TRENDS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE AUTHENTIC CHURCH OF CHRIST

Because the Church Universal is not a building but the living Body of Christ, whose scope is those in Heaven enjoying the Beatific Vision. Those on earth must convert their lives daily (conversio morae) so that Jesus might increase and they decrease (capacitas dei). I, the only Catholic who can make Jesus real in my life, but only if Christ embraces me with His energy, offer to the Father my will freely so that God’s will be done in Heaven as it is on earth. I do this by following the traditions and practices of the Cistercian order (Trappist) to the best of my ability.

1. My idea is that Christ is made real most intensely when I realize that I am not the Church, nor God, nor anyone other than who I am, a sinner who continually seeks God’s mercy.
2. An often overlooked characteristic of these four marks of the Church (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic) are not just words that come down to us from the infant Church, although that are that, but instead they are a living link, a golden thread that I can sew into those thoughts, experiences, lessons learned, all the times I have prayed and use contemplation, and every person I ever met. Because only I can sew with this thread, I can take what I sew on earth while I live to decorate the mansion my Father has waiting for me as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father. There is one thread, and it is holy, catholic, and is my heritage from the time of the Apostles, so I can sit in the presence of Christ and wait.
3. The Father told each of us that, as adopted sons or daughters, we inherit the kingdom of Heaven. What Jesus came to do was to tell us what we can pack so that we can decorate the mansion in Heaven that God has prepared for those who love Him. The Holy Spirit uses the Church throughout the centuries to safeguard the authentic way of Jesus. This truth is energy and comes from the Holy Spirit to prepare us to live as adopted sons and daughters and also to fulfill the final attainment of our evolutionary process to live forever in happiness at a level not compromised by original sin or Satan.
4. As a Catholic individual, I can utilize the gifts God has given me to communicate with the God of silence, such as placing myself in the presence of Jesus and waiting for the Holy Spirit to descend upon me, as on the day of Pentecost. I don’t go to church to do that, since, at 85, I am too old and decrepit to make the trip. Rather, using Lay Cistercian practices and charisms, provided by the Cistercian spirituality of a specific monastery, in this case, Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist), so that I can relate and love Jesus, not just as he was back in the day, but as he is now, body and blood, soul and divinity. http://www.trappist.net
   • As a Lay Cistercian, I do not have a schedule to help me, as do the Trappist monks and nuns who come together in prayer seven times a day (or at least five times). They offer up their lives in prayer and abandonment for our sins. They pray for each of us, even if they have never heard of us. They convert themselves from their false selves (the world) to that of Christ (conversio morae) so that they can steadily grow in grace and goodness before all, letting their light shine for all to see and give glory to the Father for God’s creation.
   • As an individual who follows the statutes and policies of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, as I understand them, I take what I can use in my present life and at my present age, and try to see Jesus every day and love with my whole mind, my whole heart, and my whole strength. (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:36) Placing myself in the presence of Christ in silence and solitude in the upper room of my inner self takes an act of humility (fear of the Lord) and obedience to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Giving away the two things that make me human at the physical and mental levels, I die to that concept and ask God to lift me up to the highest level of my humanity, one that only I can do, and accomplished by my abandoning the world to live in the world as an adopted son or daughter. I don’t have the energy to either lift me up to that next level or to sustain me when I reach it, but Christ does through the Holy Spirit. The following are ways Christ gave me to be in His Real Presence in that tabernacle of the upper room of my inner self. At the ripe old age of 85, and you know what a ripe banana is like, I try to perform the specific actions below to consecrate myself to what Jesus handed down through the four marks of the Church. I do all of these things as much as I can.
     • Lectio Divina at least four times a day. