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In this chapter let’s lay some groundwork for our thinking about the Church. Over many years I have heard numerous excuses and attacks on the Church. It’s full of hypocrites. It has so many bad people in it, how can they be Christian? They just want your money. It needs to move with the times. It needs to get in tune with modern secular thinking. It needs to go back to the way it was fifty years ago. I can worship on a walk. What kind of vain deity takes attendance or needs to be worshipped? If they sold their riches, they could feed the world’s poor. My God isn't like that.

The list is endless, the excuses lame, the attacks  based on ignorance or lack of knowledge. Those holding such views have failed to learn to see they have been led astray.

I don't propose to deal with these attitudes, although they can be easily addressed. I'm assuming and I hope I am correct, that if you have read this far into the book, you are already starting on a journey that will allow you to see way beyond these rather vacuous statement and judgements.

Let me provide you at this point with a little solid food.

Jesus created the church by building it on the rock he called Peter. It was a de facto creation of a new Israel a new family from all nations. The church is therefore of divine institution. As children of God, blessed and brought into  the family by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Baptism, we gather to worship. God has no need of our praise as is made clear at every Mass, rather we come to give thanks and to adore with all our hearts the giver of all good things. We are above all else a thankful people. At church, our minds are fed by readings and exposition, our souls and bodies sustained by the precious body and blood of Christ.

Now the human institution has failings. It is made up of fallible, sinful human beings. We will deal with this idea of sin later in the book, so leave deep thoughts or thinking or opinions on sin, for the moment, we will get to it at the right time and place.

Those who have truly learned to see and experience the divine, not only can recognise one another, a gift of the Holy Spirit, but are also filled with a compulsion to gather together with others who know this truth. God calls them together. Staying away is impossible. Why would anyone deny themselves this time of precious closeness to God. Those who have learned to see,  what is really going on at Mass, not just the outward actions, see the great truth of the interaction that takes place. That is why for two thousand years Christians have been prepared to die for their faith and more and more people in this present age are called upon to make great sacrifices, even to undergo martyrdom for love of the Divine. Those who have learned to see, cannot unsee what they have seen they cannot deny, but willingly sacrifice, even life itself for this amazing truth and treasure.

Is everyone in Church at the same point in their journey, of course not! But it is a journey and once we see the truth it cannot be unseen. If you are at an early stage in your spiritual journey you may fall into the error of judging others by external behaviour, as you progress you will find that you no longer judge others and you learn what it means to be humble. 

Those who judge us so harshly from outside the Church or from its periphery are just toddlers in the spiritual world and as we forgive, teach and love our little children, so we love them with a very special love.