Monday, April 19, 2010

The "Other" Catholic Church?

In the past couple years, I have probably found out about more current events than I should admit from Facebook. The first place I saw the news of Michael Jackson's death was Facebook. The news that Chicago didn't get the 2016 Olympics was on Facebook a good 10 minutes before I saw it on any of the major news outlets.

The majority of the time that friends post links to articles, I take a cursory look at the headlines, but rarely take the time to read the entire article. In the last 24 hours or so, multiple people all posted a link to the same article so I had to read it to see what was causing such a stir. I'm glad I did.

Nicholas Kristof, an op-ed columnist in the New York Times, wrote the article "A Church Mary Can Love." In light of the way a lot of major news outlets have been treating the Church lately, I was a little wary, but as I read his description of the "other" Catholic Church, I so appreciated his description of the people who are on the ground every day working for faith and justice.

Obviously, we aren't two Catholic Churches, but one Body of Christ. And we must celebrate our triumphs even as we grieve our failings. There isn't one church of those "in charge" and another of those in the trenches, we are all part of the Church and need to do whatever we can to bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth. That left me with the question: what am I doing today as part of the Body of Christ to bring about the Kingdom?

~Lauren G

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