Who are we to judge Christ’s Bride?
“If Christ loved the Church, in spite of the iniquities she would commit, pretending to overlook them, who are we to see in the weaknesses and miseries of the Church a reason not to love her and even to judge her? Precisely we, who are so full of sin?” Father Cantalamessa asked today.
“Do we not think that Jesus knew the sins of the Church better than us?” the Capuchin continued. “Did he not know who he was dying for? Did he not know that among his disciples, one was betraying him, another denying him, and all fleeing?”
“But he loved this real Church, not the imaginary and ideal one. He died ‘to make her holy and immaculate,’ not because she was already holy and immaculate,” Father Cantalamessa said in the presence of John Paul II and the Curia members gathered in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace.