Don’t blame the Church
This week we quote Pope John Paul as saying that the Church is always holy, despite the failings and scandals in the Church, today and through the centuries.It is a message that merits amplification.
Catholics need no reminding that the Church’s history is fraught with appalling affairs. Almost two millennia of anti-Semitism, the Inquisition and more recently the revelations of sexual abuses are just some of the grievous chapters in the life of the Church. These failings, and others, are sticks with which the Church is now regularly beaten, the sincere mea culpas of successive popes notwithstanding.
Likewise, many Catholics have become alienated from the Church because of offences, real or perceived, perpetrated by members of the hierarchy, clergy, consecrated orders or laity.
Many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, mistakenly characterise the Church by those who fail in their call to holiness. It is a fallacy to define the Church by hypocrites in the pews or on the altar, or by a presumed lack of compassion within the institutional Church, or even by its popes (some of whom have indeed brought shame on to the Church). Nor can the Church be reduced to its various doctrines, important though these are.
It is tempting to counter the failings of individuals in the Church with examples of holiness and greatness in the Church. For every Pope Alexander VI there are many more pontiffs of the calibre of, say, John XXIII; for every child molesting priest there are many Don Boscos or Fr Flanagans; for every Augusto Pinochet there are many Archbishop Romeros.
Pope John Paul¹s policy of canonising saints at a record-breaking pace serves to emphasise the great capacity for holiness in the Church, one to which we all are called. Yet, edifying though these saints are, they are but a component of the Church.
The lay person, the religious, the priest, the bishop and the pope
— saints and sinners (terms that are not mutually exclusive)
— make up the People of God in communion with God. Nourished by the teachings of Jesus Christ and the perpetual presence of the triune God, the Church, as a convocation of the People of God, is always holy.
We are called to holiness, to try to emulate John XXIII, Bosco, Flanagan, Romero, et al. But when some of us fail, the Church — God’s convocation of his people, as opposed to the institutional church — cannot be blamed.
- The Look of Christ - May 24, 2022
- Putting Down a Sleeping Toddler at Communion? - March 30, 2022
- To See Our Good News - March 23, 2022
