Jimmy Akin Hates People Hating on Religion

He’s perfectly right of course. When people say junk like “I’m spiritual, not religious” or “I love Jesus, not religion” what they really mean is “I want Jesus, not his body the Church”. It’s the classic gnostic impulse to pit the spiritual and the physical against one another. It was definitively rejected by Jesus himself when he appeared to Saul of Tarsus (as he breathed out threats and murder against the first members of the Catholic religion) and said not, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my followers?” but “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me”. Jesus totally identified himself with his body the Church. He doesn’t need to be liberated from his body. Indeed, somebody already did that to him once–by crucifixion. Because the separation of body and spirit does not give you purity. It gives you death. The whole point of the story of Jesus is that the body matters–and so does the Church, the body of Christ.