The problem of sin in the church

This is from comment 13 here  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/10/the-holiness-of-the-church/#comment-50009    Here he is responding to this first paragraph

If we can somehow manage to argue and defend the point that a Church truly exists in a city where there is a duly ordained minister and one human confessor (let’s just say one), even though both people have a hidden agenda and are really just seeking to evangelize the city to make money, something has to explain for this acceptance. Oh yes, they went through the proper channels in the Church from a different city, but now they are in a location where no believer in Christ lives and they plan on making a business with the Church. So for example, let’s say Judas separated from the disciples and began preaching in some nearby area, the people are bound to his preaching? I would say yes. In this case, it is shown that when one is under direct authority from Christ, though being a true devil, they still minister the authority of Christ.

This very question was hashed out in the Donatist controversy in the fourth century. Did those persons who were baptized by the Apostle Judas need to be rebaptized? The Church’s answer has always been “no.” And the reason is because the validity of the sacraments does not depend on the personal sanctity of the minister of the sacraments. And that in turn is because of the minister of the sacraments is not the source of the grace or efficacy of the sacraments. Christ Himself administers the sacraments; His ordained servants only lend Him, as it were, their hands and lips. This is the meaning of in Persona Christi. See “Lawrence Feingold: The Grace and the Power of the Sacraments.” There is no Church where there is no Eucharist. And there is no Eucharist where there is [I think he meant to put another "no" here] sacrament of Holy Orders. (See the reply to the fourth question in Responsa quaestiones.) There may be persons in a state of grace, but that is not enough for there to be a Church. In the Old Testament there were persons in a state of grace, but the Church was not yet present, because Christ had not been sacrificed, and there was no Eucharist (only manna, as a type). To think that persons in a state of grace is sufficient for there to be a Church is not to grasp the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Even the Donatists knew this, which is why they made sure to have validly (though illicitly) ordained bishops.

You wrote:

Now, if the Body of Christ is truly His Body, His own very flesh (Eph 5), then those who live in mortal sin, while claiming to be saved, are still then in this body? That doesn’t make any sense to me. For to be baptized is to enter this body, to receive the Eucharist is to be immersed and strengthened in this body, and to do penance for reconciliation is to regain the strength of the Body, so how can one who has been baptized is in the body though no excommunication (visible) is done.

The reason it does not make sense to you, I assume, is because you have “spiritualized” the Body, defining it as in some way equivalent to the set of persons possessing sanctifying grace and agape. ButChrist founded a *visible* Church. If mortal sin ipso facto removed one from the Church, there would be no need for formal excommunication; it would be superfluous. It would make no sense for St. Paul to say, “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles” (1 Cor. 5:1). Such immorality would not be “among you.” Rather such immorality would ipso facto be “not among you.” And over and over St. Paul writes about serious sin in a way (see 1 Cor. 6:9-10) that implies it could be found among them.

If you think that more needs to be taught to me on the nature of Christ’s Church, is there anything other than the Catholic Catechism you could recommend?

I recommend listening to “The Grace and Power of the Sacraments” lecture linked above, the “Holiness of the Church” lecture at the top of this page, and reading St. Augustine’s arguments against the Donatists. Studying the rigorist heresies (Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, Cathars) is what helped me work through the question you are asking, when I as a Protestant was considering the Catholic question. I came to the conclusion that “Any Protestant who is tempted to complain about the state of many Catholics must first consider the responsibility he bears for that state by not being in the Catholic Church.” There were two options: (a) stand outside and complain about the moral failings of some Catholics and allow them to be a stumbling block giving one a rationalization for committing the sin of remaining in schism from the Church Christ founded, or (b) humbling oneself to enter the Church Christ founded, eat with sinners, roll up one’s sleeves and get to work laying down one’s life to help to build up the Church Christ founded. That was the choice in front of me, and that’s the choice in front of you. As I wrote to SS last year:

What made dipping in the Jordan meritorious for Naaman as an act of faith in what was unseen, was precisely its muddiness to the natural eye, which he did not deny but subordinated while believing in its salutary efficacy on the basis of the Word of the Lord through the prophet. As I wrote in “XII. The Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty” in my reply to Michael Horton:

