When I was an Anglican I was extremely familiar with the idea that within the Church there were many parties. If forced into it, I would identify myself as an Anglo-Catholic, but even within that sub-group there were many varieties of Christian, and for preference I identified myself as a Christian. I still do. I prefer liturgies which are conducted in a reverent fashion, and modern life being what it is, they tend to be the older ones; I prefer old music to new, old fashions to new, and old wives to new; as I get older, the more set in these things I become but they are not new preferences.
Jesus challenges me every day. He makes all things new, and I have an instinctive aversion to the new. But every day Jesus tells me that I must make the attempt to love those whom I do not love, and I must direct my efforts toward helping my fellow men and women when, left to the comforts of my old ways, I could simply help myself. He reminds me that my ways are not God’s ways unless they are directed towards the furtherance of God’s will. He tells me that the world is there to be changed into the place which it was meant to be, and one day will be so; and He asks me what I am doing to aid that.
How much more comfortable it is to retreat into theological contemplation, or into the arguments over whether Vatican II is the worst thing to happen to the Church. These are familiar fields over which I can tramp without too much effort, and where I could dig a trench, put up some barbed wire and fire salvoes off against those pesky liberals. But there’s that pressure from Jesus, who tells me that these are my fellow Catholics, and that we are Christians and we should love one another, and when I shrug and say ‘well are they really Christian?’ He goes silent and gives me a look which says I know the answer to that question, and invites me to feel ashamed at having made the comment. And in that look, I know myself to be a sounding brass and a clanging cymbal
He directs me to the witness I give. Not that His Church gives, because His Church is made up of billions of Catholics, of whom I am one; indeed, He knows that His Church has boundaries beyond my visions. I know that having been forgiven much, I need to do to others what has been done to me, and that the hermeneutic of continuity in Christianity if Christ’s love for us all.
Yes, Grace brought me to the certainty that the Catholic Church is where I was being directed, and in love I would wish others to have that Grace and knowledge. But I will not lead anyone to it by a lack of love, and I will simply bear witness to what the many enemies of the Church say of it.
As with all things that are inhabited by fallen mankind, the Church is full of sinners, and when I have removed that beam from my own eye, I shall get right round to pointing out that mote in the eyes of others.
All Along the Watchtower 
I agree and many like us have settled into accepting that we cannot change or fix wrongs that we see and pray for the Church to correct these things in time. But then we are certainly blessed by our age when converted and joined the Church and did not have to suffer like many a priest, or sister did in the onslaught of liberal theology as it devastated our parishes. In some ways they were being ‘coerced’ and ‘forced’ into a new faith from their vantage point. The souls I feel sorriest for were of the age of my father and mother (World War II era vets) who awoke one morning to see their parish had taken the Saturday night Hootenanny Show and instituted it in place of their beloved Mass. Many died, like my father and mother in-law, without seeing the radical transformation of their parish faith restored. They literally felt that the Church had left them and they died without a parish to worship in. To that extent I think it is important to decry the novelties that caused so much harm to literally millions, their children and the grand children (if there are any – since we do not preach about contraception anymore). The parishes I attend now, are not as crazy as the stuff my in-laws endured but the novelty and the thoughts (especially concerning ecumenism) are still burning beneath the surface. I have explained the Church’s teaching to RCIA students, for instance, only to have the parish priest give a couple a wink and a not concerning contraception: the same has happened to me concerning the homosexuality issue. Obediently I backed off and told the offended parties in RCIA that I would say no more about the subject as the Parish Priest has become involved and left it at that. To me, these are casualties of war and at one time I would carry the fight to the Bishop or beyond. Today I put it back in the hands of the Lord in prayer. But it doesn’t mean that we should not point out these anomalies when we find them. When the lights are out there are all sorts of wiggly things that come out in the dark.
LikeLike
It was much the same in the Church of England, and there there was no Vatican II. The things we deplore were the product of that era and the collapse of leadership by those who should have known better. Many Anglicans I knew, myself among them, piled into Orthodoxy because none of the things to which we objected were happening there – but that, at least for me, could not be the resting place – I had to cross the Tiber, even though I knew that there I would find many of the things which had infected Anglicanism. I simply have to have faith that these things will pass.
LikeLike
I pray they do, C, for the sake of the Church. In the US we seem to have become a Church of indults. An indult for extraordinary ministers, to receive standing and in the hand, etc. And we watch them take jack hammers to the imported marble altars and altar rails that our grandparents built with their meager wages and their own labor to make way for a Table so that the priest may face the people and to accommodate the indult to receive standing. I watched an an old man sob as he watched them carry the broken marble of his old church out to the dumpster: for his father had put years of wages and labor into those beautiful things. Sad thing to see and difficult to know when or if it will stop.
LikeLike
Those of us condemned to live in times of change are born to suffer such things, and we may yet, at the hands of aggressive secularism, see worse.
My own views on the intellectual capacity and spinal fortitude of my own bishops had best not be repeated. But these men are not the church, and the altars and the decorations are not the church, we are the church, and that church is built on rock and not even the hurricanes will suffer will prevail.
LikeLike
I totally agree with that. I only mention that this “wide view” that we must take seems like “theory” to those who saw their parishes implode and preach a new faith. For as perhaps only Catholics know, we are told by Canon Law that we are not to run from parish to parish but support our local parish where we are expected to worship. So, at the time, when Catholics expected each Mass to be the same and when Catholics saw radical change what were they to think? After all it was supposed to be One Church; a Universal Church that should give the same experience no matter where in the world you might be. So when they saw the devastation they rightly assumed that this was the New Church and, in fact, the number of these devastated parishes and poor churchmen seemed (and do now to some extent) to them to be the New Church and the New Mass. It was personal to them where it is largely theoretical thinking for me: as the worst is over and I was not brought up with the same expectations that our parents and grandparents had.
LikeLike
I agree, Servus. The wickedness (and I do not use the word lightly) of such actions will attract punishment; woe betide those who drive the children from the Church.
LikeLike
Amen C451, Amen.
LikeLike
“He knows that His Church has boundaries beyond my visions.”
A wise and fruitful insight.
LikeLike
Doesnt matter what religion youre in, one still has to ask Jesus to show himself to you.
LikeLike
And He does within His Church every day but you don’t seem to see Him and that is very sad.
LikeLike