a big elephant

When in my previous post I argued that the abuses of government and socialism can only be contained by an alliance with the Church I do not mean that lay people must become religious, much less practicing Catholics, to carry out that entreprise.

As I have been trying to show, everybody feels free to abuse the Catholic Church. This is not a new phonomenon. It has been going on since the Reformation and intensified after the French Revolution. Even though some historical charges against the Church are true and regrettable - as the Church is made by men, not by God - most of them are pure lies or greatly exaggerated (the Inquisition being the most obvious example in this last respect).

Over the last few centuries, Protestants, Catholics, even Jews - these latter who do not admit any criticism of their culture and religion - all feel at ease to deprecate the Catholic Church and the Catholic culture and make it look bad. The Church has become some sort of a big elephant at which even the most incompetent of anti-religious shooters can claim that he shot on target. As Professor Jenkins has written, anti-Catholicism remains the only acceptable prejudice in modern society.

One of the most prevailing prejudices against the Church is its dogmatism. And yet the Church has been in need of intellectual and doctrinal help from without for a long time. Pope Benedictus XVI, for one, has repeatedly called for lay people to help the Church deal with the problems and complexities of modern life. Thus, when I talk about an alliance with the Church I do not mean the subalternization of any of the parts involved, but rather an association of equals between lay people and churchmen.