The Church
by VP
Posted on Wednesday August 22, 2018 at 09:27AM in Articles
"With a satisfaction born of her divinity can the Catholic Church look back over her young life of nineteen centuries. She has been her very existence apparently exterminated by the legions of imperial Rome, yet out of the catacombs she came forth to chant Rome's requiem.
The religious revolt of the sixteenth century prepared a tomb for the Church of the Ages. Yet in some mysterious way the Church has lived to record another Easter morn.
Still her enemies arise anew to taunt her in the modern day. She is called on by modern religion to come down from her supernatural viewpoint and become humanitarian; she is called by modern morality to come down from her high standards of celibacy and virginity, of indissoluble marriage, of marriage's sanctity; she is called upon by modern skepticism and unbelief to come down from her belief in such a thing as Truth, the existence of God and the Divinity of Christ. All together call upon the Catholic Church to come down and mingle as one among many and change her standards to suit the modern mind. And they threaten that is as she will not come down, then she must die. Like Christ, she is charged at one time of blasphemy and at another time of being unpatriotic.
Thus does the Church renew the life of Christ, and from the pulpit of her cross the Church will continue to preach and will not omit the prayer of Christ for those who contrived to kill God, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."
Source: Bishop Hafey, Easter Sermon 1932
