Historical Evidence...

I always feel embarrassed and slightly disconcerted whenever I foolishly read Internet comments and see attacks on the Church based on our shadier historical moments.

Even though real historians are often able to make things like Crusades, missions gone wrong, and Inquisitions less horrifying to our modern sensibilities by putting them in their proper contexts, there are still those stinging thoughts: "Shouldn't God's Church have known better" or "If it did know better, shouldn't it have done more to stop it?"

If the fact that the Church has often wandered into sin could provide ammunition for people who want to argue the Church is a fraud, it seems to me that the fact that the Church always comes out of sin might be historical evidence in favor of its trueness. I'm not sure I want to say that the Church pulls itself out of sin though -- it seems to me that oftentimes God has to do the pulling.

God said that Hell wouldn't prevail against the Church, but I don't recall Him saying that the Church would be free of sin. Otherwise, why would Christ have instituted a sacrament of confession?

The Church might be free of doctrinal error, but that doesn't mean it is free of erroneous judgment in action. Even through the Church's own reforms, it always sticks to its fundamental truths, and its fundamental truths always points towards something beautiful in the end. Even when it has turned ugly, it's managed to return to its former beauty. Indeed, the Church paradoxically comes out of its dark times more perfected, galvanized in the process of shedding its sins. While the Church should always have loved perfectly, it paradoxically loves more perfectly after it sees how it has loved imperfectly.

I wonder if this is universally true of all religions, because goodness knows that some religions seem to have taken irrevocable steps towards evil, hatred, and ugliness...

Comments

[Lindsay]

You make a good point. I've always stuck with the idea that the Church is, ultimately, not the same as her people. People sin. People do horrible, stupid things all the time. We try not to, but we can't help it. Yet, despite two thousand years of being run by concupiscent fools like us, the Church remains, and that is the true sign of veracity. Even we can't screw it up forever.

[Peter Terp]

I received an e-mail nudging me to clarify some sloppy language in the blog post above.
My intention was not to suggest that the Church as such was sinful. Rather, my hastily composed words were supposed to suggest that the members of the Church had collectively erred.
Thus, I essentially was using "the Church" to metonymously refer to the reified body of its members, rather than describe the institution itself.

Hey, even the Fathers had lapses of clarity and orthodoxy on occasion.

This does help to clarify my point, however. In that "the Church" has an existence beyond that of its members. That "the Church" as an institution is self-correcting of the errors that its members commits. Indeed, often the only way of describing the errors, sins, and general evil of its members is through the Church's own moral theology. We often recognize the wrongs and abuses perpetuated by those within the system by using the system itself...which may or may not be the case with certain other religions which seem to actually promote hatred and sin as a matter of faith and deny critique of those same evils as an abuse of that faith.

The Spirit seems to provide evidence of its involvement in the Church by not tolerating the continued abuse of Church authority.