One of the heritages from history which prevents us so often from seeing the Church, with all its greatness and read more

One of the heritages from history which prevents us so often from seeing the Church, with all its greatness and misery, in its true light, is the distinction between the "empirical" and the "ideal" Church. It is to such a degree an element of our thinking that we hardly notice it. It has been since the first centuries a standard view, a means to give account of the, indeed, often disappointing state and quality of Christian faith and practice in the Church as it appeared. As such it is understandable; but nevertheless it proceeds more from the counsels of worldly wisdom than from the faith-as-response by which the Church should live, and the call to incessant renewal under which the Church stands as "God's own household", "growing into a holy temple in the Lord". However stubborn and refractory the stuff of ordinary reality may be -- and it is -- the Church, though with clear realism seeing this reality, can never permit itself to put the divine indicatives and imperatives, which are her peculiar directives and points of orientation, behind considerations which are properly speaking worldly in character.

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 If one thing is clear as soon as read more

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 If one thing is clear as soon as the Church becomes serious about its missionary and ministerial calling for the world, it is that two difficult roads in particular have to be trodden: first, the road towards overcoming the scantiness of its knowledge of the world of today, and its ignoring of what really goes on in the world under its surface; secondly, the road towards reforming its spirit, atmosphere, and inherited structure, in so far as they give no room for new vitality... What can and must be said and resaid, with all gratitude for what in many places is already happening, is that a fearless scrutiny and revision of structure is one of the most urgent aspects of a renewal of the Church.

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 "Secret" sins, such as are not known read more

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 "Secret" sins, such as are not known to be sins (it may be) to ourselves, make way for those that are "presumptuous". Thus pride may seem to be nothing but a frame of mind belonging unto our wealth and dignity, or our ... abilities; sensuality may seem to be but a lawful participation of the good things of this life; passion and peevishness, but a due sense of the want of respect that we must suppose owing unto us; covetousness, a necessary care of ourselves and of our families. If the seeds of sin are covered with such pretences, they will in time spring up and bear bitter fruit in the minds and the lives of men; and the beginning of all apostasy, both in religion and in morality, lies in just such pretences. Men plead that they can do so-and-so lawfully, until they can do things openly unlawful.

It is common to hear churchmen speak as though they did not really regard Christian unity as a serious question read more

It is common to hear churchmen speak as though they did not really regard Christian unity as a serious question this side of the End. This is a disastrous illusion. Christians cannot behave as though time were unreal. God gives us time, but not an infinite amount of time. It is His purpose that the Gospel should be preached to all nations, and that all men should be brought into one family in Jesus Christ. His purpose looks to a real End, and therefore requires of us real decisions. If we misconstrue His patience, and think that there is an infinity of time for debate while we perpetuate before the world the scandal of our dismemberment of the Body of Christ, we deceive ourselves. In an issue regarding the doing of the will of God there is no final neutrality.

Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus For some years now I have read through the Bible read more

Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.

This autonomy of man, this attempt of the Ego to understand itself out of itself, is the lie concerning man read more

This autonomy of man, this attempt of the Ego to understand itself out of itself, is the lie concerning man which we call sin. The truth about man is that his ground is not in himself but in God -- that his essence is not in self sufficient reason but in the Word, in the challenge of God, in responsibility, not in self-sufficiency. The true being of man is realized when he bases himself upon God's Word. Faith is then not an impossibility or a salto mortale [mortal leap], but that which is truly natural; and the real salto mortale (a mortal leap indeed!) is just the assertion of autonomy, self-sufficiency, God-likeness. [It is] through this usurped independence [that] man separates himself from God, and at the same time isolates himself from his fellows. Individualism is the necessary consequence of rational autonomy, just as love is the necessary consequence of faith.

Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862 Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274 In addition to read more

Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862 Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274 In addition to the general situations in which men find themselves today, there are those things in personal life which have always tested faith: the inexplicable tragedies and injustices; the suffering of innocent people, especially of children; the seeming uselessness of prayer, and so forth. It is surely life itself that makes against belief in most cases. It is the contradiction in real life between any image of God as good -- whether God is "above", "beneath", or "within" -- that makes men atheists. Yet how few books and how few sermons touch on this basic problem! Our theological libraries are crammed with books devoted to every aspect of textual and higher criticism of the Bible; but of genuine theological thinking about the things which drive religion from men's hearts, there is appallingly little to be found. The archaeology of Christian origins seems largely to have replaced genuine theology.

You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in read more

You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a constant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden?