The recent pastoral letter of our bishops is a direct challenge and invitation. Its demanding title The Quality Of Christian Life urgently calls each Maltese Catholic to review his/her commitment to Christ through his Church.
“The three big realities” that make our choice more difficult to commit ourselves to Jesus, namely the rapid cultural shifts, the introduction of divorce and, finally, the clerical sexual abuse of minors, hard as they seem, present a golden opportunity both for a personal and an ecclesial renewal.
The former secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan said: “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there”. A choice is worth of its nature when it is informed.
Thus, before one leaves the Church by his/her personal choice it is important to reconsider what is s/he leaving behind. A serious process of discernment needs to be initiated without any further delay.
The following questions, as proposed by Pope Benedict XVI in his interview with the journalists during his last international trip to Germany, are to be sincerely asked and replied: “Why am I in the Church? Do I belong to the Church as I would to a sports club, a cultural association, etc., where I have my interests, such that I can leave if those interests are no longer satisfied? Or is being in the Church something deeper?”
His reflective answer to these pertinent questions some of us may have, offers a sound basis for an informed choice:
“I would say it is important to know that being in the Church is not like being in some association but it is being in the net of the Lord, with which he draws good fish and bad fish from the waters of death to the land of life. It is possible that I might be alongside bad fish in this net and I sense this, but it remains true that I am in it neither for the former nor for the latter but because it is the Lord’s net; it is something different from all human associations, a reality that touches the very heart of my being. In speaking to these people I think we must go to the heart of the question: what is the Church? In what does her diversity consist? Why am I in the Church even though there are terrible scandals and terrible forms of human poverty? Therefore, we should renew our awareness of the special nature of ‘being Church’, of being the people made up of all peoples, which is the People of God, and thereby learn to tolerate even scandals and work against these scandals from within, precisely by being present within the Lord’s great net”.
Hence, the slogan: “Jesus yes, Church no” does not make sense in Christianity. In Germany, the Holy Father said: “To abide in Christ means… to abide in the Church as well… In Christ we belong together.
“Within this communion he supports us, and at the same time all the members support one another… We do not believe alone, we believe with the whole Church of all times and places, with the Church in heaven and the Church on earth”.
Being an authentic Christian is a matter of informed choice!