Cardinal Dolan Reaffirms: 'Church Is Not a Country Club for the Perfect', But 'Hospital for Sick'

[M-Dent]

This seems to me to be rather contradictory with the primary purpose of the Church which is to convert souls to the Gospel.

If the Church is shrinking, it means that somehow she is failing in her mission. If a “purer” Church is to give witness, it can’t be to barricade the doors and keep the riff-raff out. If it does that, it is singularly failing to give witness.

I do not read it as one promoting the notion of ‘hope for a smaller more elite worship group’ more-so as hearing it repeating the prophetic how God will draw witnesses so He can be heard calling at every point of human history. Providence to help man along in our journey.

We can barricade the doors arguing for inclusive pastoral approaches as much as arguing over liturgical purity. Most only see the arguing. Humans are not the one who truly convert souls to the Gospel. As we know, the Holy Spirit does. This is how I understand the point of the “purer Church” view.

 

[Tajho]

Hospital for the sick

This seems to me to be rather contradictory with the primary purpose of the Church which is to convert souls to the Gospel.

If the Church is shrinking, it means that somehow she is failing in her mission. If a “purer” Church is to give witness, it can’t be to barricade the doors and keep the riff-raff out. If it does that, it is singularly failing to give witness.

“If the Church is shrinking” is it? While one area of the globe may see the Church population decline another is witnessing an explosion. There is much trouble in this world and people especially the “riff-raff” flee to the Church. Wasn’t and isn’t the Church, and at it’s very beginning, reaching out to such people? The Church is there for such and is the place of recovery for the same. It is the mission of the Church and will be regardless of how it’s rules are revised and upgraded.

 

[unafraid]

In order for one to receive the medicine, one has to ask for it (in their heart, aka conversion of heart). This is what changes people to begin with, their desire in wanting to change. If one has no intention of changing, they will not change.

Taking the Eucharist and staying in a state of mortal sin isnt going to inhibit people’s free will and force them into sainthood. It most likely will have zero effect. When one is in a state of mortal sin, they are completely and totally severed from God. The mortal sin nullifies any good that the Eucharist would bring, and in fact, only compounds the sin further. Its called Sacrilege. What good does placebo do for patients who need real medicine?

We ought to be careful ascribing human parameters and limitations onto something which is in and of itself divine…the Eucharist. It is Christ Himself, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.To assign absolute interpretations of how He chooses to encounter any who decide to take Him into themselves, on a person by person basis, is reaching far beyond the human scope of understanding.

Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem every single human being, without exception! That is a scale of love and mercy unfathomable to the merely mortal mind. Personally, when I encounter the Lord in the Eucharist, I never feel completely worthy, but, I always feel overwhelmed with gratitude. I can only adore the Eucharist, but I certainly cannot try to constrain, or limit It. That Christ is there (genuinely present) for me to worship is wisdom enough for me; the rest I leave to Him.

 

[pnewton]

We ought to be careful ascribing human parameters and limitations onto something which is in and of itself divine…the Eucharist. It is Christ Himself, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament…

The use of human terms are not parameters or limitation, but rather metaphors. Cardinal Dolan is using the metaphor to teach. Jesus Himself used many metaphors to describe the divine, as did the prophets before.

 

[YoungTradCath]

This seems to me to be rather contradictory with the primary purpose of the Church which is to convert souls to the Gospel.

If the Church is shrinking, it means that somehow she is failing in her mission. If a “purer” Church is to give witness, it can’t be to barricade the doors and keep the riff-raff out. If it does that, it is singularly failing to give witness.

But since when has the Church done that, I mean really?

I’m a convert and my decision to inquire wasn’t due to anything the Church said or did or anything the Church didn’t say or do. It was due to a Catholic friend of mine who made it seem interesting to me and whose arguments I couldn’t refute. I thought, “Maybe he’s right.”

Then I went and talked to a priest.

So much of what brings people in the Church or keeps people out is attitudinal. If Catholics are kind and eager to go out and get and accept potential converts, then we will have success. If Catholics don’t care and act like… insert bad thing here… then we won’t.

There’s not a whole lot that documents from Rome can do to change people’s attitudes. That’s something that has to be dealt with on a local level.

Again I didn’t crack open a Catechism and think, “Oh **** I need to be Catholic!” nor did I crack one open and say, “**** this stuff sucks it isn’t for me!” Catechetical stuff and document reading was later after a positive impression was already made upon me toward Catholicism. Maybe if the first impression I had of the Church was one on homosexuality from the Catechism or whatever, maybe I would have said this isn’t for me.

