Some catholics are angry at The Church. It’s not uncommon to find Catholics who are, to some degree, separated from The Church because they’re angry at some Catholic practice or another. The complaints are familiar, repeated frequently by a state-run media hired by clients who would like to replace Church functions with their own institutions:
1. Women aren’t allowed to be ordained, “proving” that The Church has an overall “unfairness”. (This grows in importance commensurately with society’s purported love of “equality”. Lack of fairness on women’s issues must not extend to Moslem areas, only Catholics are expected to do more in this area.)
2. The Church just doesn’t care enough and should do more (And, I’m not giving any more until She does!).
3. Priest scandals have “ruined The Church for me”.
4. The Church has so much money and there are so many poor people that it’s just not fair.
5. Priests should be allowed to marry.
6. The Church is not controlled by any government agencies, and it’s not right that it can do whatever it wants.
7. Big problems exist with the environment, obesity, and climate and The Church doesn’t seem to care.
The Church usually responds so criticisms by saying “Yes, we are wrong for not doing and being better.” They could dismiss most of these concerns by telling the obvious truth, that they are lies and exaggerations, the result of easily swayed people responding to anti-Catholic propaganda. These issues come from the same intellectual and analytical error: thinking that The Church is much larger and more powerful than it is.
The Church seems very large and powerful, from a distance. We see Her ancient and medieval structures still standing, and forget that each church was built in areas that were, are, and will be home to many who hate and want to destroy Her. We see the brilliance of minds like Ambrose, Augustine, and Aquinas, and do not see that each of them, like ourselves, was involved in life-long battles with an evil that tried to destroy them and The Church they loved and obeyed. We see, in fact, that in their three respective countries The Church has been weakened in St. Ambrose’s Italy, destroyed in St. Augustine’s North Africa, and reduced to increasing irrelevance in St. Thomas Aquinas’s France. It is an ongoing miracle that an organization so opposed by so many could have survived as long as She has.
Faithful Catholics know that The Church is the Body of Christ on earth. Many of Her critics don’t consider the operational reality that The Church is also a body politic. As such, She is the weakest, most weaponless state on earth. She is subjected to the same political concerns as every other political entity. Most bizarrely, her only means of physical defense are Swiss guards wearing medieval armor and carrying pikestaffs.
The Church has both spiritual and political enemies bent on destroying Her. They attack Her from without with endless criticism from a media owned and operated by Her enemies. Those same enemies work diligently to infiltrate false priests and destructive agents within Her to bore away from within. They are trained to do as much damage as they can, hijacking, for instance the Vatican II Council to weaken Church liturgy and doctrine.
The result of their machinations? When news of their attacks are endlessly publicized through a biased media wholly owned by The Other Side, people who want to leave are provided all the excuses they need for doing so.
What Her critics don’t understand is that The Church, like The Christ Whom she imitates, is supposed to be crucified in each generation. It is Her job to be constantly vilified by all Her enemies, thereby helping to separate the sheep from the goats on the Day of Judgment. She is there to be hated by all who hate. She exists to be sin for those who love to sin. She is there to be a target for those who see Her as a threat to their ongoing enslavement and abasement of neighbors. Those who hate God and their neighbors have always hated Her. They always will. That is the way The Creation Program was written and downloaded.
The Church has a duty. She is there to provide salvation for the forgiven faithful and damnation for the unrepentant. She is the miracle that lets the goats separate themselves from sheep. Their willful separation on earth is maintained forever in the next life.
Too bad for them. We may pray that those who have strayed return, we may pray that others not leave, but most of all, we should pray that our own soul is faithful, obedient, and able to be made worthy of Heaven. We do not want our souls sullied and lost by taking cheap shots at She Whose duty it is to apologize for even imaginary faults, rather than defend against the attacks and onslaughts of those who lose their souls by hating Her Whose very being offends only those who prefer evil and their own vanity to the humility She requires and manifests by word and deed.
