The Musical Priest

A comment made on my earlier post includes the following: "I haven't given up on God. But the Church? Well, that's another matter entirely. And I'm not sure if I am going to stay or go."  It would be improper and unhelpful for me to offer an intellectual reason to remain in the Catholic Church, especially in light of the failure of so many of its leaders to leader, the apparent inability of so many of its pastors to pastor. In my prayer this morning, I imagined a group never really mentioned in the Scriptures: the non-disciple friends of Jesus. By this I mean those women and men with whom Peter might have gathered on the odd weekend to spend time with, to relax with, to 'get away' from the other followers of Jesus. Peter may have introduced some of these people to Jesus and some of them may even have considered themselves followers. Imagine the shock and horror when Peter told his friends just how it was that he managed to escape being pegged as one...

For those of you who read CNN.com, you'll have probably seen this charming little piece by journalist Roland S. Martin . You really have to read the whole article for yourself, but it is really quite interesting. But the analytic part of my brain did a double-take at his line of argument: Yet as I reflect on my years as a Catholic, it pretty much was a wasted experience, as there was more identification with the church, and not with Christ. And that's why Pope Benedict XVI is meaningless, along with his decision to re-state the primacy of the Catholic Church. Now, I think his whole piece is completely stupid. But tell me how this argument hangs together? Writing out of HIS experience, he feels that HIS experience of Catholicism led more to an identification with the Church than with Christ. THEREFORE, the Pope is meaningless. In MY experience, I am a complete failure at tackle football. In MY experience, it led more to an identification with a Crash-Test Dummy than it did with ...