Few who have undertaken seriously to live out their baptismal commitment have found it to be a lark. That enterprise is a formidable challenge. There are weaknesses from within. There are obstacles from without. Different periods in the history of the church have made the latter loom large. Say the sixteenth century must have been a truly daunting time.
Many Catholics dedicated to gospel lives find our times as presenting uncommon pressures. What is embraced by the term the child sex abuse scandal and the remarkable irresponsibility on the part of certain church authorities in handling these matters have, as some expressed it, “tested” their faith. Not, necessarily, that they consider leaving the church (although, we are told, some have done that), but they are, as at least one has stated, “just hanging in there by their finger nails.” (Not the most promising stance, indeed.)
It seems to me that, granted all the difficulties involved and not denying them in pollyanna fashion, these are times that summon us to rise above the mediocrity, cynicism, nihilism and polarization that engulf us, to allow ourselves to be stretched out to the dimensions of Christ to show forth the beautiful and mature Christ for whom, consciously or unconsciously, people are hungering and thirsting for.
There is encouragement and inspiration to be taken from the words of Pius XI in December l937, a time when matters in state and church, though, admittedly, for far different reasons than today, could have been judged not conducive to living out one’s baptismal commitment. “This era is one of the most disturbed that mankind has ever known. It is also one of the finest, for it is an age where mediocrity is allowed to nobody, where Christian lives flower in all their beauty and triumphs are made ready for the Church, but we need holiness for that.” (Emphasis mine, but knowing how Pius XI had a capacity for irascibility, I believe he would have stressed those words).
I believe this is the faith perspective called for today. The God who call us to this task is the God who is for us and with us. The God who dwells within us. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” “In” is the superlative degree of “with,” Yes, we are weak but, as the Church prays, “God chooses the weak to make them strong” in bearing witness. We can accommodate for our purposes the words of Gandhi to those who were not considered a people in his day exhorting them to their dignity as human beings in order to energize them to deliver themselves from under the heel of the British Empire, “We are to be the change we seek in society.”
We are to be the change we seek in the Church. Yes, structures have to be changed. Definitely reforms are called for to bring about an open church which is transparent and respectful of all. A church which fulfills its function as expressed by the Second Vatican Council to “render God the Father and his incarnate Son present and as it were visible in the world.” A church which reflects the concern of the Lord for the downtrodden and marginalized, that is stripped of pomposity and that is in the forefront of advocacy for nonviolence. A Church that is not sexist where there are no second class citizens. But we are that Church! The Church is not the Pope, the Vatican, the curia, the bishops, the clergy. (Google Nicholas D. Kristof, “Who Can Mock This Church?” New York Times, May 2, 2010) We are the Church! That is one reason I have been saying for a long time now, “Be highly critical of the Church.. . . . It may lead to your own conversion.”
“But we need holiness for that.” There is no such thing as cheap discipleship or cheap grace. Are we willing to pay that price? And it is a costly one!
Many Catholics dedicated to gospel lives find our times as presenting uncommon pressures. What is embraced by the term the child sex abuse scandal and the remarkable irresponsibility on the part of certain church authorities in handling these matters have, as some expressed it, “tested” their faith. Not, necessarily, that they consider leaving the church (although, we are told, some have done that), but they are, as at least one has stated, “just hanging in there by their finger nails.” (Not the most promising stance, indeed.)
It seems to me that, granted all the difficulties involved and not denying them in pollyanna fashion, these are times that summon us to rise above the mediocrity, cynicism, nihilism and polarization that engulf us, to allow ourselves to be stretched out to the dimensions of Christ to show forth the beautiful and mature Christ for whom, consciously or unconsciously, people are hungering and thirsting for.
There is encouragement and inspiration to be taken from the words of Pius XI in December l937, a time when matters in state and church, though, admittedly, for far different reasons than today, could have been judged not conducive to living out one’s baptismal commitment. “This era is one of the most disturbed that mankind has ever known. It is also one of the finest, for it is an age where mediocrity is allowed to nobody, where Christian lives flower in all their beauty and triumphs are made ready for the Church, but we need holiness for that.” (Emphasis mine, but knowing how Pius XI had a capacity for irascibility, I believe he would have stressed those words).
I believe this is the faith perspective called for today. The God who call us to this task is the God who is for us and with us. The God who dwells within us. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” “In” is the superlative degree of “with,” Yes, we are weak but, as the Church prays, “God chooses the weak to make them strong” in bearing witness. We can accommodate for our purposes the words of Gandhi to those who were not considered a people in his day exhorting them to their dignity as human beings in order to energize them to deliver themselves from under the heel of the British Empire, “We are to be the change we seek in society.”
We are to be the change we seek in the Church. Yes, structures have to be changed. Definitely reforms are called for to bring about an open church which is transparent and respectful of all. A church which fulfills its function as expressed by the Second Vatican Council to “render God the Father and his incarnate Son present and as it were visible in the world.” A church which reflects the concern of the Lord for the downtrodden and marginalized, that is stripped of pomposity and that is in the forefront of advocacy for nonviolence. A Church that is not sexist where there are no second class citizens. But we are that Church! The Church is not the Pope, the Vatican, the curia, the bishops, the clergy. (Google Nicholas D. Kristof, “Who Can Mock This Church?” New York Times, May 2, 2010) We are the Church! That is one reason I have been saying for a long time now, “Be highly critical of the Church.. . . . It may lead to your own conversion.”
“But we need holiness for that.” There is no such thing as cheap discipleship or cheap grace. Are we willing to pay that price? And it is a costly one!
