The Church is the Body of Christ on earth. Christ, the Second Person of The Trinity, is God. There is a clear analogy between that and we, who are made in the image of God.
The body does the will of the mind/spirit. The mind follows the soul’s orders. So, just as our body does the will of our soul, The Church does God’s will. Whatever She does is precisely as right as God.
The Church has been, recently, reflecting a change in God’s approach to us. In earlier times, He had The Church operate by reflecting on earth His power in Heaven. Now, He seems to operate differently.
No sane person with even the vaguest awareness of His power should be surprised, startled, or angry because God appears to have changed His modus operandi. It’s His universe. He is the Programmer and Downloader of The Creation Program, and He can do whatever He wants with, within, and without it.
Some, in varying degrees of outrage, ask “Why?” when they see The Church appearing to change in ways they don’t like. First of all, the fact that we have the ability to ask “Why?” does not mean that we deserve an answer. The best thing for us to do is simply accept the fact that He has changed His approach. He did not decide to do so capriciously or arbitrarily. He decided to do it because He wanted to, and that is all the reason we need.
Catholic Fundamentalism offers one answer as to why The Church Militant seems to have transformed itself into The Church Loving. It weeds out the self-righteous, a fact that we can prove because we see it going on before our very eyes: We hear many souls say: “I stopped going to Church because of the scandals.” They are too blinded by their own self-righteousness to see that all sins, including their own, are scandalous and will be taken care of by God at Judgment, not by their judgment, today.
“I stopped going to Church because ________”, is a common refrain. All of us who are Catholics have heard about all the reasons that there are with which the straying vain will fill in the blanks.
God has heard them, too. Despite His great love, He gives us free will. Some of us use it to idolize ourselves so thoroughly that they vainly, and insanely, make their own minds the judge and arbiter of Him and His will.
If we have any sense at all, we go to Church, we obey, and we believe. Until the end.
