Sunday, April 1, 2018

Thankful for Friends

My friend, Jimmy E. Greene, posted something this Easter morning that touched my soul. Thank you Jimmy.

On this Easter Sunday there is much unrest and anger at the scandals surrounding our diocese, priests and leader.  Critics outside the Church will ask how we adhere to an institution that has so many deep flaws and now this. My first response is that the Catholic tradition of thought and practice is that faith and the physical church are as separate as faith and mortal man.  My faith isn’t shaken anymore by the flaws of a mortal man who is but a conduit then it would be if an earthquake made rubble out of the church building.  Our faith is an inside of us thing and not a flesh and blood or bricks and mortar thing.

I’ll never forget the William James phrase that faith is a “live option” inside of us.   How true.  For me, The Catholic Church is the only religious place that I feel at home in and to renounce it based on the misdeeds of failed priests is to question what and who I had faith in to begin with.  I hope that my community of Catholics uses this to remember that crucial reminder; faith is and always has been the message and not in the messenger.   One does not need a conduit to receive it since there’s a direct line for each us of 24/7/365✝️✝️✝️

That “live option” in each of us is just that...alive.

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