Ours is the Church We Deserve

Ours is the Church we deserve. We have reduced Her and deformed Her until She fit our lifestyle, and now we sit back and point our fingers at Her. We abandoned Her, hold Her to a higher standard than we hold to ourselves, and we weight her down with the baggage cast off by our own degenerate society. The Church has no need of our political correctness; so we force Her to accept our own faddish cultural norms and thus we divide Her. The Church has her own standards of ordination; so we sue Her until She accepts our own shameful acts and thus we shame Her.

Ours is the Parish we deserve. We ignore it until we need it, then we demand it jump through hoops to match our twisted lives. We assume it will always be there, yet we won't lift a finger to help. Problems at the church office? Throw money at it until they go away. Church offices are well known to be dysfunctional, full of nasty people and heterodox amateur theologians. Our church office is where the women come to kvetch about their husbands, who are off working or fishing. Nothing actually gets done there. No one is there to do work, but to scare off volunteers, plan vacations and complain about the measly paychecks. Are we going to tackle that bucket of worms? Not on your life.

Ours is the Mass we deserve. We come in late, glare at interlopers until they relinquish our spot in the pew, and talk loudly to remind everyone around us of the sacrifice we are making for Our Lord's sake. We are dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. We have forgotten the right things to do to show respect to Our Lord in His house, so we dip and sway indecisively in front of random objects around the Nave. We slump into our place and immediately begin sizing up the congregation, gazing around with frank curiosity and unequivocal judgement. Then we sit back and passively wait to be entertained.

Ours is the Homily we deserve. If we wanted to be challenged, we would be out riding a bike. In Church we expect approval and gratitude because we took time out of our busy day to grace this unfriendly place with our presence. If that Priest so much as hints that we might not already be everything we could be; if that lonely, pathetic man talks about homosexuality or birth control, suicide or abortion; if he suggests that we be kind to our enemies or welcome invaders, we will make him sorry he ever heard of our town. We will run him out on a rail; we've done it before, and we'll do it again. It's a lesson for all the priests who will come and go over the years: don't step outside the box.

Ours is the Pope we deserve. We have turned him into a pop star, pursued 24 hours a day by paparazzi, yet we berate him for being photographed with public sinners. We expect him to be a world-class politician, teen idol, theologian and scientist. If he disappoints anyone in any categeory of excellence, he must be publicly shamed for his flaws. We assume that the Pope will attend all important affairs of state around the world, yet if he attends something we disapprove of, this disapproval automatically extends to him. We laugh at his Medieval conceits and we beg him to cure our Modern afflictions. Everything he does correctly we soon forget; everything he does wrong is remembered for all time.

We are the Church; never forget that. For good or for ill, She magnifies our qualities. We either raise Her up or we drag Her down. It's no good pointing a finger; She is what we have made of Her. The Magisterium and the Deposit of the Faith will always give us a leg up on anything Man can create, but the end result can be no more than the effort we expend. It should take much more than one hour a week to show the love we have for Our Lord. Love of God should ooze from our pores every waking moment. There should be no question in anyone's mind, be they stranger or family, that we fervently worship Christ.