Writing Straight with a Crooked Line

Sometimes my work as an environmental scientist gives me insight into the Church. This week I showed my students a graph of the average surface temperature at a North American weather station over the last 100 years. The line was “zig-zagged” up and down, showing the hot and cold seasons of each year. But the overall trend of the line was to move upward, as the earth has gotten increasingly warmer over the past century. The Church is like that, as we have had highs and lows and made some poor judgments over the years – sometimes misreading the signs of the times, misunderstanding the Scriptures, and, worst of all, putting the institution ahead of the Gospel. But, in spite of all this, we – all of us – as Church, have led countless people into greater communion with our God through His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Our task as Church is to be the shining city on a hill through which “God is preparing a new dwelling place and a new earth where justice will abide, and whose blessedness will answer and surpass all the longings for peace which spring up in the human heart” (Gaudium et Spes).  While we refer to her as our “Holy Mother Church” we remember that we don’t expect our own mothers to be perfect, but we do expect them to teach us how to love.  - - - Fr. Jim