time. St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Anselm, taught us the importance of how human reason helps us to understand the faith, in that philosophy is the “handmaid of theology.” We can appreciate Cardinal Manning’s book by borrowing the explanation of a prominent layman of the twentieth century, the Brazilian writer Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, who used philosophical language to explain the nature of the Catholic Church this way: “. . . the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . is not merely a species of the genus churches. . . . In relation to the other churches, she is not a greater and more brilliant diamond among smaller and less brilliant ones. She is the only true diamond among ‘similars’ made of glass.” Cardinal Manning’s book explains this truth theologically by showing that the Catholic Church is unique, for her life as the Mystical Body of Christ comes from her Soul which is divine, the Holy Spirit. This uniqueness belongs to the Catholic Church alone, and to no other religion.