Can We Remember the Love Story?

Can We Remember the Love Story?

I love this recent quote from Pope Francis in an April homily - "We, the women and men of the Church, we are in the middle of a love story: each of us is a link in this chain of love. And if we do not understand this, we have understood nothing of what the Church is.”

Do we understand what the Church is? Do we remember that we are in the "middle of a love story"?

Some comments and questions don’t sound like it:

"The Church needs to come into the 21st century."
"We should allow birth control."
"When are women going to be ordained?"

I actually read a comment from a woman who said that she was going to leave the Church if it did not start ordaining women. I think she missed the love story part.

The Church is not a democracy. Majority does not rule here. We don’t get to vote on changing the Ten Commandments, for heaven's sake.

Have we forgotten who is in charge here?

"Christ said, “I am the Truth”; he did not say “I am the custom." - St. Toribio (1538-1606)

And then there is the infighting that has really driven me crazy. Disagreements are one thing but some people are very uncharitable. Even Pope Francis, in a speech to the cardinals before his election as pope, referred to the harsh comments and "hypercriticism" being found in blogs and comment boxes.

When I first started blogging, I visited the blog of a convert. Being a convert myself, I thought it might be a blog I would want to follow. And I was anxious to become part of the blogging community, though I was not sure what that meant.

There was a post that had caused quite a controversy and rather strong arguments. I decided to put in my two cents, in a charitable way. And I quickly got cut down for it.

I was so hurt. And I never went back to that blog.

"… One isn't a good Catholic when he is looking only for the negative, for what separates us. This isn't what Jesus wants." - Pope Francis

Amen to that.

We will probably always disagree. We are part of a pretty large family. But can we not discuss these things with love?

Can we not stop our whining?

Can we remember the love story?

Copyright 2013 Colleen Spiro