We are in the habit of making grand claims about our institutions — often about their failures, sometimes about their successes. But we rarely pause to ask ourselves about their purpose.
Father Alberto Cutié — priest, television personality, man who doesn’t mind getting a little sand in his shorts when he makes out on the beach — seems to be taking it in stride.
You’re in your pew. The worship is amazing, almost transcendent. The song ends in a moment of awe-filled silence. It’s just you and God. And then—train wreck; you are catapulted from a state of ethereal wonder to an awkward announcement about the church cookie bake-off or a video that never seems to have the sound start until seven seconds after it begins.
“People have to be more tolerant. We have to make them understand that homosexuals are not different from them as human beings. [Gay] people are suffering and we believe the problem is in failing to understand them.”
I think of our churches like a crop of corn that was planted at the same time. That field produced corn for 50 years—so much wonderful corn that many of us were fat and happy. In our abundance, we forgot to diversify and plant new fields. Now the corn is coming to the end of its season, all at the same time.
There is much work in the church that, while essential to the functioning of the body, is not likely to make one’s heart sing. Certainly, there can be a great feeling of satisfaction in good budget work, or crafting endowment policies, but the meetings that go into getting to that end result can be demanding. T
There’s a fine line between using authority and being authoritarian–a very fine line, and often subject to interpretation.