Extra Credit - due Sunday night 9 pm

You have received the handout with the next writing assignment. It offers details on the Catholic understanding of sin, particularly social and structural sin. The important insight to remember in that handout of information is that any discussion of social and structural sin begins with personal, individual sin. We're all sinners.

What are the implications for members of the Church? Many people disregard the Church because it's filled with hypocrites and sinners. I just finished reading Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion by Antonio Monda. In his introduction he writes:

I've always found less than convincing the position of those who recognize the existence of God and the divinity of Christ but dispute (or even have contempt for) the Church. I certainly don't mean to say that the Church of Rome hasn't made mistakes, even serious ones, in the course of its long history, but I want to emphasize that the believer can't not know that Christ entrusted the keys to Peter, investing with complete authority the disciple who denied him three times during the night before the Crucifixion. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, in his book Heretics: 'When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brillant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward - in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.

Later in the introduction Monda continues,

Reflecting on human fraility, one returns to Chesterton's insight about the very institution of the Church, with all its contradictions - which I don't think have impugned, even marginally, the truth of its teaching. In 1965, the theologian Karl Rahner wrote, 'The Church would be not the true people of God but a purely ideal reality, of almost mythical character, if one thought that the state of sin of its members determined it. If one realizes clearly that the earthly Church remains a church of sinners, one understands how and why it is the holy Church."

How would you relate this insight of our frail Church with the power we have to be the conduit for the Reign of God? Think about the definition of the Reign of God (the power of God active in the world challenging its structures) and the Catholic Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform (link below). How can a bunch of sinners bring about the reign of God? How does the Spirit confront apathy on the part of Church members, young Church members in particular?
Reflect away. Brendan, you judge who the top 5 power bloggers are for this entry...