The Feast of the Holy Family

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
7th January 2018

Do Not Be Scandalised by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

The Church is divine; She will always possess the eternal truth. Yes, the Church is divine, but She is also human, and much more so than Our Lord Jesus Christ. He was the Saint, the Just par excellence, He could not sin, whereas the Church on the contrary is made up of sinful men. It is true that the Pope has a share in the divinity of the Church to a certain degree by the charism of infallibility; yet he is still a man, he is still a sinner. Outside of those cases where he invokes his charism of infallibility, he can err, he can sin. So why do we take scandal and say like some "He is not the Pope"; as Arius said of Our Lord "He is not God"? We, too, could be tempted to say "it's not possible, he could never be Pope and still do the things he is doing".

Are we supposed to separate ourselves from the Church of Rome and cling directly, so to speak, to Our Lord Jesus Christ? Dangerous mistake!

Pope Pius XII says very well that "If at times there appears in the Church something that indicates the weakness of our human nature, it should not be attributed to Her juridical constitution, but rather to that regrettable inclination to evil found in each individual, which its Divine Founder permits even at times in the most exalted members of His Mystical Body, for the purpose of testing the virtue of the Shepherds no less than of the flocks". That is no reason why we should lessen our love for the Church, but rather a reason why we should increase our devotion to Her members. These words are prophetic. We need no other explanation to understand the situation we are living through today. Right now, we do not have the happiness of living in peace and in total confidence in the hierarchy. We are caught up in a great disorder, but it is our duty to maintain the most appropriate attitude, so we don't go astray and don't hold in our hearts certain sentiments and orientations that would lead us straight out of the Church.

Other people, on the contrary, divinise the Church to such a point that they consider everything in Her to be perfect. So for them it is out of the question to offer any opposition whatsoever to anything that comes from Rome, because they consider that everything in Rome is divine. They are imitating those who said that Our Lord was so much God that He could not have suffered. They said that He appeared to suffer but in reality He did not suffer, His blood did not flow. It is the same thing with certain people today who say "No, nothing can be human, nothing can be imperfect in the Church". They are wrong, too. They are not looking at reality straight on.

Just as we never would have dared to place those words on the lips of Our Lord, "My God, My God, why have you abandoned Me?" (Mt. 27), so we never would have thought it possible for error to penetrate so far inside the Church.

We cannot close our eyes to the problem. The realities are right there in front of us and they refuse to be ignored. We must not abandon Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if, as Scripture says, He appears "Like a leper" (Is. 53).