Namaan, for example, did not like the muddy Jordan. He would have picked a cleaner river back home near Damascus. (2 King 5) But the issue was not ultimately about some virtue of Jordan’s water but about faith as submission to God, accepting what God had said through His prophet even though it was not the way Namaan would have done it. The obedience of faith required of Namaan by divine prescription that he dip in what to him was the muddy Jordan, whereas he would rather have washed in a cleaner river in his homeland. The Church Christ founded is very much like this. Even her seven sacraments are foreshadowed in Namaan’s being required to dip seven times. That is because the Mystical Body mirrors Christ’s physical body. Isaiah tells us, “He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” (Isaiah 53:2-3) The Church, which is the Body of Christ, imitates Christ in this respect. It is so human that one can walk right past it without recognizing it for what it is. Just as when looking at the physical body of Christ on the cross, and seeing the wounds from the nails, the gashes from the scourging, the crown of thorns, we might not see the divinity of that body, so likewise it is easy to look at the tares within the Church, dissenters within the Church, heretical clergy, etc., and conclude that this visible body cannot be the Church that Christ founded. It requires the eyes of faith to believe that this visible body, having the succession from Peter and the Apostles, is the Church that Christ founded and that Christ is found within her.

Holiness as the second mark of the Church becomes invisible to those whose hearts are fixed on scandal and sin. A focus on the sins of certain Catholic leaders, to the exclusion of the holiness of her saints, is a distorted and inaccurate view of the Catholic Church, as I explained in the second paragraph of comment #433 in the “I Fought the Church and the Church Won” thread. Here the inverse claim to yours could be made: In order to produce such saints, the Church must in fact have faithfully preserved Christ’s doctrine. The lives of the saints recounted in Butler’s twelve volumes so outshine in their brilliance the sins of various Catholics, that they reduce the latter to a mere pebble, as Lewis in The Great Divorce describes heaven’s size compared to that of hell.

also at the same link, but in comment 15

You wrote:

Something that seems to be unaccounted for is the “amount” or “extent” of difference between the modern Catholic situation in the local parish and the way the ancient, more historic mode of the local Catholic situation, say from 150AD to 600 AD. The way that “Church” was if one examines and compares today to back then, the difference is very drastic, I am sure you are aware.

There are many important and relevant factors here. First, the first three centuries, the Church was under severe persecution compared to recent times in the West. To be a Christian was to be subject to execution. That tends to lean the ranks. Second, history generally focuses on the most notable Christians, because those are the stories worth remembering. For this reason we shouldn’t think that all the Christians of those centuries were as saintly as the martyrs we read about. Third, even by the end of the second century, we find rigoristic schisms rationalizing their schism on the basis of the difference between themselves and the Church, indicating precisely the existence of the sort of causal Catholics with whom you do not wish to be around or associated. These schism include the Montantists, into which error Tertullian fell, the Novatians, and the Donatists. Rigorism is the perrenial temptation for those opposed to laxism, and Protestantism fell into it as well. Rigorism’s stumbling block into schism is “anyone less holy than me,” all in the name of concern for the Church’s purity, even at the expense of foregoing her unity. But the existence of rigorism in opposition to the Church, already in the second century, indicates that the dichotomy you are attempting to draw is overly simplistic. There was laxism then, and there is laxism now. There was rigorism then, and there is rigorism now.

The Donatist controvery was not really dealing with whole catholic communities who were filled with teenagers who were in gang-wars, or old men who led Mafia administration throughout the state, or people who believe all “religions” are fine I just like being Catholic, type of people. St. Augustine was not dealing with these type of communities. Augustine was speaking about the secret sins of those who were ministers. It was very explicit and out in the open that one would be excommunicated if he committed idolatry. Well, today, you can stop and interview the average parishoner, and he might say that he believes Islam is a wonderful belief system. This type of “norm” is today, not back then. And so the extremeties and extents to this issue of “sin in the Church” are much different today then they were back then.

You’re just revealing that you haven’t read much Church history, or have only read the accounts of the martyrs and saints. The epistles of St. Paul and St. James, St. Peter, and St. Jude, and Revelation, all indicate the same thing: there were egregious sinners in the early Church, and even whole particular Churches went off the rails. And the same is true throughout Church history. Read the Christian historians Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius. Just read the life of St. Athanasius. But all these scandals and apostasies they describe did not mean that the *Catholic* Church ceased to be holy, for the reasons explained in the lecture at the top of this page. Nor did they justify going into or remaining in schism from the Church.

