You know what I want to say to such people? You damn well try it. Go on. You try running an international Christian organisation that is committed to both liberalism and biblical tradition. You think it’s easy? You think it’s about being nice and progressive?<\/p>\n
The real question, Gene, is whether we believe in the church at all. To believe in the church is to believe that God wills the Gospel to be incarnated in something that looks very like a human ideology, full of all-too-human flaws, and not unstained by human violence. Can it be that God wills this? That he allows himself to be mediated by a morally flawed society, a place in which homophobia (and much else) is rife?<\/p>\n
This is what we must ask ourselves: do we dare to take the (considerable) risk of identifying the cause of Jesus Christ with a particular human tradition, a particular model of human wellbeing? Such a tradition will have rules – otherwise it would lack all coherence, all grammar. And these rules change slowly, if the tradition is old and large. Yes, the Catholic model of church does seem to implicate us in certain habits of cultural violence. Dare we accept that? Dare we suffer it? Is there an alternative? Yes: the alternative is to reduce Jesus Christ to a mere idea, to allow him to be eroded by secular anarchism, to be wise in our own sophistications.<\/p>\n
For Catholic and apostolic Christians, Jesus Christ is not an idea but a living body. He calls us to defend his body, Gene. Perhaps it currently feels as if you are the waste matter excluded from the body – but is this not a crucial part of bodily health? When it comes to this very natural process, the dichotomy of inclusion\/exclusion is transcended. You are part of the body that excludes you. May God grant you the wisdom to see this.<\/p>\n