The continued survival and the enduring strength of the Catholic Church sometimes puzzle both believer and non-believer alike. What, they ask, is the real nature of this phenomenon? How has it managed to survive through two-thousand years? Fr de Bovis explores in this book the essential “mystery" - here used in its full meaning of an event produced by God's power and revealed by God in the very act of bringing it about - of the Church founded by Christ. He begins with the Church's origins in Israel and continues with the first stage of its foundation before the Resurrection before discussing the "conflrmation" of the Church as a sacramental mystery in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Succeeding chapters explain in detail the background and full significance of the term “the Body of Christ", the nature of the Church’s authority and what is to be understood by infallibility in relation to the Church and the Sovereign Pontiff, and, finally, the visible and invisible characteristics of the holiness of the Church.