Finally, you say that it is an option to “humble” oneself and eat with sinners and help build the Church. The problem I see happening here is that as “soon” as you are sitting down with 2 parishoners who are unmarried, 65 years old, and live together, and mention that they should examine their lives (in the nicest, slowest way possible), they accuse you of getting in other people’s business, you are accused of judging.

You’re talking about how sixty-five year old Catholics would react to your telling them how to live, while overlooking the problem of your own state viz-a-viz schism. Humility requires looking in the mirror first. You have no ground to stand on when attempting to rebuke Catholics for fornication, if you yourself are in schism, which, as St. Thomas Aquinas explains, is one of the greatest [objective] sins, because it is a sin against charity, which is the greatest virtue. And prudence would dictate that before you presume to tell these folks how to live their lives, even if what you would say is true, you first talk with their priest, who will give an account for their souls, (Heb 13:17) and whose role it is (primarily) to direct them to the way of life. We submit to Christ by submitting to the successors of the Apostles. “He who listens to you listens to Me.” Until we’re willing to do that, we haven’t yet become like a child, as Jesus instructed. Rather, we’re in the position of thinking we know better than the Church, and that the Church is not good enough for us. And that’s why faith requires humility, because it requires submission to those who by Christ’s authorization have charge over our souls.

me
also concerning this subject:

Doctor Ludwig Ott describes a similar situation this way in his book called “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma” (page 296),

In saying that the Church is indefectible we assert both her imperishableness, that is her constant duration to the end of the world, and the essential immutability of her teaching, her constitution and her liturgy. This does not exclude the decay of individual “churches” (ie., parts of the Church ) and accidental changes.

The Church is indefectible, that is she remains and will remain the Institution of Salvation, founded by Christ, until the end of the world.

and from  107 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/signs-of-predestination-a-catholic-discusses-election/

Corruption by Church officials never justifies schism from the Church. We have no authority to start our own Church; Christ founded His Church and we must stay in His Church. We should be willing to lay our life down, if necessary, to stay within Christ’s Church, working to build her up, even when we find sinners within her.

also from comment 34        here  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/10/the-holiness-of-the-church/  :

I deeply appreciate the advantage of being with those whose own faith and holiness can help your own – but at bottom you must not and cannot rely on others for your spiritual life. Grace is from God. The question is whether the Catholic Church is His full channel of grace. If it is – and if the Sacraments, particularly, are the central flood of grace – then it is spiritual suicide to avoid them.

You must find the truth of the Church. You will not do so by examining this or that sinner within it.

and comment 232

From the 2 Cor passage you conclude, “So we do have a duty to separate (unbind) ourselves from the fellowship of unbelievers. If the unbelievers happen to be church leaders, this duty is still our duty.” But that conclusion is not entailed by the passage. It is an assumption you are imposing on the text. The meaning of the text is not that Christians should separate from the Church if or when there are tares within the Church, but rather that the Church should separate herself (in communion) from unbelievers.

Further, this verse declares that “we” are the temple of God… not some church somewhere.

The verse does not say “not some church somewhere.” Those are your words and your idea imposed on the text. The “we” is precisely the Church.

Is that not the “pickle” the Jews were in upon the appearance of Christ? The Pharisees were the keepers of God’s law… the Levites… entrusted with the “keys to the kingdom” under the old covenant. Along comes Christ, and the Jews have to make a decision… do I stay with the corrupt “church” that God clearly founded? If they perceived that continuing to follow the Pharisees was tantamount to “trusting God”, where would that leave them?

That objection is addressed in the section titled “The Contradiction of Pleading for Communion in what one Condemns as Idolatrous” in Matt Yonke’s post titled ““Too catholic to be Catholic?” A Response to Peter Leithart”.” The objection presupposes that the New Covenant is no better than the Old Covenant with respect to Christ’s guidance of and relation to the Church’s leadership. So the objection is a question-begging objection, because it presupposes precisely what is in question.


from comment 239 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/apostolic-succession-and-historical-inquiry-some-preliminary-remarks/#comment-51965

 It is always better to suffer within the Church for following one’s conscience, even suffer death if it comes to that, than to commit the sin of schism. As St. Augustine said, “There is nothing more grievous than the sacrilege of schism….there can be no just necessity for destroying the unity of the Church.” And if one were to be excommunicated for following one’s conscience, the proper response would not be to start one’s own Church and embrace the schismatic state, but rather to seek continually to be reconciled and restored to full communion.