Posted on 11/10/2015 7:14:58 AM PST by Salvation
As a priest and pastor I work very closely with others: clergy, religious, laity who work for the Church, and laity who volunteer. We all work for the Church because we love her and her people.
But along with that love comes, at times, disappointment, hurt, or even disillusionment. Perhaps these feelings result from issues in the wider Church such as the betrayal of sexual abuse by clergy, the lack of courage and leadership from some bishops and priests, the scandal of dissent at the highest levels; questionable partnerships with anti-life and anti-Catholic organizations, the breakdown of discipline, and the strange severity of response to some infractions contrasted with the almost total laxity in the face of others.
Perhaps they are just the result of local problems that are found in any gathering of human beings: gossip, hurtful actions, hypocrisy, power struggles, wrongful priorities, favoritism, and injustice.
And while these things happen everywhere, many somehow hope there will be fewer of them in the Church. Some who have come to work for the Church began by thinking, “What a wonderful thing it will be to work for the Church (instead of out in the cutthroat business world)!" Maybe they envisioned a place where people prayed together and supported each other more. Perhaps they thought the Church was a place where there was less competition and strife.
Alas, such hopes are usually set aside early for any who work for the Church. We are, after all, running a hospital of sorts. And just as hospitals tend to attract sick people, so the Church attracts sinners and those who struggle. Jesus was found in strange company, so much so that the Pharisees were scandalized. He rebuked them by saying, People who are well do not need a doctor, sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not the righteous (Mk 2:17).
And thus idealistic notions of working in and for the Church often give way quickly when the phone rings with an impatient parishioner on the line, or when two group leaders argue over who gets to use the hall, or when the pastor is irritable and disorganized, or when the maintenance engineer is found to be drinking on the job, or when certain members of the choir are making anything but harmony, or when some favorite parishioners get attention from and access to the old guard leaders while newcomers are resisted.
For all these sorts of situations that engender irritation, disappointment, or deep disillusionment, I keep a little prayer card near my desk. I sometimes read it for my own benefit and sometimes share it with those who feel discouraged at what happens (or doesn't happen) in the Church. At critical moments, I pull the card out and read it to myself or to others, especially those who love the Church and work closely with her. It is a beautiful mediation; it recalls that great love often generates the deep disappointment, but that in the end love still abides.
Consider, then, the following words. They are perhaps overstated in places. But love has its excesses. Take these words as a kind of elixir that, even if excessive, will hopefully speak to the pain that love sometimes causes. In the end, though, love is what remains. Here are the words I often share with those who are freshly hurt:
How baffling you are, Oh Church,
and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer,
and yet how much I owe you!
I would like to see you destroyed,
and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal
and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity,
more compromised, more false,
and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face,
and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you,
because I am you, though not completely.
And besides, where would I go?
Would I establish another?
I would not be able to establish it without the same faults,
for they are the same faults I carry in me.
And if I did establish another,
it would be my Church,
not the Church of Christ.
(from The God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto)
Yes, where else would I go?
Monsignor Pope Ping!
The protestant mainline church, especially in the DC and NE region, is severely compromised by hatred and cruelty in its upper echelons ensuing from leadership blighted by homosexuality.
I never even heard of this. The media would have it that it was only the Catholic Church that had any homosexual behavior. But, then the media have always seem to detest Catholics and Evangelicals. Just an opinion.
Your post is amazing in that it shows that homosexual behavior happens in non-Catholic churches too. Thanks for your testimony.
We all work for the Church because we love her and her people.
The above sounds good until you think about it.
Rev 3:13 “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what He is saying to the churches.
Yes, where else would I go?
Joh 6:68 Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.
The Church as Monolith is the province of high minded persons. And spiritual tyrants. “Wherever two or more are gathered” lacks the drama some people require to feel spiritual (or in control).
When Jesus healed the man born blind, he proved that HE was the true spiritual authority, setting Himself AND the man born blind against the presumed guardians of the “church” of that day, the Pharisees.
There is no question that Catholicism (and much Protestantism) nurses the same spirit of control those men had, and when anyone dares to come against Monolith they are quickly subdued, guilted, shamed. Problem is that Jesus still, by fiat, frees unworthy men and women from the clutches of Monolith and rubs supposes authorities’ noses in it just as he did with the man born blind.
“For not from the east or from the west
and not from the wilderness comes lifting up,
but it is God who executes judgment,
putting down one and lifting up another.”—Pslam 75
The Bible warned us that the Church would be made up of deeply flawed individuals. When we look at Abraham’s doubts about God giving him a child; Jonah refusing to deliver God’s message and running away; David lusting after another man’s wife and acting on that desire; and Peter with his denial of Jesus, Thomas with his doubts, John with his pride, and Paul with his persecution of the church, we see flaws.
The good news is that God worked with those flawed individuals and accomplished His goals, which should make us feel better about working in a flawed Church to continue doing God’s work.
Homosexuality is treated as a protected class in mainline protestant churches, especially in the northeast. The leadership of these denominations is rife with sexual predators and vengeful harridans who seek to destroy traditional ministries.
This is consistent with the infestation by cultural terrorists of all of our society’s institutions.
A program for those striving to overcome homosexuality addiction.
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