Thoughts on the Church

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Recently I introduced a homily I was asked to give by calling attention to the exorbitant wealth of a certain celebrity, who owns a 165 million dollar estate, not to mention three others in Florida totalling 230 million, another in Hawaii at 78 million, one in Washington for 23 million, and a number of apartments in New York City for 80 million. My purpose was not to call attention to human greed or whine about having more than one needs. The point I wanted to reflect upon was that loving our neighbour as we love ourselves, is very difficult to achieve, because our self-love is far greater than we realize. The wealth that I call attention to is merely a visible image of what happens when all the conditions are in place that permit a person to provide himself with everything that corresponds to the degree of that self-love. If I have no concept of the degree of self-love that exists in me, then it is quite possible that if billions of dollars were to suddenly fall on my lap, my real estate portfolio might very well look like the above, at least after a few years. To love one’s neighbour as one loves oneself is a lifetime task to be achieved.

The Church, like the world, is made up of individuals who love themselves inordinately, so inordinately that we really have no concept. We don’t know until circumstances allow that monster to rear its ugly head. Is it any wonder, then, that the more a person gets to know the inner machinations of the institutional Church, the more discouraged, despondent, frustrated, angry, disappointed, disillusioned, disheartened one becomes? There are saints among us, and it is always wonderful to find them. These are the faithful who really do love others to the degree that they love themselves, as another self, as it were. And we do expect them to be in the majority in the Church–certaintly the majority of clergy. But this is not so, and it is always painful to discover this. It’s the pain of disillusionment at the very least.

Most people are not able to withstand the force of discouraging winds that an awareness of the current ecclesial state of affairs has on a person, which is why most people are kept in the dark, by the design of divine providence. I shake my head very often at the naivete of a good number of parishioners who seem to be utterly clueless, oblivious, to what is going on under their very noses, but I have to remind myself that they don’t see what I see, because they don’t have the inside angle that I have. And it is a darn good thing that they don’t, because they’d leave and we’d never see them again. I am very happy that I did not have that vantage point early on in my life, because I would not have had the spiritual muscle mass to withstand the major and minor scandals, and I would have moved on. One has to be ready for them, and God is merciful and does not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to withstand it. We think life in the Church should be void of such trials and struggles, a safe haven from the world in which trials, struggles, darkness, conflict, sin and stupidity are the norm. Life in the kingdom of God is void of this, but not life in the institutional Church. The kingdom of God is within you, as Jesus said in Luke, and it is among us too because among us are those who belong to that kingdom to one degree or another. It is the grace of that kingdom that allows us to continue to commit to this institution, because some goods can only be distributed and shared when institutionalized, such as schools, hospitals, universities, military, etc. Institutions are made up, however, of human beings whose fundamental battle in this life is against the enormous ratio that exists between one’s love of self and one’s love of neighbour. Most people are not actively engaged in that battle, and that includes clergy at all levels.