Latest Posts


Post Library

AN UNCOMMONLY HONEST CONFESSION

Director’s Reflection

Dear Companions on the Journey,

Certainly many have experienced ambivalent feelings about belonging to the Catholic Church, identifying with the Church. state the case mildly.

I have long admired the works, especially the preaching, of now-deceased Jesuit Walter J. Burghardt. wrote the following many years ago. I resonate with it:

LET ME MAKE AN UNCOMMONLY HONEST CONFESSION. the course of a half century [of living], I have seen more Catholic corruption than you have read of. have tasted it. I have been reasonably corrupt myself, and yet, I joy in this Church – this living, pulsing, sinning people of God, love it with a crucifying passion. Why? all the Catholic hate, I experience here a community of love. For all the institutional idiocy, I find here a tradition of reason. For all the individual repressions, I breathe here an air of freedom. all the fear of sex, I discover here the redemption of my body. In an age so inhuman, I touch here tears of compassion. In a world so grim and humorless, I share here rich joy and earthy laughter. In the midst of death, I hear here an incomparable stress on life. all the apparent absence of God, I sense here the real presence of Christ.

What do you think?

And let us pray for/with one another.
Michael
The Paulist Center