Loving the Church

For years there has been a triple line of messages in many media regarding news that has to do with religion, and more specifically, with the Catholic Church.

On the one hand, one can see how the news that deals with the religious theme silences the transcendent dimension, precisely the one that is more specific to it, and gives the news with data that is more 'down to earth'. The Way of St. James is reduced to tourism, cathedrals and temples to art, World Youth Day to economic income for the host country.

Another second line of communication tends to present and highlight the negative side, silencing the positive things that Christians do. The bombardment of news about pederasty among priests and religious is along these lines. In this way, a rejection of the institution as a whole is generated.

The third key is to present a Church divided between the people and the pastors, in such a way as to open a breach within the people of God. To separate, to affectively distance one from the other is also a message that is gradually permeating.

Undoubtedly, this line of information is gradually generating a mentality of ignorance and even rejection that adds to the challenges that the Church faces in evangelization. How to address this challenge?

Evidently, it is necessary to carry out a good communication, we would say, in a reverse order. To give religious news with a deep look, to also tell the stories of love and generosity that arise in the life of Christians, to show our pastors and their work of service that they exercise from their post with closeness.

But above all, I think it is important that we cultivate a true vision (and experience) of what the Church is. As long as we Christians do not live a deep vision of the Church, we will drag the limits that every human institution has.

Because the Church is much more than a group, a collective, an association. Our reinforcement of the 'perception' of the Church cannot be to find our strengths, to generate a current of pride of belonging or to strengthen membership as any collective could do. No, it does not go that way.

We have to understand that the Church is our mother. Living from this spiritual dimension will be what will make us really have a true sense of belonging that will overcome any crisis or challenge. The Church gives us Christ, a real, living Christ, not retouched by our ideas or tastes, by historical fashions. The Church engenders us to the life of God and nourishes us so that we may grow in that life that is given to us. She is truly our mother. I love the Church with that love that comes from the heart and from the heart, that is the love of my mother. A warm love that unites and adheres with that umbilical cord that surpasses by far any marketing campaign or reinforcement of the public image that one wants to do.

This experience of the Church is what we have to transmit especially to the new generations. And I have the feeling that we are failing in this, perhaps because of superficiality, perhaps because we are in different cultural registers. But the risk of a merely sociological vision of our belonging to the church, without a deep understanding, is something that we must take into account and reorient ourselves, if necessary.

St. Ignatius of Loyola included in his Spiritual Exercises the 'rules for feeling with the Church' in that convulsive century of rupture due to the Protestant Reformation. Perhaps today we should bring back to life the desire to feel with the Church, to love her with all our heart, going beyond her limits, discovering her true greatness, which lies mainly in her motherhood. That is why our relationship with the Church is primarily a relationship of love.

Love for the Church and love for Christ. Which is not something different.