Another Response to a Skeptic

For those of you just joining in, this is part of a series of posts following a correspondance with a friend. The series starts with Thoughts of a Modern Day Skeptic. This is my most recent response.

This is fun! I think our difference comes out of our understanding of the nature of the church (the $25 word is ecclesiology). For centuries that Catholic church was structured just as you suggested, a top down hierarichal institution that would tell people what to say, think, and do. In Vatican II the bases of the Catholic church started to shift from an institution to a gathering of people. The church is first the people of God. Now I agree that such a philosophical change did not filter all the way up and the Catholic Church continued to rule and dictate in different ways.

As a Baptist, my understanding of the church is the gathered people of God. The church is in fully present at the local level only. We do not have a hierarichy. This may be why I have a kinder view of the church, becasue each one is a mix of blessings and curses. There are churches that do evil things - case in point the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas - the anit-gay church (and everything else) that tells gays they are going to burn in hell and that God hates them. This is wrong and evil.

Do I think churches should be help to a higher standard - kinda. They should be working with completely different standards, i.e. those of a religious nature. Perhaps then I cannot compare churches to other institutions. Yet on the other hand, as I said above, churches are still human institutions and do fall (or sin in religious parlance). Think of the pastor of a church.... someone like me. Should I be held to a higher standard of ethical living than anyone else in the congregation that I am leading? Am I a better human being than anyone else?

Here is the crux of my position: the church is a gathering of people trying to understand and live into their relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The church is a gathering of people helping each other, praying for and with each other, pushing each other in beliefs, and walking together.

As to your criticism of Catholicism, I cannot relate completely. I cannot relate because I am not a Catholic, nor have I ever been one. I can only imagine that when an institution that was such a strong part of your formation is complicit in such a sin that the reaction must be like a moment of spiritual vomiting. (or perhaps literal vomiting)

You have been taught a certain view of the world by a very hierarichal institution, and that view has been shattered by that institution's actions. So I cannot condem your reaction (nor could I anyway). I guess I would ask you, in time, to consider that the "church" universal is larger than the Catholic church.

Again, this is good.