The Church's mission

John Ghigo has written (September 19) about his difficulties concerning the Word of God and the Catholic Church. Apparently he does not comprehend the Church's mission.

Inspired by the Word of God, its members serve the spiritual needs of humanity worldwide. Young healthy men and women give up everything to go to distant lands, opening schools to educate the poor and the destitute. Like Mother Teresa, they care for lepers, open TB hospitals, hospices for AIDS victims "gratis et amoris." They radiate patches of light in a dark world of ignorance, poverty and illness, sometimes risking their own lives.

The famous journalist and TV commentator, Malcolm Muggeridge (previously an agnostic, Voltarian in spirit and a radical) owes his conversion to Catholicism to Mother Teresa, who convinced him of the extraordinary power of love. (The Times, London 1982)

Challenging the Word of God, the Church and its hierarchy has in the past led to sad chapters in history.

"The gradual restriction of Catholic influences in all branches of public life" and the "deconfessionalising of public life" in the 1930s in Germany is an example. (Hitler and the Christians - Waldemar Gurian, 1935)

The Catholic Church defends the rights of the poor, the unwanted and abandoned worldwide and is a source of encouragement to governments in social legislation, a point of reference in social spheres.

It encourages the foundation of good loving families who teach their children virtues and values and bring them up to be good law abiding citizens. So-called new lifestyles which, in fact, existed in ancient Babylon, Egypt and Rome, harm marriage and invariably lead to misery and despair.

The causes of family life upheavals are many but, perhaps, we have forgotten the art of praying to our Father in Heaven. Maybe we have lost the virtue of Forgiving, but worst of all, we may no longer understand the meaning of True Love.