Writing stuff like this one scares me.
"Who do you think you are, anyhow?" the little voice demands.
And yet, and yet, why have I been so critical of The Church, its Cardinals and Bishops and the Pope? Well, for one thing, they have sinned.
And the little voice repeats, "And, who do you think you are?"
Behind this psychobabble is an insight. When I criticize The Church, I am actually criticizing Religion itself, except as it shows up in other Churches less autocratical, but also sinful. And to and for those foreign and intriguing modes of relating to someone or something greater than myself, I lean, if not yearn.
Why? Because I know I am a sinner. And when I toss out Religion, I lose that awareness, even though I am also aware I'm banking on Mercy and Forgiveness, when the time comes that it's over.
It's hard to dump God. Even though it looks easy to walk out on The Church, not as punishment for its sins, but as an escape from the reality of my own. If I face the reality: I am a sinner, then I face the reality: so is The Church.
Why? Because, while it very well may be The Mystical Body of Christ, Divine, even Heavenly, it is also very, very human.
Perhaps, though, insight becomes clearer, as foresight gets foreshortened after eight decades of looking and blinking, and an end seems closer than it did in the past. That end, or beginning if I choose to name it as a transition more acceptable than just a termination, could very well happen. There is now a growing realization that my time is not eternal and is running out of time.
I think that those who leave Mother Church and go elsewhere are like orphans. Those forlorn youngsters check out weekend visitors, trying to pick out a couple they'd like to have as parents, while hoping desperately that some couple will choose them, out of that deep-down wisdom born of lonely solitude that any couple will do to get them out of there. Thus, then, Churches become foster homes to put up with or run away from.
Why? Yes, you know the answer without prompting: Because foster parents are sinners, too.
And that's when I become greater than myself, thinking: If I could abolish sin, why then ..................?
If this piece is too, too -- a word I've come to like a lot -- "Churchy", then let me switch to the other way I live. As an American. Natural born citizen, too. Down by the seashore and up near "purple mountains' majesty." Free. Except for all those laws and rules and regulations and customs, most of them out of outmoded traditions created by Founding Fathers, or beyond them by Pilgrims, running away from their reality at their continental home.
I ask me: How many Americans have left America, to go live somewhere else? I don't get an easy answer. Even if I determine my country uses torture and cruel and unusual punishment to keep terrorists at bay and the people in line, I know there is no other place to choose, where sweetness and light bounce of roads paved with gold, no land that is more free, braver, in the dawn's early light.
And I give up the thought of moving to Canada or Australia. With a new President and a shift in power in Washington's Congress, maybe there'll be a change for the better. Wait and see.
Too bad I can't think that way about Rome and its Vatican, still excommunicating and unexcommunicating sinners who keep on sinning, regardless. But, I don't, you see, because I hold God to a higher standard and God owns The Church. Right?
Only problem there is simple: Could there be another God? Who is different? Perhaps, if I abolish God, I could abolish all worries and concerns and fears and doubts, dropping faith, but hanging onto, of course, love and hope. And the little voice whispers, "Really? You?"
People who dislike my getting Churchy, ridicule me as a Cafeteria Catholic. The little voice laughs at that one, "Wasn't our God, a/k/a Jesus, a Cafeteria God? Did a job on that old-time religion of his incarnate time, he did." And I, undaunted, argue right back, "So where's the Kingdom?"
I like dotCommonweal, a blog, which comes across as sort of spontaneous, alive, not canned, nor bristling with logic and reason, like a carefully written article for publication in the big print version of our Commonweal. "Weal", incidentally, is defined as "a general state of well-being, prosperity, and happiness." Instead of being smarty-pants and snickering, "Seen any lately?" we should look around and realize we do have a goodly share of weal, and it is common. In both State and Church, our families. Don't wait and see. Just look and see.
The blog that prompted all this is entitled "SINNERS."
Paul
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dotCommonweal
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/print/2866
Sinners
Posted by J. Peter Nixon on March 1, 2009, 1:47 am
In the chapter entitled "Forgiveness of Sins," Romano Guardini reflects on the story of the healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:3-5) and asks "what must take place if forgiveness is to be experienced?":
Man must admit the general profundity of sin, must overcome his attitude of superficiality and cowardice, and earnestly attempt to face sin in whatever form he may encounter it. He must not make it a mere matter of judgment or of will, but must feel, and deeply, for its core. He must not stubbornly insist upon the justice of a merely judge, but must consent and accept–with all his moral dignity, his freedom and responsibility–a Father's love (and how many refuse precisely this!)…Instead he must learn the humility that seeks grace. This is the summons in Jesus' first words: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1:14-15). Before all else, men must learn that they are sinners; they must take stock of what they have become through sin, and de profundis call to God that they may be forgiven.
One of the things that I like about this passage is that Guardini grasps that sin is not primarily a failure to abide by an abstract moral norm, but is rather the betrayal of a relationship. It is one thing to lie. It is another, for example, to lie to one's spouse about a matter of deep importance. It is in the latter act one begins to grasp the betrayal that lies at the heart of sin.
Guardini's suggestion that we must "learn" that we are sinners seems deeply true to me. A person can have a "natural" sense of right and wrong–and even sense that these categories have a transcendent origin–without truly understanding the nature of sin. Perhaps one of the reasons the greatest saints were so conscious of themselves as great sinners is the closeness of their relationship with God. The closer one draws to the source of all life and love, the more one's radical dependence on that source becomes clear, and the more that one's failure to respond in kind becomes a painful truth that must be confronted with honesty.
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