Toss them all out!

Mark Winsor of Vociferous Yawpings has a good post on Leaving the Church.

Some people on other blogs have recently suggested that heterodox Catholics in America should break away from the Roman church and form their own. Some have even suggested that the orthodox in America should break away from Rome to protest the way the bishops have run - or wrecked - our church. Can we hit the breaks here a second, and look at what’s involved in both ideas?

I would find myself guilty as charged in desiring those of heterodox opinions to stop trying to corrupt things within and go somewhere else more in agreement of their opinions. After all who wants others mucking up the Church of us "true Catholics" and not making the Church the desired pleasant country club atmosphere where we can sit on comfy couches reading The Wanderer and looking down at those "poor" radical traditionalists and progressives.

This is a serious lapse of charity. How can we love (willing the good) of others and possibly be desirous of them being separated from the sacraments? The Church is a hospital for sinners not God's version of the Elk club for his true followers. Even when the Church takes the drastic step of excommunicating someone, it is to let them know the seriousness of their error so that they can repent and come back within the Church. Excommunication is not to punish those dastardly heretics and to prevent them from fouling up our perfect organization, but an act of fraternal love to bring about conversion.

Being a convert I like reading and hearing conversion stories and have seen many revert stories where people were going along for years holding opinions contrary to the faith and then experiencing a reconversion to Christ. Would we have tossed them out of the sheep's hold also? As always we must walk the tightrope of the dynamic tensions of Martha and Mary, prayer and action. One of the annoying things about being a Christian is that so often we must start from within ourselves in conversion before we can even think about correcting others, after all picking up a stone is so much easier than picking up our rosaries.

I will join in with Mark on June 8 to begin a novena to St. Jude for heterodox priests and bishops to abandon their heterodoxy and embrace the truth.