The Church still spawns saints

Melding humanity and holiness creats an intruguing paradox

By BISHOP FRED HENRY
Calgary

The blank could be filled in with anything ranging from the Crusades to Galileo to clergy sex abuse. While these are very interesting questions and challenging problems, they are designed to deflect attention and silence debate.

However, they also highlight the paradox of sin and holiness of the Church.

Within the Body of Christ, we all acknowledge that the Church's holiness is a supernatural holiness, but at the same time it is a human holiness, pursued by means of human behaviour and human acts in the midst of institutions regulated and administered by human beings.

St. Paul's letters already witness to the fact that there were in the communities of the early Church, instances of a lack of faith and charity, of envy, of lying, of greed, of unchastity. In every one of his letters there are to be found exhortations against sin and exhortations to lead a life worthy of those who are dead to sin.

All the members of the Church are called to holiness and have through the sacraments the possibility of reaching it. But alas, only a certain number fully respond to their vocation. The rest slow down and hinder the development of the Church.

Even the saints are rather disconcerting. They retain faults of temperament and weaknesses of judgment. Sanctity attracts, astonishes and sometimes irritates.

The Church is a communion of saints and sinners. Every saint has a past and every sinner a future.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that John Paul has no less than 94 times acknowledged that - regarding racism, anti-Semitism, the Crusades, war, divisions between Christians and the treatment of women, among other things - the faithful, including ecclesiastics at the highest level - have been unfaithful.

Some Catholics think the present pope has "gone too far" in asking forgiveness, while others will apparently not be satisfied until a pope condemns the Church itself.

What is certain is that no other Church or religious community, never mind secular institution, has so candidly, repeatedly and voluntarily accepted responsibility for its failings.

Nevertheless, there are a number of constants or givens.

The Church in her whole body, as in her members, is in constant need of repentance and purification and renewal.

• The Church does not cease to preach the Gospel of salvation and means of salvation. "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel" (1 Corinthians 9:16). If Christ is to be known and the Father glorified there must be tongues to preach the Gospel; for "how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him they have not heard? How are they to hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14-17).

  Such preaching is absolutely necessary. It must also be faithful preaching pursued even in spite of the opposition encountered.

• The Church does not cease trying to raise the moral level of humankind. The Church acts in human society as a moral and spiritual leaven which continually renews it, constantly inspires it with a sense of peace and justice, a moral sense and a sense of love.

  The Second Vatican Council emphasized the reverence due to the human person as it stressed that each should regard his neighbour, without exception, as another self. "All that is an offence against the dignity of man, like sub-human living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, commercial traffic in women or young people, and degrading conditions of work . . . all these practices and others like them are infamous: they corrupt civilization, dishonouring those who instigate them more than those who suffer them, and they are a grave insult also to the honour of the Creator."

• The Church welcomes sinners. While continuing to preach the ideal life of the Gospel, she is full of mercy for those who sin. It is a question of following the example of Christ who was firm in matters of principle, but always indulgent towards sinners. If they leave her, she prays for their return. When they come back, she weeps for joy with them, like the father of the prodigal son.
• The Church continues to offer the ideal of evangelical perfection, inviting those of her children who desire to do so, to live completely, even in this world, their full life as adopted children of God, wholly consecrated to God and to the service of their brothers and sisters through the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

  If she must carry the weight of many sinners, she also counts among her members a not inconsiderable number of those of all ages and all social circumstances who have arrived at a heroic sanctity, contemplative, apostolic or reparative.

• The Church in her whole body, as in her members, is in constant need of repentance and purification and renewal.

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