Карл Ранер, «Церковь грешников» (NS V, 415)

[alexander_konev]

«‘Donna, dove sono quelli che ti accusavano? Nessuno ti ha condannata?’ Ed essa, con indicibile pentimento e profonda umiltà, risponderà: ‘Nessuno, Signore’... ‘Così neppure io intendo condannarti.’ Scoccherà un bacio sulla sua fronte, dicendo con tutto l’affetto: “Sposa mia, santa Chiesa”». (p. 441

Comments

[alexander_konev]

“If then holiness and sin co-exist in the ‘image’ presented by the Church (and the Church is essentially ‘image’, a sign making historically accessible the grace of God in the world), this is of course not to say that sin and holiness in the Church have the same relationship to the hidden essential purpose of the Church and therefore belong to her in the same way. The holiness made tangible in her history is an expression of what she is and will remain infallibly and indestructibly until the end of time: the presence in the world of God and of his grace. The Church is always something more than an association, more than a ‘juridical Church’ and confessional organisation, because the Holy Spirit has indissolubly united himself to her. And this Holy Spirit of God, in himself hidden, recreates over and over again in the palpable holiness of the Church a visible manifestation of his continuing presence capable of convincing the world. In this holiness - not in sin - are we given ‘phenotypically’ the inner glory which constitutes the