REP. Lito Atienza, in an apparent move to ingratiate himself with bishops in an election year, asks President Duterte to “stop insulting the faith” of Catholics because “the Catholic Church is indestructible.” I have two issues with this statement.
First, it presumes Duterte is trying to destroy the Church when he could simply be pressuring the Church, albeit in his rudely (no pun intended) irreverent way, to change some of her ways. One must admit there are many parts in her beliefs, laws and practices that need changing or she would continue to fail in her role as spiritual anchor of an increasingly morally wayward Philippine society.
Second, the Catholic Church is not indestructible. In fact, she self-destructed in the 16th century when she refused to accept Martin Luther’s list of essential reforms. The one Church of Christ broke into different sects that came to be known as Protestants, Lutherans, Calvinists etc.
She continues to self-destruct because she simply tosses insider-reformers and forces them to form ecclesial communities of their own. Yet the Church badly needs another reformation, another Martin Luther who, for the above-mentioned reasons, will have to be an outsider (like perhaps Duterte?) who is otherwise not afraid to be cursed to hell by fire-breathing bishops.
It must be stressed here that the members of the biggest sect, the Catholic Church, and of the smaller Christian sects (Lutherans, Calvinists etc.), are all believers and followers of Jesus Christ. Although the Catholic Church is the biggest, this does not make the other smaller Christian sects any less members of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church.
I know I am crossing a line here (thank God, heretics are no longer burned at the stake) but I simply cannot believe that Jesus would consider Christians from other sects as not part of the people of God. I believe that all Jesus believers or followers, no matter what Christian sect they belong to (Catholic, Protestant or Lutheran, etc.), are parts of Christ’s mystical body.
This is what is indestructible, the community of Jesus believers. The world will always have Jesus believers of all sects and denominations because of the spirit of Jesus that binds them together. Water takes the form of the glass that contains it. Similarly the spirit of Christ takes the form of the glass or the Christian sect that contains it.
That spirit is indestructible but not the different sects that contain and promote it in their varied ways. Thus the Catholic Church as an organizational glass containing and promoting Christ’s spirit or, better still one interpretation of it, is not indestructible. The myth of her indestructibility is actually most destructive of her.