[HomePage] [Von Balthasar] Why I Am a Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar

(Hans Urs von Balthasar, well-known Swiss Catholic theologian, wrote this essay in German. The present abridgment and translation was made by Augustine Valkenburg, 0.P., and first published in the Irish monthly, The Furrow, for March, 1972; and I have included a few passages from the longer piece, as given in "Elucidations", London SPCK, 1975 - translation of Klarstellungen: zur Prufung der Geister, 1971)



The reason why I remain in the Church is certainly not that I have succeeded in seeing that the Church corresponds a) to my expectations, or b) to God's expectations.



Should not the question implicit in a) be turned around to read: do I correspond to what the Church

expects of me? And should not b) read: can the Church, which even the unenlightened see is made up of sinners, ever correspond to God's expectations?



Still less so, if forgetting her ancient wisdom she decides, with almost comical earnestness that she does correspond to these expectations, and proceeds accordingly to program herself by her unaided wits. Down through the centuries the sinners in the Church, that is, all of us, have behaved more or less

idiotically; but never more so than when they believed they could, by dubious manipulations, establish

God's Kingdom on earth.



Why then do I remain in the Church?



Because, despite the high degree of idiocy we have displayed, the Church has miraculousy managed to

survive. Indeed, the greater the violence used against her the more radiant her inviolability; the more

the Church is humiailiated so much more clearly is she seen to occupy her proper place. Jesus and his

apostle Paul often speak of the "lowest place."



I do not greatly mind what outsiders do, but there are those within the Church who think they do a

service to God by belaboring the Church as they would a dusty mattress. Let them beat away by all

means, provided they strike their own breasts and with each blow identify themselves with the

belabored Church.



If they refuse, I fail to understand how they can assert they are in the Church and not outside fighting

against her. However, let us leave them to their fate or, better, to a gentle Providence who may open

their eyes to this truth: a sinless, all-knowing Church that would sell off the old dusty one would be no

Church at all but only a Montanist-Donatist-Pelagian sect not worth remaining in and having nothing in

common with the Church of Jesus Christ. We leave them to draw that simple conclusion, and proceed to positive argumentation.



1. I remain in the Church because the old catholica still resembles the Church which leaps to the eyes

from the pages of St. Paul's Epistles and the Acts. Indeed, the resemblance is so striking as to be

offputting. The very Corinthians whom Paul lauds "for the grace of God which was given you in Christ

Jesus, be-cause in everything you have been enriched in him" (I Cor.1 ff.), he proceeds to denounce in

chapter after chapter for forming cliques, for their arrogance and their incontinence, for loveless

behavior at the Eucharistic party (the expression comes from a Swiss parish bulletin), finally for their

denial of the Resurrection by attempts to rationalize it.



This community whom the apostles wished "to espouse to Church as a pure virgin" had overnight turned into a respectable little huzzy. How did Paul recall her to order, to her true self ? Naturally by

preaching the cross of Christ, the folly of God. But in addition with an almost painful importunity he

painted a more than life-size picture of himself, the humiliated holder of Church authority.



Let the brotherhood look there to see, however unwillingly, the cross of Christ and the folly of God

actualized, and their own true countenance. Whole chapters could be quoted, a few sentences will

suffice. "I think God has set forth us the apostles last of all, as men doomed to die, seeing that we have been made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak but you are strong. You are honored, we are without honor ... we are become as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all, even until now" (1 Cor.4,9ff.).



One should note that "until now." Again, "we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and

ourselves merely as your servants in Jesus ... always bearing about in our body the dying of Jesus so

that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh ... thus death is at work in us, but

life in you" (2 Cor.4:5,10,12). Bitter irony underlines the calm assertion of a rule, which is the

definitive structure as it existed "to this day": what the Church ought to be (and in God's grace

actually is), what she de facto makes of that grace and, mediating between these as "the offscouring of

all," humiliated church authority.



Paul was, perhaps, not the most sympathetic of men and this, together with the insistence upon his

authority, roused the charismatic progressivists against him. Had not the Apostle, however, asserted his authority in Corinth and insisted that charismatic gifts find their place within the unity and love of the whole Church which forms the Christian, (1 Cor. 13), and at the cost of his life preserved unity between the mother Church and the communities of the diaspora (Acts 21 sq.),then humanly speaking the una catholica would never have materialized.



The question at issue today is not one about the limits of the Pope's or the bishops' jurisdiction, but

about the established structure which persists (not of its own strength, for it is weak and 'crippled',

but because it has been established) precisely at the point where it is humiliated. In the gospel Peter is

often in the wrong, and every occasion is taken to reprove him in order to train him in the true position

of an office-bearer.



It is edifying that Boniface VIII 'deserved' to be so demonstratively humiliated. And if today Paul VI

is, in the eyes of the world, as a result of so many mistakes which today are inevitable as a consequence of the absurd overloading of the papal office, a deeply humiliated man, then I can only breathe a sigh of relief as I catch a scent of fresh air. For this makes him to me far more credible than the pontificating cardinals, whose democratic ecclesiastical politics earn them the plaudits of the masses (headed by the theologians).



One speaks of the visibility of the Church but one should take care, for the 'structure' of the Church is

always only visible together with her humiliation. And it may be that, in an age where both inside and

outside the Church structures are built up, pulled down and reconstructed with an increasing ease and

speed, that in such an age the structure, the form of the building, may not be able to attract attention

to itself, that this element may perhaps be reduced to a minimum while the other side the humiliation,

precisely because of this shrinking process, may shine out all the more brightly in its mysterious

visibility and thus may show us which of the many possible structures is really and truly intended.



Indeed it might perhaps be very much to the point if the Pope were to turn the Vatican into a museum

and were to take up his seat in one of the many administrative buildings of some pious society at the

gates of Rome, buildings which were superfluous when they were built and are now ready for sale. It

could be a sign; and Paul VI has already given many such signs. At any rate it is not of great importance. But it might also happen--and this would be more important--that, as a consequence of the humiliation of the Catholica, the apparent sublimity of its structures would show themselves in their true lowliness and that thereby the unification of the divided Christian denominations, under the archetypal image of the crucified Lord and the humiliated apostles, might be brought nearer.



It is, I think, correct to say that in recent times nearly all attempts to reach a closer agreement have

come actively from the side of the Catholic Church, whereas the others have looked on more or less

curiously, if not with a certain maliciousness (how far will it condescend to abandon its position of

supremacy in its diplomatic moves towards unity?); but it is also correct to say that such

'condescension' will only achieve true credibility for all if it can show itself unambiguously to be

humiliation, at least for those who are prepared to see it (for there will always be the others). There

will be those who will laugh, but for the others it will then be high time to examine themselves and the

manner in which the head of the Church and the serving office of the Church exists.



2. Why do I remain in the Church?



Because being the Church of the Apostles she alone knows what commission by, and service of, the Lord means, and can give to me the Bread and Wine of Life. "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have not life in you."



I do not allow myself to be put off by assurances that condensed food preparations are available as

substitutes, love of the neighbor in particular, without which the other has no effect. No. It is the blood

of life I want to receive, the giving of God's own self, who antecedently to everything else gives me in

His Son the outpouring of His love, and that regardless of behavior of mine, the recipient ... I must

remember that the words of St. John that God is love may not be separated by the recipient from the

message of the Cross and Resurrection of the historical Jesus.



Between Him and love of my neighbor there can be no proportion. No synthesis can gradually be formed of the love I bear my neighbor on the one hand and, on the other, the love of God for us in the

Eucharist.... Neither love of the neighbor nor the union of prayer in common gives the Body of the Lord. ... Numbers are irrelevant, good will insufficient. Only what is in the Church from the beginning until now, what is greater than the sum of her members, what transcends the vagaries of subjectivism, that alone makes available the Body of the Lord. And once again, that is the ministry, Church authority....



That is something which the Eastern Church knows very well, as to a large extent does the Anglican

Church. And it must be clear to anyone who gives thought to these matters that it is only in this way that the worm of sectarianism, namely of subjective, self-judging charismatics, can be kept out of the wood of the Church. This worm ravages its interior until it reaches the point when the gift of God, the peace of Christ which passes all understanding, is overcome by the quarrels and controversies of the

charismatic. By their fruit ye shall know them.