The primary purpose of the Church is not go convert as many souls to the Gospel, it’s to convert as many souls to the Gospel as possible while ensuring that they have what they need to conform themselves as perfectly to Christ as possible. We are not a megachurch, we’re a megachurch with principles.

 

[clem456]

This seems to me to be rather contradictory with the primary purpose of the Church which is to convert souls to the Gospel.

If the Church is shrinking, it means that somehow she is failing in her mission. If a “purer” Church is to give witness, it can’t be to barricade the doors and keep the riff-raff out. If it does that, it is singularly failing to give witness.

Clearly we are called to propose Christ to all people, to proclaim the good news. But conversion of souls belongs to God.

We are going to have ups and downs. There are no guarantees of success, and no reason to despair of failures. Christ lives and the Church will continue to live in him regardless of numbers. If the Church is smaller, that is tragic. Hopefully in our struggles we are moved to conversion ourselves, to give more effective witness, to admit our failures, and to point to the source of our healing.
But will the Church grow as a result? I dunno… no guarantees of numbers.

 

[unafraid]

The use of human terms are not parameters or limitation, but rather metaphors. Cardinal Dolan is using the metaphor to teach. Jesus Himself used many metaphors to describe the divine, as did the prophets before.

I wasn’t referring to anything Cardinal Dolan said, rather, I responded to a quoted post that I had framed above my remarks.

 

[johnnyc176]

Interesting article from Fr. Z…

wdtprs.com/blog/2014/10/extraordinary-synod-on-family-is-thanks-be-to-god-over-for-now/

What does Communion become, through the open admission of those who are objectively and often openly in the state of mortal sin? Communion becomes that white thing someone puts in your hand to make you feel “welcome”, like you “belong”. Then you sing the song and go on your way. You don’t have to think about how you live, or what you are doing with you receive the Eucharist. 1 Corinthians is a dead letter. Why bother going at all? One you have obtained the victory of self-affirmation, of deciding for yourself about Communion without any regard for the Church’s perennial teaching, why even bother with Mass?

 

[unafraid]

Interesting article from Fr. Z…

wdtprs.com/blog/2014/10/extraordinary-synod-on-family-is-thanks-be-to-god-over-for-now/

In my opinion that quote gives too broad an interpretation, and it presumes too much. It does not consider the trembling sinner who approaches the Blessed Sacrament weeping, desperate, and humbled by the hope of transformation. Perhaps the chance for a Eucharistic miracle fills them with awe? In that circumstance there is certainly more at work than some simple form of nullification due to a certain breach of protocol.

We know that the sacred person of Jesus Christ composes the reality of the holy experience within the Eucharistic Feast. Who can then know for certain how the Lord chooses to interact with any person who comes to His Supper…even the wretched and the lost, or a being in any state what-so-ever. God’s will is His alone; it can’t be deduced by human reckoning.

Adoration is the only certain form of interacting with true body, blood, soul and divinity which is Christ present in the Eucharist. Awe suffices for me.

 

[OraLabora]

“If the Church is shrinking” is it?

That wasn’t quite my point, it was that Pope Emeritus Benedict mused that he was OK with a smaller, purer Church. My point is that a smaller Church would be the sign of failure, not success.

Absolutely! But some of the new types of “brokenness” out there probably require that the Church figure out how to deal with them pastorally, and this is what the Synod was about. A lengthy and complex annulment process may have made sense when there was no such thing as no-fault divorce, and divorce was very rare.

There was a time when same-sex sexual activity could land one in jail; now we talk about making same-sex unions into “marriages” and many jurisdictions, including my country, have in fact done so. Cohabiting is also almost the norm now.

The world isn’t flat anymore, the earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around, and the “hospital for the sick” needs to look at finding new treatments for new diseases.

Well actually they’re the same old diseases of human concupiscence, but we seem to have contracted a more virulent strain.

The Church will and should be a messy place. A place where Truth and a path to it can be found, but we should be admitting those willing to take the first, tentative steps and not just those who are already at the destination. A “hospital” that admits patients but refuses to administer medicine because they aren’t well enough yet, isn’t really a hospital.

 

[ProVobis]

The mortal sin nullifies any good that the Eucharist would bring, and in fact, only compounds the sin further. Its called Sacrilege. What good does placebo do for patients who need real medicine?

:clapping::clapping:

 

[ProVobis]

That wasn’t quite my point, it was that Pope Emeritus Benedict mused that he was OK with a smaller, purer Church. My point is that a smaller Church would be the sign of failure, not success.

IMO, that’s a pessimistic way of looking at it. If purer means more holiness and more saints (same thing in Latin, actually), then I say let’s have more of it.

