It seems as if recently the Catholic church has been in the news more and more often, and this time thankfully it’s been positive press! It’s hard to believe but the pope’s death actually was a good thing for the Catholic Church–it has gotten the media to stop focusing on the negative’s taking place in the church (child sex abuse scandal’s, et al) and start focusing on a lot of the good things the Catholic church has done in the past few decades with John Paul II as Pope.
On Nightline this evening the talk focused on the Catholic Church and the upcoming search for a new pope as well as the the upcoming challenges the church will be facing throughout the world, especially in Latin America and Africa. Some of the statistics that they gave in regards to the church in these two regions were absolutely startling! In Africa at the turn of the century (1900) there were 11 million Catholics on the continent and today (2005) there are 148 million there, the numbers were very similar in Latin America as well. However, as they spoke of these numbers they began to mention one of the greatest challenges that the Catholic church is facing…Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Muslims.
The report contained language that put these three at odds with one another saying that the Catholic church is losing ground to the Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Muslims. In fact, one reporter went on to say, “The competition for souls is fierce.” That line struck me as very odd. Now I can see the competition between the church and muslims being fierce because their theology on salvation is worlds a part, however I find it odd to see that same competition between the Catholic church and pentecostals/evangelicals. Aren’t we all one church? Didn’t Jesus pray for unity in the church in John 17? Didn’t Paul speak profusely to the church in Corinth about unity? I think that the world continues to notice a great separation in the church, and that’s not healthy. The world continues to see the church as competitors, trying to be bigger than the church next door as we compete to “win the most souls”.
I have noticed that the church’s “party lines” have been dug deeply into the ground by the generations that have preceeded mine, however I have also noticed that those lines seem to have no value or precedent to the generations that follow mine. More and more I notice college students, high school students and jr. high students visit everyone’s church no matter what the denomination and feel comfortable there. They’ll go wherever because it’s not a matter of Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, etc; it’s just the church, plain and simple.
I have a student that just recently started attending our Sunday night student gatherings and he fits in really well, everyone really likes him and in fact invited him to come with us to a summer conference that we attend annually. Well, he grew up in the Catholic church and his father has a problem with him attending this conference claiming that he’s “walking away from his faith.”
Our faiths (Catholic v. Protestant) both started in the same place. I’m sure that Martin Luther never intended to create a separation in the church like this, but rather was looking for reform, change in what he saw as wrong (indulgences, etc.). Why can’t the church go back to the days where we were actually united? Why can’t we begin to work together on things in order to help the world? The outpouring of aide for the victims of the tsunami was incredible, but imagine if the church had come together as a unified body, imagine what could have been done? A celebrity charity event may not have needed to happen… The church could have been celebrated, not the celebrities, God could have been glorified; not Madonna, et al.
Some day the church will wake up. Some day the church will rise from her days of discontent and unity, and the church will once again be a unified force for good in the world! Dare to dream with me?
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