Why the Church?

Yesterday I received an e mail forward from a friend that ended with these words "And yet I’m never out of mind of what Annie Dillard said: What a pity, that so soon after Christ came the Christians."

We all get discouraged with the institutional church from time to time. Understandable. Some of us have given up on Her entirely. We prefer instead to stay in our individually wrapped spiritual environments like so many slices of processed American cheese. Understandable but unfortunate.

I don't think God meant it to be that way. In fact, I'm quite sure He meant the opposite..... Theologically, it is impossible to draw a line separating the resurrected Christ from His Church, which is his Presence on earth. When we say (as has been re-hashed in recent press articles) "outside of the Church there is no salvation" we are not saying that from within a ticket booth with a crossing guard arm we raise and lower to decide who is out and who is in. Catholics are very clear (or should be) on this. We don't get to decide who's in and who is excluded. That's God's job.

But by the same spiritual law we ARE required to let everyone know what the God of reason and faith requires from each of us. Then, the decision to respond to or turn away from that Presence is left to each one of us.

And that Presence comes to us in with and under the most distressing guise of other people. Others who are hard to get along with, others in their need, others who force us to do what Jesus our Lord did,... love and serve others.

When we withdraw ourselves from that sharpening Presence both we and the Church lose. We lose the ability to grow in actual holiness, which equals loving and serving others who may or may not be "like us." But the Church also loses, because if this process goes on ad infinitum then the Church is left as a lonely parody of modern life.

We sit in homes with no front porches listening to our I-pods and eating food from plastic containers prepared for us by people whose names we will never know. In ecclesial terms, without the Church we are left sitting in a comfy chair, reading about, praying to, and serving a God whose true Face we will never know.

That's the pity.

Two good reasons why churchy stuff is important

Here are two really good sections from Benedict XVI's address to the Swiss Bishops during their recent ad limina visit. They illustrate why institutional and theological issues really are vital to our spiritual lives.

"In the Church, the institution is not merely an external structure while the Gospel is purely spiritual. In fact, the Gospel and the Institution are inseparable because the Gospel has a body, the Lord has a body in this time of ours. Consequently, issues that seem at first sight merely institutional are actually theological and central, because it is a matter of the realization and concretization of the Gospel in our time."

........

"I remember, when I used go to Germany in the 1980s and '90s, that I was asked to give interviews and I always knew the questions in advance. They concerned the ordination of women, contraception, abortion and other such constantly recurring problems.



If we let ourselves be drawn into these discussions, the Church is then identified with certain commandments or prohibitions; we give the impression that we are moralists with a few somewhat antiquated convictions, and not even a hint of the true greatness of the faith appears.



I therefore consider it essential always to highlight the greatness of our faith -- a commitment from which we must not allow such situations to divert us.In this perspective I would now like to continue by completing last Tuesday's reflections and to stress once again: what matters above all is to tend one's personal relationship with God, with that God who revealed himself to us in Christ."