 

[OraLabora]

IMO, that’s a pessimistic way of looking at it. If purer means more holiness and more saints (same thing in Latin, actually), then I say let’s have more of it.

I think a “pure” Church (i.e. made up entirely of “pure” members) is a pipe dream in the Church Militant. We have to pass through the Church Suffering to make it to the Church Triumphant to taste a pure Church.

Like a hospital some come in ill, and leave well. Some come in ill, and don’t pull through. Some come in well, but catch some disease inside and die.

For every saint coming out the exit, there are very broken, un-catechized, sinning people coming in the entrance.

It’s a continuous process so it will therefore always be a messy place filled with people at different points on their faith walk and understanding. If for some reason this process stops and we see only a “pure” Church, we will know the Church has failed because it means the doors to the hospital are closed.

The Church should never lose the focus on taking in the broken, and making saints out of them.

 

[1newcatholic]

The Church was never guaranteed to be prosperous, large, or influential in politics.

It was never guaranteed to become financially prosperous or politically influential (although it is now, and long has been, both), but it was most certainly guaranteed to be large, a kingdom of “thousands of thousands” inhabited by a multitude too numerous to even count.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

IMO, that’s a pessimistic way of looking at it. If purer means more holiness and more saints (same thing in Latin, actually), then I say let’s have more of it.

I’m with you on this. . . ‘purer’ still implies a journey, not that everybody is perfect, after all.

I don’t think anybody was saying that a smaller but more faithful Church at some point in time would mean that said people were ‘kicking out’ those not found to be ‘holy enough’.

I think that what Pope Emeritus Benedict meant by this was that it might become necessary, given our human nature and its tendency to concupiscence, coupled with a truly diabolical worldview that has come into prominence and ‘infected’ many otherwise good and loving people, that, in order to **show those who are having trouble the truth that is Christ, **there might be a time that many will (hopefully temporarily) ‘fall away’ due to being led astray, and that the ‘smaller’ Church will, due to its tenacity and strong focus on maintaining the truth, be the instrument to ‘bring people back’. So for a short (hopefully) period there might be fewer people professing faith (a smaller Church), but because of them, there will then be a hopefully long period of bringing all people into the Faith culminating in the joy of the Second Coming.

 

[JimG]

In my opinion that quote gives too broad an interpretation, and it presumes too much. It does not consider the trembling sinner who approaches the Blessed Sacrament weeping, desperate, and humbled by the hope of transformation. Perhaps the chance for a Eucharistic miracle fills them with awe? In that circumstance there is certainly more at work than some simple form of nullification due to a certain breach of protocol.

We know that the sacred person of Jesus Christ composes the reality of the holy experience within the Eucharistic Feast. **Who can then know for certain how the Lord chooses to interact with any person who comes to His Supper…even the wretched and the lost, or a being in any state what-so-ever. God’s will is His alone; it can’t be deduced by human reckoning. **
Adoration is the only certain form of interacting with true body, blood, soul and divinity which is Christ present in the Eucharist. Awe suffices for me.

Why then, would one object to a Black Mass?

 

[ProVobis]

If for some reason this process stops and we see only a “pure” Church, we will know the Church has failed because it means the doors to the hospital are closed.

The Church should never lose the focus on taking in the broken, and making saints out of them.

It seems that this synod addressed couples, who at least have each other, for better or for worse. But as Br JR pointed out in another forum how many people there are in hospitals who are alone and have no visitors. When my dad was dying at the VA hospital, he roomed with several of these. It is indeed sad. These people have no one and I think more focus should be to at least pray for these individuals, or, when many of those in hospices die, to obtain as many indulgences for them as possible.

 

[1newcatholic]

Why then, would one object to a Black Mass?

Superstition and weak faith?

 

[graciew]

It seems that this synod addressed couples, who at least have each other, for better or for worse. But as Br JR pointed out in another forum how many people there are in hospitals who are alone and have no visitors. When my dad was dying at the VA hospital, he roomed with several of these. It is indeed sad. These people have no one and I think more focus should be to at least pray for these individuals, or, when many of those in hospices die, to obtain as many indulgences for them as possible.

And why no visiting them too, Pro Nobis ? What do you think ? It is a beautiful ministry for those who can offer up some time.

 

[ProVobis]

And why no visiting them too, Pro Nobis ? What do you think ? It is a beautiful ministry for those who can offer up some time.

Exactly. Sometimes it takes an effort to get past the guards but where there’s a will…

I have to say the Pope has put out a good example for doing this and for confession.