Posted on 03/27/2007 10:59:58 AM PDT by Balt
With all of my vitriol about journalists and journalism, in the interests of balance, here's a word of praise:
It comes from the very icon of iconoclastic journalism himself, Sam Donaldson. It was several years ago, during a visit of our late Holy Father, John Paul II, to the United States. Remarking on the many stories the media blitzed us with about how most American Catholics "disagree" with the Pope on just about everything important, he made this off-the-cuff remark: "No one's forcing anyone to be a Catholic. Why don't they just leave the Church?"
Why, indeed? What Sam failed to take into account is something which every experienced churchman has come to take for granted, even though we never did understand the peculiar mental gymnastics that it causes. The Catholic Church is of Divine origin; and, no matter how much one comes to hate it, you can't leave it without being forced to rip a certain amount of God our of your soul. You might as well ask someone to cut off his own arm - or, to use our Lord's own analogy, "If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away" (Mat 5:29). In this context, of course, the sin isn't against God but against one's own ego - clearly "god" for some. As St. Augustine said, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."
Those who remain in the Church for the purpose of agitating the faithful and campaigning against her teaching would clearly like us to see them as "freedom fighters" - patisans in the struggle, not unlike the French Resistance - sacrificing themselves to free the rest of us who, out of ignorance and a lack of intellectual sophistication, have not yet reached that stage of enlightenment wherein we, too, would see how oppressed we are. The reality is that, as St. Augustine postulated, we are created by God with the seed of faith within us; and, until that seed is acknowledged and cultivated, it nags us. And, as the Second Vatican Council taught us, Christ and his Church are one and the same; we cannot separate ourselves from either one without doing violence to our own created nature.
The sham of the "struggle for intellectual and moral freedom" within the Church is even more clearly exposed when one considers that it is impossible to "disagree" with a particular moral teaching of the Church without also disagreeing with everything the Church understands about herself: namely, that Jesus Christ personally established the Catholic Church as a visible institution upon the earth; that He entrusted to her His own Divine authority to teach in His name; and that, by a special gift of the Holy Spirit, He protects her from error in that teaching whenever she tells us what we are to believe and how we are to live. If this is what the Church claims about herself - which it is - then it isn't possible to "disagree" with any fundamental moral dogma without rejecting the Church's whole understanding of herself. Thus, to dissent from a fundamental moral dogma - say, abortion - and choose to remain in the Church to "fight" for it, would be like refusing a place in a life boat on the Titanic because your personal belief in global warming doesn't allow you to acknowledge the existence of icebergs.
Here's what brought all this to mind: Diogenes, over at Catholic World News, very briefly flashes us a banner advertisement from a group called "The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice." Their motto: Abortion is between a woman and her God. What does your religion say?
Figured it out yet? If abortion is "between a woman and her God," what difference does it make what her religion says?
Which church?...
The Universal church?...
Which Universal Church?..
Over time, I've only come to more fully believe in and obey the Church's teachings; after learning the hard way, of course.
Except that it wouldn't be more accurage. Lumen Gentium is clear: it wasn't some non-institutional, etherial community of believers, i.e., the "church" with small "c", that Christ established. The teaching is that Christ deliberately established the human institution known today as the Catholic Church - large "C". Sorry, but that's what LG says.
Agreed. But neither was it the Catholic church that Christ established.
The specific institutional structure known as the Catholic church was established long after Christ's ascension - agreed?
Agreed.
Nine days later.
I think it is generally agreed that the church - the bride of Christ - was began at Pentecost. That Peter was the leader of the early church is also generally agreed.
My main assertion is that while the early church had structure (i.e. hierarchy), the institutional structure known as the Catholic Church did not come about until some time later.
depends on what you mean by "Catholic." I am a reformed Protestant and recite that I believe in one holy catholic church. This does NOT translate into an equivalence with an organization which pronounces (officially...., I am thankful that there are many who do not insist this is true), that I am eternally damned (what the word "anathema" means) because I affirm that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy pardoning sins for Christ's sake, and it is that confidence alone by which we are justified. I believe that my works add NOTHING to my justification, but rather are evidences of that state of justification. Canon 12 of Trent states that I am damned for such a belief.
Despite this grevious error, I certainly believe that the Roman Catholic church is a part of the universal (worldwide) Catholic Church, which includes all confessing churches.
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