![]() Nowhere has this notion found more profound traction than in the writings of Jean Cardinal Danielou, particularly in a little book he wrote near the end of his life called Prayer as a Political Problem, which first appeared in French in 1965, followed two years later by an English translation put out by Sheed & Ward. Prayers do not hinder or impede, the Church is saying, the effort to build a world where it is easier for men to be good where, at the very least, the enticements to vice are not quite so many, nor so damnably hard to resist. Indeed, she wants even the Earthly City to help signpost the way leading back to God. In order to facilitate that blessed moment, however, when mankind finds itself at last in the arms of God, transported to the precincts of the Celestial City, the Church must ask the City of Man that it not put roadblocks in the way. And so Christ fashioned the Church of the Poor, so that those for whom he most hungers, indeed, the generality of the human race - men and women not to be found among the chic and the stylish - might all the more easily find their way home to God. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church."īut what is meant for all must somehow be within the reach of all. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. The Catechism is very direct on the subject, reminding us in Article One that, "at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. The door leading into hell is not locked from the outside. If the world then is to be made welcome in its worship of the one true God, it follows that the only exclusions will be self-inflicted. Why else had he sent his Son if not to suffer and to die for them? He certainly didn't come on the strength of anything we've got to offer him. So entirely delighted does God seem to be with the human race that he's eager to enroll every member in the Kingdom. ![]() Not only are there no walls to be breached in order to find God, but this mighty fortress of open windows and limitless spaces appears to be in constant motion to find us. Nor are putative members required to turn over large sums of cash before signing on. There are no secret handshakes, or hidden insignia, to gain entrance to the Catholic Church. ![]() Have you got a heart? Does it beat sufficiently to evince life? Well, then, what's keeping you from being baptized? How fortunate, then, for fallen human beings that the Church's criteria for admission are so wonderfully unexacting. And so if anyone were actually to find the perfect Church, its very perfection would diminish by one having joined it. ![]() An evil worm having insinuated its poison into every apple, the fruit is no longer pure. Surely the most salient feature of the human condition is that we're all more or less mired in the muck. How thin the ranks of Catholic Christianity would be if all the stupid and ugly people were denied entry! Unlike, say, the pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair, in which only the beautiful people appear - or the Society of Mensa, in which the dimmest bulbs are never allowed to shine - nobody is ever turned away from the door of the Church. A club where the admissions policy is so perfectly promiscuous that even Groucho himself could belong. When Groucho Marx announced that he would never want to join a club that would have someone like him as a member, it obviously hadn't crossed his mind that he had just made an excellent (if unwitting) case for membership in the Roman Catholic Church. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |