Society of Sinners

“Oh the glory of the Church, its uniqueness, is that it lives perpetually on the vitality and realism of its own repentance, its contrition, and its plea for God’s help and forgiveness.

Let us not claim moral virtue for church members or for the Church.

Let us rather glory in the fact that the Church is a society of sinners who claim no virtue but humbly rest their broken and burden lives upon the grace which God has eternally revealed in Christ Jesus.”

By Charles Clayton Morrison

Poetry often brings forth beauty in a few brief words as the poet crafts images that are seemingly impossible from the blunt words of normal speech by arranging and forming a beauty and truth beyond the mere words on the paper. The “Society of Sinners” helps us form such an image of the Church, at once beautiful but also full of the reality of who we are as a people, sinners and yet redeemed in Jesus Christ.
This short poem came to mind as I was looking at some of the material for the Universal Synod begun by our Holy Father Pope Francis. He has asked the Church to look outward and inward and seek to discover where the movement of the Holy Spirit is guiding our Church in this age. The temptation I have, as do many, is to see the Church and the holy people of God in one of two ways and in truth both of these are of worldly origin and not the reality of God’s vision and blessing upon his people.
Charles Péguy describes it perfectly when he writes how the world seeks to divide us into the camps of the “perfect” and the “irredeemable” where the people placed in these places are of our choosing and not God’s choice. He writes,

“There are two formations, there are two extractions, there are two families of saints in heaven. God’s Saints come out of two different schools.The school of the righteous and the school of the sinner.
The wavering school of sin.Fortunately in both cases God is the schoolmaster.”

(Charles Péguy, “The Portal of the Mystery of Hope” p. 87)
It is as the prophet Isaiah writes, “and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.” (Is 62:5)

The temptation is to fear the warts and wrinkles of the Church will somehow diminish Her mission of the salvation of souls and the call to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. The defensiveness can be to “claim moral virtue” abandoning the self introspection needed to “humbly rest their broken and burdened lives upon” Jesus Christ. Or on the other hand fall into the despair and hopelessness of other side fear where grace is muted and the vision of redemption is seen dripping from the stingy and miserly closed fist rather than the open hand of generosity and blessing. Where sin is the master and God is placed into a corner to be brought out only on rare occasions. When we are able to see, as Péguy notes, the Church as “the wavering school of sin” we understand how God calls us to the humbleness of trust in His will is the sign of faith needed to enter into a fuller conversation needed in the Synod process.
Pope Benedict XVI shared this pearl of wisdom, “The purpose of the Church’s turning toward the world cannot be to dispense with the scandal of the cross, but exclusively to render its nakedness accessible anew.” (Joseph Ratzinger) Many people, I included, have some trepidation about the synod process but I also have great trust in the power of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to lead us closer to the cross of Jesus Christ in proclaiming the good news of forgiveness and reconciliation. It is, as the poem above notes, a time to practice the grace of being “a society of sinners who claim not virtue but humbly rest” in the blessing of God’s grace. If we choose not to be afraid of the warts and failures of call to discipleship and rather on the reality choosing to seek the good and joyful of God’s grace and peace in the midst of the world wishing to divide and destroy the unity our faith calls us to live, then we truly become the Church God creates us to be..
“The Church may be ugly, the singing may be out of tune, the priest corrupt and the faithful inattentive. In a sense that is of no importance. It is as with a geometrician who draws a figure to illustrate a proof if the lines are not straight and the circles are not round it is of no importance. Religious things are pure by right, theoretically, hypothetically, by convention. Therefore their purity is unconditioned. No stain can sully it.” (Simone Weil, “Waiting for God” p 139–140)
God Bless
Fr. Mark