I’m an RCIA sponsor and I was kind of upset when they taught that Vatican II stated the Church is not perfect. I totally disagree. The Church is perfect but the people that make up the Church, lay people, priests, deacons, brothers, sisters, etc… are not. Their imperfection does not negate the perfection of the Catholic Church. Am I incorrect?
You are correct, Mike.
In *Lumen Gentium * 1:4 (The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church) we find: “Hence the universal Church is seen to be a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and Spirit.” (Which, btw, was a quote from St. Cyprian of Carthage.)
Here, St. Cyprian, of course, and the Second Vatican Council also, spoke of “A PEOPLE” as one organic whole, not as merely the sum of the number of individuals. That is because the Church is One Mystical Person of Christ and Body in a supernatural union of Grace by the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in three states: of blessedness in Heaven, of purification after death, of visible communion on earth. This means that Christ dwells in all and only in all that comes from Him (what He joins to Himself), but not in any of what contradicts Himself. This is why there can not be a facile identification of the Church with its visible members with all the actions of all or any of its members.
All that comes from the sin of its visible members, of course, is not the Church, because it departs from union with Christ. The opposite distortion is this “we are the Church” materially understood as one would of any other sociological grouping of humanity, which is a radical secularization of a Divine Mystery. This is why one can say that every member of the Visible Church sins, but the Church does not sin. Thus in the Holy Father John Paull II’s “apology” a few years ago we see clearly that he does not identify the Church herself with the sins of which her sons and daughters, however lofty their position, have committed.
Thus the Church is HOLY, not sinful as its members are (taken individually or materially, for there are many dead members of the Visible Church who are only materially, i.e., externally, joined to the Church and to Christ, who nevertheless have the opportunity of being revived, especially by the prayers and sacrifices of the alive members.)
It can be difficult for some to see this since they approach the issue superficially, materially, without understanding the depth of the union of Christ with His Visible Body. When that Visible Body teaches it is Christ Who teaches.
Thus only what is done out of this union with Christ in us is the Church, such as teaching on faith or morals by the Magisterium, the sacramental life of the Church, the acts of virtue done in grace by the faithful, above all the lives of heroic sanctity of the Saints. All this is Christ in us who cooperate with Him. The errors in teaching by individuals or sections of the Church, the moral failures, the exercises in poor judgment, the omission of doing good when the circumstances require it, all this is done not by virtue of union with Christ, but by virtue of sinners’ own initiative as first cause themselves, and thus not by the Church. It takes divine faith that the Church is this Great Mystery of union between Christ and His Body to see this; a purely sociological approach misses this entirely as does an historical/scientific approach without faith.
To repeat: The Church is Christ extended. One can not speak of the Church in simply a material sense as an organization as sociologists do. We are not the Church so much as CHRIST is the Church. HE is the Temple in His own personal Body. Qualitatively in Him personally is the fullness; by incorporation into Him we participate in this fullness His personal Humanity has. Whatever He unites to Himself is the Mystery of the Church. Now He united Himself visible with the apostolic community at Pentecost never to be separated from that historical community.
- and the Church is meant to grow up into the full stature of Christ. If the Church were perfect, we would not still be awaiting the Coming of Christ.