Luke 6:43-44 - For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.
It's a pretty tough row to hoe to defend all the fruit of the Catholic Church as good. Certainly, there have been very good Catholics - the examples abound. And certainly in modern times the bad fruit is at least called bad by the Church itself. But historically, there have been several instances of clearly bad things condoned both passively and actively by Church clergy. Honestly, I have no interest in examining specific cases and poring over the evidence to either condemn or exonerate the Catholic Church. I'm really only interested in the theological problem given the fact that evil has been done by the Church.
While this same issue can be troublesome in the Protestant church, I never considered it a theological problem - a practical problem, but not necessarily theological. The protestant believer does not rely on clergy to establish and protect true teaching and dispense salvation. That's what the Bible is for. So, it was easy to explain that bad protestants were just bad - they were wrong, they were not following the teachings of Jesus, they were not practicing what they preached. A follower of Christ in the protestant tradition leaves a bad teacher. Shoot, that pretty much defines the Protestant church - leave the bad teacher and hold to what is true.
However, in the Catholic Church, this is a much more troublesome issue because clergy is supposedly entrusted with the keys to the Kingdom and with Apostolic authority. The people themselves are the protectors of the Gospel. So, the theological problem is: how can Jesus entrust these things to an institution, and preserve that institution through the centuries, that has produced as much bad fruit as it has from it's earliest days to present.
Restated: If the Catholic Church is correct, then the follower of Jesus cannot leave the Catholic Church. Jesus established the Church by installing Peter, the first pope, and by giving the keys of the Kingdom to the Apostles. Peter and the other Apostles faithfully passed on their authority to successors, and so on to present. The Catholic Church alone, under the Apostolic authority of the pope, is able to dispense the Bread of Life and forgive sins. Under the hierarchy of clergy, every member of clergy in the Church is faithfully elected to office according to Tradition and Apostolic authority. However, the Catholic Church, from deacon to pope, has a long, varied and extensive record of bad fruit - stuff that is clearly wrong.
A couple answers I found to this problem are completely unsatisfying to me. One, that protestants are just as bad. Fine, I have no interest in deciding if that is true or not because it's pretty much impossible to really "prove", and even if it were proved it doesn't address the problem. Two, that the Catholic Church has simply operated within existing secular societies who are really to blame for the evil - perhaps facts have been manipulated to make it appear that the Church was involved with evil, but it wasn't. Well, I think that argument is just false - even popes think that answer is false.
The last answer (there are others I'm sure, but it's my last answer) I found unsatisfying at first, but as I've come to understand the nuance it makes much more sense to me. I don't know if this is true of all protestants, but I suspect it might be. When I think of people that hold an "office" in the church (deacon, Sunday school teacher, pastor, worship leader, etc) I think of people that are saved - that is, they are officially "inside" the church. Catholics don't think in those terms. Catholics think the whole Church from parishioners to popes are wheat and weeds.
Matthew 13:24-30 - He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
So, if it is true that this parable is actually talking about what I'm talking about...end of theological problem. The Lord has deemed it be so until the harvest. If I agree the Bible is saying that, but I think that is a bad idea and the world should not be that way...that is an entirely different theological problem.
If you find that unconvincing I will risk one further explanation, but it's really just an extension of the wheat and weeds response. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here as it requires some set up, and this is something that may come up in later posts. But Jesus came to establish a kingdom. The kingdom He established is the Kingdom of David - as in Jesus, son of David, heir to the throne of David. The Church is that kingdom. So, what can we learn about good and evil in the Kingdom of David as established by God in the Old Testament?
2 Samuel 7:8, 16 - Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel...And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’”
2 Samuel 11:14-15 - In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.”
2 Chronicles 12:1 - When the rule of Rehoboam was established and he was strong, he abandoned the law of the LORD, and all Israel with him.
The precedence is there - the leaders of the Kingdom of David include wheat and weeds. Why is it so? I don't know, but I do know a couple things. Someday, it will be established minus evil. Second, the Catholic position on evil in the Church is Biblical.
In all honesty, I hope I don't face any challenges to my faith more difficult than this one. It's a hard one to truly settle in my heart.
Love,
Paul
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