3. Why do I remain in the Church?



Because she is the Church of the saints, both the hidden ones and those others who have been pushed into the limelight. It is they who refute the silly assertion that Christians are so engrossed in receiving their God that they can never forget themselves to engage in feats of courage and imagination.



The saints know well that God is never the stranger, never the other. When He calls He is nearer to me

than I am to myself. Urged on by the gift of God Himself they go forth to achievements that are

unknown to those who remain within themselves.... Though selfless, the saint remains his own self, he

makes a reality of what others merely plan to do or deliberately forget: Peter Claver, Las Casas, Filippo

Neri, Don Bosco.... They are the true realists, they make allowances for the hopelessness of man as he is, and do not shirk the present by taking flight into the future. They are the real Utopians; they set to

work and hope against hope. Clear-sighted they may be but not calculating, they live by the love of God in the Eucharist.



And the saints are humble, that is to say, the mediocrity of the Church does not deter them from

expressing once and for all their solidarity with her, knowing well that without her they could never

find their way to God. To bypass Christ's Church with the idea of making their way to God on their own initiative would never occur to them. They do battle with the mediocrity of Christ's Church not by

protesting but by enkindling and encouraging the better. The Church causes them pain, but they do not

become embittered and stand aside to sulk. They form no dissident groups but cast their fire into

the midst.



Your genuine saint never points to himself; he is no more than the reflection. It is the Master Flame that

counts. This pointing away from self is an exact criterion. "He was not himself the light, but was to bear witness to the light" (Jn.1:7). But of the same saint it is written that he was "to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" (Lk. 1:79).



When you come to think of it, is not this pointing away from self perfectly and uniquely realized in the

Church herself? She is more than community, more than "a sociological phenomenon," she is "the

handmaid of the Lord" (and that includes the humiliated holder of church authority) who points away

from herself and is filled with all fullness, not of herself but with "the fullness of Him who is fully

fulfilled in all" (Eph. 1:23).



To conclude: Why then do I remain in the Church?



Because it is the only chance there is of freeing myself from this curse that is the deadweight of self, so

that in loving my role I fall in love with myself; to be rid of that but not alienated from man, because

God became man not in a vacuum but in the dimensions of community, in the Church.



I do not doubt for one moment that God's incarnation envisages all men and that He is sufficiently God to attain to all whom He wills. But God set up in the middle of mankind's history of horrors and

abominations a bridal bed, shining and unsullied, which is described in the Song of Songs. And the

endless problem of the history of the Church is not so murky that the light of love does not come shining through again and again in the lives of her saints.



There is a counter-test and this is, unfortunately, the most irrefutable experience that I have had in my

life in the Church. Nobody need attach to it any greater importance than that of a report based on

experience. There are vocations in which men are called into the sphere of the fire. They always demand the whole person. And such vocations are refused, though one can only speak of refusals where men consciously resist the call (for a thousand unimportant reasons). Such refusals are more numerous than one might think.



Those who have said 'no' remain marked. They burn but they consume themselves. They become cynical and destructive, they smell each other out and hold together. It makes no matter whether they officially leave the Church or remain within her. Anyone who has some facility for distinguishing spirits can recognize them. They are, of course, not identical with the so-called 'enemies of the Church', nor with what Ida F. Gorres has referred to as 'God's demolition-squad in the Church'. These latter can perform the rough but necessary tasks; unsentimental, straight-forward.



The work of the former is much more insidious and I do not wish to portray it here; enough to say that

its negative form provides the irrefutable, because involuntary witness for the positive form of what

may be called election and sanctity in the Church. In the desperate exhibition which they make of

themselves, those who have rejected their call show what disappearance into pure service could have

been.



Of course the Church 'should' ... It 'should' do everything and much more than it ever can. I would

simply like to know whether all those who leave the Church because it does not fulfil their expectations

of it find satisfaction elsewhere.



Of course the Church "should do this, should do that." She "should do" everything, and much more than she is ever capable of doing. But should not the words "the Church should do this" mean "I should do it?"



All the more so, seeing I receive from the Church far more than I deserve and far beyond the giving of

any person or human organization. Therefore it is my concern, the concern of all of us, that the Church

should more perfectly correspond to what she is in actuality. Obtained from: http://praiseofglory.alabanza.com/huvbcatholic.htm [HomePage] [Von Balthasar]