“The Church is full of hypocrites”?
Have you ever heard the comment that “I left the Catholic Church because there were so many hypocrites”?
If this is the real excuse for leaving the Catholic Church, what they’re really saying is that they are attending, or are in search of, a perfect church. When I hear this comment, my first response is, “Well, when you find that perfect church you’re looking for, and you join it, no offense, but it will no longer be perfect.” As Catholics we believe all those in Christ are members of the “Body of Christ — the Church.” We also believe the Church is multidimensional: there’s the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Militant on earth, and the Church Suffering in purgatory. However, those in Christ on earth, the Church Militant, are fighting the good fight and are “working out their salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) and are striving to be perfect.
However, just as Christ’s body is both divine and human so is the Church, and Christ’s body had many wounds. But the divine physician Jesus Christ says (in Mark 2:17), “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” And because of our wounded and fallen human nature, we are in need of healing, and the purpose of the Church, as in all of God’s operations, is the external glory of God, which is for the sanctification of man by the communication of truth, of the commandments, and the distribution of God’s grace through the Sacraments. And it is grace that we, the wounded, the sick, seek while we sit in the pews of the Catholic churches around the world — because, what does grace do to our nature? It heals, perfects, and it elevates it to make it super-nature, supernatural.
What if you were in church and Peter, the first hypocrite, who denied Christ not once, not twice, but three times was sitting on one side of you, and Judas, one of the twelve Apostles that Jesus hand-picked himself, who was the biggest scoundrel of all, was on your other side. As you stare at Christ upon the Altar (the Eucharist) what would you do? Would you leave Christ and his Church? If you asked me, I would give you this advice. You might elbow Peter, our first Pope, sitting next to you for the answer. And he would give you the words to say. He would probably tell you to repeat what he said (in John 6:67) after hearing Jesus offer him to eat his flesh and drink his blood (the Eucharist), just as he offers you and those sick and dying hypocrites sitting next to you to do, and you would hear Peter whisper in your ear to say, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” So imitate Jesus on the Cross and hang in there.
God bless,
Pat Bline