"How much filth there is in the church."
It is very troubling, wounding. I see no cause for rejoicing or piling on condemnations.
For me it is more akin to what the discovery of the abomination of desolation in the sanctuary will be like - or at least a foreshadowing of it.
In meditations written for the Way of the Cross at the Rome Colosseum on Good Friday, March 25, 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger said too many Catholics continue to scorn and scourge Jesus in his church."The soiled garments and face of your church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again."
"Christ suffers in his own church," he said. He described "the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism," but also the fall of those Catholics who abuse the sacraments or their positions in the church.
"How much filth there is in the church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him," he wrote. He said the church often seems like "a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side."
"The soiled garments and face of your church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again," he wrote.
"Have mercy on your church," he prayed. "When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered." - CNS
Make it stop.
