On Protecting the Church from Sinners

I was praying Evening Prayer yesterday evening (the Feast of St. Teresa of Avila) and found this in the intercessions:

Christ, you presented the Church to yourself as a chaste virgin to her spouse: keep her holy and inviolate.

And it struck me that in the face of confusion and concern over bishops saying ludicrous things (which things those are depends on the person listening), this prayer is exactly right. It’s Christ’s job to keep the Church holy, not mine.

There’s an attitude I’ve run across plenty of times—in my own heart, I’m not pointing fingers at anyone else—that treats public sinners as barbarians, as potential destroyers, as people from whom the Church needs to be protected, because I don’t want them to Break My Church. Because it’s My Church, and I don’t want it broken.

By “public sinner” I mean someone who openly lives his or her life in a way contrary to the moral teachings of the Church. The divorced and re-married; those living together without benefit of marriage; those in same-sex relationships. That’s as opposed to people like me, who keep their sins private and try not to let anyone know about them.

Let’s gloss over the fact that for couples like these that I actually meet in my daily life (as opposed to the straw-couples of public discourse), any sins they might commit due to their unorthodox situation are a matter of conjecture on my part. Their status is public, but the related actions that might be sinful are usually, blessedly, private. (That’s as opposed to my own sins, which aren’t a matter of conjecture at all. Well, not to me.)

I worry about protecting the Church from them. Not consciously, not in so many words (until yesterday evening), because when you put it that way it sounds absurd. Just what do I think they are going to do? Crucify Our Lord? It’s been done. My son has the T-shirt.

It’s not my job to protect Christ’s Church from sinners.* (Except, maybe, from myself; and even there I need Christ’s help.)

So what is my job? To love the sinners who come to Church. To love them, and to bless them as best I can, and, always, to speak the truth to them.

It is not loving them to lie to them about God’s law. I must never do that, nor water it down. But equally, it is not serving God to discourage them from coming to Him because they do not measure up to my standards.

I am not the Gatekeeper. That’s someone else’s job.

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* Certainly there are those whose task it is to preserve the Deposit of Faith. We call them bishops. There might even be some laypeople in that category. Perhaps you’re one of them; I won’t say otherwise. But I’m pretty sure I’m not.

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