It is said that Napoleon Bonaparte once threatened a Catholic Cardinal by saying: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” To which the cardinal replied: “Your Majesty, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

Whether true or not this anecdote reminds us that Hell has infiltrated the Catholic Church and has never won. Hell was utterly defeated on the Cross. People in the Church from pope to layman may have sold out to Satan, but the Mystical Body of Christ will never be destroyed. Arius, Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and Knox, inter alia, all tried to destroy the Catholic Church. In our own time popes, clerics, and religious have tried to destroy the Catholic Church. The world will never overcome the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church will overcome the world.

N.B. I intentionally use the term “Catholic Church” for absolute clarity. Other sects refer to themselves as “Church”. They are not. There is One Church and that is what is commonly referred to as the Catholic Church. Sects come and go. The Catholic Church alone is eternal.