You need to capitalize your "T" in "Truth" but other than that I agree with everything you just said. This may be the most brilliant explanation by a lay person of the Church's consistency and dedication to Christ that I've ever seen.
I've purposely avoided long drawn out debates in this thread because as usual on the trekbbs, the Atheists have the floor and are using a thread as a forum to bash people of Faith and their Faith.
Well, the thing is that you can't take take these sorts of threads seriously. Or, at least the motivations for some of the people posting in them.
I've been what you could call the 'resident Catholic apologist' on this board for a long time. I don't always get involved in religious threads of other sorts, but I normally turn up when there is Catholic Church bashing going on. Bash the Catholic Church = Out I pop.
The thing is that on this board, you have some people who are angry at the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church won't approve of anything and everything every person on earth wants to do.
They'll bash it under all kinds of guises - usually it takes the form of something silly like 'the whole Church and all of it's teachings of 2,000 years
...in their entirety are corrupt because of a few sicko priests'. They usually LOVE that one.
But the vast majority of the time, at the root of it it, the Catholic bashing comes down to an anger at the Church because the Church won't bless anything and everything people want to do. The Church holds up a 2,000 year old standard...and people don't like standards. ESPECIALLY if they don't meet them. The Church holds up the sacraments which haven't changed in 2,000 years....and people don't LIKE selected parts of those sacraments. Especially if they can't partake of particular ones of them (Holy Orders being the chief 'offender' here), just because they 'want to'. The Church challenges the human race to be something better. But people don't WANT to be better - they want to have fun. They want to have pleasure. They want to have everything they see and crave, and they
don't want to share it with anyone else. In short, they want to be told that they don't NEED to be 'better', because they have in fact already arrived.
And if you look at it that way, the Catholic bashing doesn't bother you. Because often what it amounts to is similar to a small child pitching a fit in a toy store because daddy won't allow them to have everything that they see and want.
They want the Catholic Church to change to suit THEM. They want the Catholic Church to tell them what they want to hear, and they want the Catholic Church to make them feel all warm and fuzzy about everything they want to do. And it pisses them off that it won't.
But the purpose of the Church is not to tell people what they want to hear. The Catholic Church says alot of things I know that *I* don't always want to hear.
The purpose of the Church is not to build the self esteem of people by telling them that whatever they want to do is A-Okay. I know that the Church sure hasn't make ME feel all warm and fuzzy about myself and the things I've done/want to do at times.
But I love it anyway....precisely because of what it's purpose actually IS - to STAND for something. No matter how much the world changes, the Church stands in the same place it has always stood. Like a lighthouse in the storm.
We are all out there on the ocean - getting tossed about hither and yon until we have no idea where we are, or even if we are upside down or right side up.
But the Church is there...like a lighthouse on the horizon. And even if we are not shooting for it specifically, it can at least tell us if we are right side up.
Doesn't mean we are going to live up to everything the Church teaches. NONE of us do. I know I certainly don't...and I struggle with parts of Church teaching myself, to be honest.
Doesn't mean we are always gonna 'like' it. Because that was NEVER the Church's stated goal.
The thing is, though, that not 'liking' it is not gonna make it go away. We can moan and whine about how the Church is not telling us what we want to hear. However, the decision to try and follow it or not is up to the individual. Follow it or not - no skin off the Church's nose either way.
But there is no point in being angry and bitter at it. Because it's not gonna change.
Hasn't changed in 2,000 years...and it's not gonna change now. Certainly not because puny little
me doesn't get told what I want to hear.
I mean, if the Church changed every time someone 'wanted' it to....well, this entire discussion would all be moot...because the Church wouldn't have survived the first 50 years of it's existence.
