Thought Experiment
Hello Everyone.
Another day and another post.
I engaged in a thought experiment today and I found it had a
lot of benefits, so I’ll try to replicate it here. I know it won’t be perfect, but it may lead
to other things I didn’t notice previously.
I started with the situation in the Church and how I could
participate.
In essence, what
could I do?
How can I have any influence over the current affairs of the
Church and the necessary reforms without being a high-ranking cleric, a wealthy
donor, a person with political power or have any sway over any significant
number of people?
How could I remove bad clerics? Reform the monasteries? Prohibit
disrespectful and illicit masses? Fix
the finances of the Vatican bank and the accounts of dioceses all over the
world?
Right now, I can’t change any of those things. So, it got me thinking on a more basic level of
the Church – what is the Church’s purpose?
The salvation of souls, right? That’s what the Church is suppose to do.
But let me put the Church in a different context – business.
Let’s assume the Church is a business. What does it sell? Salvation.
So how good of a business is the Church? They say that there’s a billion
Catholics. But how many of them have bought
the product and think it works?
First, lets define “salvation.” Catholics believe that there is a triune God
who created and ordered the universe. He
created humans, gave us faculties to understand the rest of creation and Him,
and gave us rules to live by. Disobedience
to those rules (sin) created a distance between us that we couldn’t mend. This disobedience also put the immortal part
of us (Soul) in peril of pain and suffering because that distance would be
permanent after death (Hell). So in His
infinite goodness, He sent the 2nd part of the trinity, the Son,
Jesus Christ, to Earth and his Passion would be the recompense for our sins.
The only thing we have to do, is believe that Jesus Christ
is the 2nd person of the triune God.
However, we also have free will, which means we that have the
opportunity to sin again, which creates a new distance that requires mending through
the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist that Christ founded as vehicles
of grace that enable us to return to Him.
However, you still have to believe for those Sacraments to have their
effect. And receiving those Sacraments
without belief actually causes a greater rift between the person and God.
So, with that being said, how many Catholics actually are
consumers of the product the Church is selling?
How many believe that Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity
(that he’s God.)?
We don’t know. I have
yet to come across a poll that has asked Catholics this. But it’s not a stretch to believe that there
are Catholics who think Christ is a prophet/great teacher/holy but not God.
The best stand-in question is: how many Catholics believe in
transubstantiation?
A pew study last August suggests about only 1/3 of American
Catholics believe in transubstantiation.
1/3. (Source: Pew Research Study)
Let’s assume the rest of the Church is consistent with
this. That mean’s that there are really
only 333 million Catholics in the world, not one billion. (Personally, I think that’s very generous.)
So as a company, the Church has one billion customers, but
only 1/3 of them think the product works.
The rest aren’t sure, don’t know or have left to a competitor but the
Church keeps counting them to support it’s stock price.
So if the salvation of souls is the only purpose of the
Church, and the Church seems to be doing such a bad job, why are we talking
about so many other things?
Why are bishops talking about Global warming? Why are FrancisTrad, Inc. talking about this
rubric in the pre-1955 Missal during this particular Mass during Holy Week? Why is Catholic Twitter fighting over this
school closing or making somebody a saint?
Why are we talking about all of this stuff when it has
little to do with an obvious fact – the mission statement of the Church as
given by Jesus Christ is not being followed by the Church. If there are 8 billion people on Earth and
there are only 333 million Catholics, then clearly EVANGELIZATION is the only
thing we should be talking about. Of
course, this runs directly counter to the repeated message of the Antipope
Bergoglio, who considers it shameful and a sin to convert people to the Faith
(or sell salvation to souls). He’s
literally teaching (selling) something that the Church doesn’t sell and forbids
the only thing the Church can sell.
And what of us?
We fight and argue on Social Media all day long, but we’re
not serving the Church or Christ. We’re
playing to our own vanities. How many
people have been converted to Catholicism because of the antics of FrancisTrad,
Inc.? Just by sheer luck, you’ll get
some. But they’re not focusing on
that. They’re providing a product to consumers
they know will buy – frustrated trad Catholics who feel somebody is finally
listening to them and fighting for them.
Trads believe. They are buying
customers of the Church. But they’re begging
for a new IOS update that the Church refuses to provide. These guys, FrancisTrad, Inc. are saying that
they’ll get the Church to update, but we need money for that effort. And trads give it to them.
Then you’ve got the Sedes who are telling everyone to go to
open source Linux.
You know, I’m going to say something positive about
Protestants and Evangelicals. Forget
everything else that’s wrong about them and keep this in mind – they NEVER miss
an opportunity to say their pitch – Jesus is Lord!
No matter what the context is, they are always preaching
about Jesus being Lord. They always have
a sign saying John 3:16 somewhere.
Why? Because John 3:16 is the
most concise, easily remembered piece of Christian sales pitch in history.
“For God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son:
that whosoever believes in Him may not perish, but have life everlasting.”
And guess what? They’re
getting buyers. People are buying what
they’re selling – including a lot of former Catholics too.
So this was a rather long post that I wanted to share because
hidden behind all the debates and issues and topics, is really this: the Church
isn’t doing it’s job and every one of us needs to focus on that before we focus
on anything else.
Every Catholic needs to be evangelizing – with words, posts,
actions and prayers. This is what the
Church is about. It’s the only reason it
exists – to save souls.
Maybe we’ll discuss how best to do that in another
post. Comments welcome.
Thank you and God bless.
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