The One True Church

[rest_in_thee]

First Things, the journal for which the great, late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus was editor, has published an article he wrote for the magazine just before he died. I have just read it, and it is a wonderful commentary on ecumenism and the nature of the Church, and a Catholic understanding of the One True Church. Here is an excerpt:

My church is

Comments

[crosstherubicon]

I don't usually care to extend these disagreements but I think in this case it matters because you're not applying the rules you claim to apply to others.

I gave you a pretty neutral response and you responded, yet again, with the kind of mild violence of written word you are keen on stating I myself supposedly engage in online. You can't apply a few particularities in order to create a general rule. Not regarding a person's nature. At no point did I make brash statements about your own idiosyncracies - I kept my response *general* instead of making it personal.

"You don't seem to have much of a sense for when it's the right time to proceed..."
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"You come across as thinking that just because you're right it doesn't matter how you say it, because you're right, dammit."
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"...you don't ever seem to account for that..." etc

You haven't based your summary of who I supposedly am by taking into account the sum of my responses here. Which, all said and done, reflect very well on me - the offer of prayers, the constant referral of all theory back to the practise of love, etc. Instead you have formed a picture of me which you are determined to lock me into rather than stepping back and thinking, "Am I letting this guy breathe or am I applying a different, unique approach to him simply because I don't like him?"

I don't know why on earth you couldn't simply have read what I said in my last response and tried a little harder to be a bit more conversational and decent instead of yet again referring to the ad hominem. If you can't see that I was presenting you with a suggestion, by speaking in general terms, that I am aware of my own faults then how can you set yourself up as the arbiter of good, diplomatic communication?

I fear the truth might be that your own evangelism suffers a little from the dogmatic rigour you see in other Catholics. And where is the Mea Culpa in that?