Knavish imbecility. . .

“The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine – but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight”     ― Hilaire Belloc

While you might laugh at the quote, it is surely true. What God established by the blood of Christ and the fire of the Spirit has been ruthlessly attacked from within as well as without. Yet age to age the faith has endured. The institution of the Church has endured not by juridical edict but by the power of the Spirit working through the Word who calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies it into being and sustains it by the signs that actually deliver what they sign in the Sacraments. We do not have the office of pastor because it works so well but because this is how God has chosen to order His Church. We do not have a law to order our life together but the pure and precious Gospel that does not compel but woos and wins the heart. It is our great temptation to invest the future of the Church in the people on either side of the altar rail or to turn that Gospel into a system of commands and rules. God is forever trying to fix what we screw up. Popes are nice until they get you in trouble. Bishops are wonderful until they forget who they are and what they are to be and to do. You can continue the line right down to the smallest office to which any is set apart within the Church. Add to this councils and teaching magisterium that are the bane of the faith as much as a blessing. We have not even begun to talk about the enemies without.

How on earth would a human institution have survived through the ages? Nations have arisen and fallen. Societies have emerged and faded away. The Word of the Lord endures forever and with it those who are called to faith, gathered around this Word and Sacrament, enlightened from the darkness of sin and its death, and sanctified from unrighteousness to holiness. Everyday you go to bed at night, give thanks to God who is at work to repair what we destroy and to restore what we have "improved." It is the singular truth of our time that the Church would have been a footnote in history if left to us alone. Thanks be to God she is not.