But nobody wants to die

E.J. Dionne explains why he’s not quitting his Catholic church, prompting this response from DougJ at BalloonJuice:

It’s true that the church-going Catholics I talk to don’t listen to anything the crazy-ass bishops say. But, for me, I would not join any club that would have someone like Joe Ratzinger or Karol Wojtyla as a head member. I can understand thinking “Joey Ratz is an asshole, he doesn’t get to win, we get to win”, but I think conservatives are like termites or black mold. Once they’re really in the foundation, blow the this [mess] up and start over, because you’ll never get them out.

That may sound harsh, and it may even strike some readers as anti-religious or anti-church. But DougJ’s comment struck me as remarkably similar to a quote AZspot recently highlighted from Episcopal priest and author Robert Farrar Capon:

The church can’t rise because it refuses to drop dead. The fact that it’s dying is of no use whatsoever: dying is simply the world’s most uncomfortable way of remaining alive. If you are to be raised from the dead, the only thing that can make you a candidate is to go all the way into death. Death, not life, is God’s recipe for fixing up the world.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.