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Question 

Dear Father Angelo,

My name is Giuseppe. I’ve been following the Dominican Friends site for a long time and I find it to be a very useful instrument. I thank you for the service you provide and I’m especially thankful to God for your gift to the Christian community. I’m 28 years-old and I’ve always been active in the Church, I thank God for having made Himself manifest and having given Himself as a gift to me through my parents, who raised me in the Faith. Even with my limits and falls, I’ve never stopped believing in God’s mercy and grace. Life as a Christian is countercultural, it’s a perpetual fight, especially in today’s society which reverses the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ. For a while, though, some questions have been reverberating in my mind that I find difficult to answer.

I know fully well that Christ instituted the sacraments, but established the Church through Peter in particular. However, I ask myself: taking history and current events into account, is the Church that Christ edified through God truly a community that follows God’s will from the beginning? I mean, is it really the Church that Christ had in mind? That community which is supposed to follow Christ in everything, without any ifs and buts? I ask you this because, during the centuries after the birth of Christ, certain events took place in the Church that I cannot conciliate with the Gospel (i.e. the enormous financial and political power of the Vatican State, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc.); behaviors that still persist today in other forms (corruption, little transparency in the management of money, etc.). Now, deep down, this problem doesn’t touch me personally — I haven’t lost faith in the Church. Since the Church is constituted of people, it is a fact that all of us can fall and only God can give us a new nature. It’s also true that the bad has more resonance than the good. I think of the things that many people of faith did for the Church, in particular religious orders like yours, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, Saint Teresa’s nuns. The problem comes up when I interact with people who are far from God and the Church, who use these reasons to justify their distance, oftentimes referencing a series of common misconceptions which make it difficult for me to find the appropriate answer. In conclusion: how should a Christian behave in light of these facts?

I thank you in advance for your answer.

Best regards,

Giuseppe

Priest’s answer

Dear Giuseppe,

1. You ask yourself if today’s Church is the Church Jesus imagined and wanted.

This question would lead us to believe that the Church of today is the one presented through certain media which identify the Church with the Vatican or, best case scenario, identify the Church with the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

But that is not the Church.

What is the Church?

It is the society of the baptized, who receive their spiritual life from Christ, for their life and activity in the world.

The society of the baptized includes bishops and priests. But the Church is made up of everybody. It is an error to identify the Church exclusively with the clergy.

We all are the Church, even those who never attend Mass.

2. The Church, using our Lord’s phrase, is like a field where the good seed (the grace of Jesus Christ) brings about different fruits, depending on the disposition of the individual: a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold (Matt 13:8).

Some inside the Church do not bring about fruit: they are like the path where Jesus tried to sow (Matt 13:4).
Some have little consistency: they are like the “rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots.” (Matt 18:5-6).

Some started out well, but were choked by the preoccupations of the world (Matt 13:7).

Without mentioning the fact that, again using the language of the Gospel, the enemy of man sows weeds all through the wheat (Matt 13:25).

3. Of course, Jesus wants a holy Church. But perfect holiness, immune from every danger of corruption, is not of this world, but of the next — of Heaven.

While we are here, all the baptized, meaning the whole Church, are subject to temptation, to defeats and to victories.

The Second Vatican Council says: “While Christ, holy, innocent and undefiled knew nothing of sin, but came to expiate only the sins of the people, the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal (Lumen gentium, 8).

All the members of the Church, from the first to the last, are always in need of being purified. The same goes for the Pope, for me and for you.

We all go to Confession — some more often, some less — and we will until the end of our existence on Earth.

We all know ourselves to be in this condition: we are never definitely saved until we are at least in Purgatory. 

4. For this reason then, conscious of who we are, from the least to the greatest, we do not point the finger at anyone, because we are conscious of our personal need for purification.

The great Saints purified the Church by purifying themselves with great intensity: see the example of the lives of Saint Francis or Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

5. The Church of all times finds Herself contaminated by human miseries.

Starting from the Church founded by Jesus: the Apostles argued about which one of them was the greatest (here is pride!) and there was even a traitor (Judas) motivated by greed.

I’m not interested in which member of today’s Church is a victim to pride or to greed.

I’m worried about not being the one who is dominated by pride or greed.

6. However, I have to add one last thing: in your email, you make reference to common misconceptions about the Church. You know fully well who they are orchestrated by.

Those are people who scold the members of the Church for not being in conformity with Jesus’ teaching. Granted, who fully conforms?

But are they, who systematically and aggressively move this criticism against the Church, holy, immaculate, stainless, pure, detached from money, ambition, tending toward holiness?

A passage from Saint Paul comes to mind: “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Rom 1:28-31).

Abortion — the killing of the innocent — is their flag, they claim as a right or civil victory every sort of impurity, even the most abominable, they don’t promote marriage in any way, are in favor of euthanasia and they practice it if they can… In summary, they are in favor of every kind of degeneracy: they do not realize they are promoting nothingness and dissolution as an ideal.

I will stop at this for the time being.

In the future, I will come back to some of the other points in your email.

9. Keep pointing towards sanctification, towards being like the Lord wants you to be.

I assure you of my prayer and bless you.

Father Angelo