What does church mean to you? Do you go to church to feel closer to God? Is it your sanctuary in a world that is increasingly heading towards hell? Does church give you a sense of security?
What if I told you that the church is not the church? It means that we cannot function as the body of Christ. At least, not anymore.
If the church cannot even properly observe the sacraments, what else can it realistically accomplish?
The church today is just a beautiful decoration on top of a burning Christmas tree.
It still exists today to make people feel good. To provide them with the sense of spirituality they crave.
But what is spirituality? That makes no sense at all. It is a vague, ambiguous cloud of nothingness. It's the feeling you get when you tell yourself that Jesus lives in your heart.
Do you ever wonder why the moral foundations of the world are crumbling? Because the church is only a refuge from a collapsing world. It is seen as a place of escape rather than an institution of power and influence.
But the church was never meant to be a retreat. The church was meant to engage with, shape and transform the real world. God is not a vague sense of connection or an abstract concept. Jesus was the Word made flesh, not a disembodied spiritual concept. The church was meant to be active in the here and now, rather than floating above reality in an ethereal euphoria.
Historically, the church had teeth. It wielded power – not just spiritual power, but real, tangible authority. Popes once coronated kings, crowning monarchs as divinely recognized rulers. This is not limited to the Roman Catholic Church. So did the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The state depended on the Church for its legitimacy, and its doctrines and decrees had real weight. When the church spoke, it wasn't a proposal. It was the voice of an authority.
Compare that to today. What would the church do if a man found out his wife had filed for divorce? It offers prayers and perhaps a referral to a good lawyer. But where does that power come from? Where is the authority to confront the chaos of the modern world?
As Dr. Stephen Baskerville, professor of political theory, aptly points out: his interview YouTuber Hannah Pearl Davis said today's church is unable to provide solutions to the real crises facing its members.
Instead of priests and dioceses going to divorce court and requesting legal standing to oppose and prevent divorce, they simply pray for the soon-to-be-separated parties. And if the church cannot even properly observe the sacraments, what else can it realistically accomplish? I couldn't stand my teeth anymore.
This decline from authority to ornament is at the heart of why our society is falling apart. The church has abandoned its role as the moral and spiritual pillar of civilization. Rather than engaging with the world and claiming its rightful place in it, it has retreated into vague notions of spirituality and feel-good sermons.
Until the church regains its authority, until the church becomes the church again, it will remain nothing more than a remnant of what it was meant to be.
The problem is not what happens to society. The question is, why did they separate the church from society?
