Trouble in our Church

Yes, there is trouble in the Church, our Church, the Catholic Church. By trouble, I mean “something is wrong,” something that needs to be corrected or removed That has always been a problem, and it will continue to be a problem until God almighty puts a stop to it, totally, completely, and permanently.

In the book of Genesis when the “fall of man” occurred, God, the Father, said to Satan: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel (Genesis 3:15).

A Battle

In the Book of Revelation, the battle is mentioned again:

Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus (Revelation 12: 17 ).

The snake becomes the dragon, but Satan remains Satan. He has been persecuting the Church since its beginning, and in the end, he will be defeated:

The Devil who had led them astray was thrown into the pool of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever (Revelation 20:10).

Until the end of Satan’s attacks on our Church what are we to do; we who love, need, and protect the bride of Christ, how does God want us to respond?  That is what I need to write about, this is what I want to explore.

St. Paul tells us to

Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. Our battle is not against human forces but against the principalities and powers, the rulers of this world of darkness, the evil spirits in regions above (Ephesians 6: 11-12). 

However,  exactly how do we “put on the armor of God,” how do we prepare, how do we fight?

I know that God’s in charge, after all the Church is the bride of Christ.  I also know that Jesus expects the faithful to help restore and protect the Church, the pilgrim or militant Church, in this world. But again the unanswered question, what is the battle plan?

Don’t Leave The Church

I am well aware of one thing we don’t do. We don’t do what Martin Luther did in the 16th century. We don’t “correct” the Church by leaving her, abandoning her, and seeking another bride. We are committed to Christ and to His Church so first and foremost we remain faithful; we don’t run and hide, or just leave. We take a stand and fix what is broken.

We have our guidelines; there are do’s and don’t’s. Let us look to the magisterium, especially the Pope, sacred tradition, and sacred scripture, and set these sources as our parameters. Using the metaphor of a doctor to a patient we can approach the “wrongs” in the Church as a disease or illness and respond to it the way a doctor responds to a  patient.  We attack the disease, not the person.

Charity Not Anger

This I believe is a good approach because it will keep us in the arena of charity and guard against our anger so that we don’t sin to overcome sin, and it places our focus on the cause, the disease, which is Satan.

St. Paul tells us to rely heavily on prayer:

With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit…”  (Ephesians 6: 18, The New American Bible, St. Joseph Edition).

He also tells us to live our lives with, truth, righteousness, and faith in the word of God:

So stand fast with your lions girded in truth, clothed in righteousnes as a breastplate, …In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield…And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:14, 16-17).

We need to defeat the disease,  not the person. But I didn’t always think this way. Instead, I used to see the dissenters, the Catholics “merging” with the world as the enemy. Forgetting to “love my enemy” I shattered the bond of charity with anger, which did no good at all, and only made matters worse. Let me explain by briefly telling you a story.

Trouble While Teaching

I was teaching at a Catholic school, though it didn’t seem very Catholic to me. For example, the principal, a nun, was always without her habit, and the monsignor, the church pastor, seemed to approve. At the time I was under the influence of those who believed in a “divided Church,” not a very healthy or prudent way of looking at the bride of Christ, for she is not divided at all.

It wasn’t long before I mentioned my “disapproval” and disrespect for nuns out of their habit to the principal. Again not very prudent. After that, I most certainly wasn’t one of her “best” teachers.

Later on, within a couple of months, I had a serious discipline problem with one of my students. I gave him detention; he refused to stay, and the parent brought the problem to the principal, who sided so it seemed 100% with the parent, who sided 100% with the student. So the matter was brought to the monsignor. According to the parent, her son did not warrant detention. I wouldn’t apologize to either the student or the parent, I was not remorseful for my alleged misjudgment; I wouldn’t budge an inch; I got fired.

I could have stayed, perhaps it would have been best; I could have continued my ministry at that school. I could have resolved the problem with the student (and the parent) in a number of ways. And in time, with prayer and the grace of God, maybe the principal would have worn her habit or joined another order with habits. A lot of things could have happened; maybe I would have eventually become the principal. However, what did happen? The way I view this incident with hindsight is that I broke the “bond of charity,”  and all the good that I could have done was left undone.

So what is the point of this story?

Live in a Spirit of Charity

I learned, years later, that we must live our lives in the spirit of charity no matter what the circumstances may be.  Problems, especially problems in the Church, need to be viewed as problems for us, something we need to resolve, not me against you, us against them,  orthodox vs. unorthodox, or liberal against conservative, etc.  Does the spirit of charity declare that there is no division? No, it does not.

Does it declare that there is “no enemy” in the Church trying to destroy it from within? No, it does not. But the mandate of doing all things in charity means to “love your enemy,” to pray for those who persecute us, and by the will of God combined with our participation, we may rescue them from “the fires of Hell” and bring them back to Christ. We need to be the feet of Christ and walk towards those who have turned away from God; we need to be the hands of Christ and reach out to those who are separated from his love.

In the following quote, we are reminded that Christians everywhere have a  ministry to do God’s work here and now:

It is said that after German bombers destroyed an English cathedral during the Second World War, dedicated volunteers worked to repair one of the church’s broken statues of Christ. Rather than restore the figure’s missing hands, the artisans left Christ handless – replacing the artwork’s “Come unto Me” inscription with “Christ has no hands but ours.”

Saint Teresa of Avila proclaims the same message in the following poem written in the 16th century:

Christ has no body but yours.

No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which He looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes, you are His body. Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours,Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on the world.

There is trouble in our Church, and in the world.  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” (Edmund Burke, 18th century British statesman).  Even more than the “good man” is the challenge for God’s people everywhere to unite against our common enemy, “put on the armor of God,” and defeat Satan with a spirit of charity toward those who follow in his wake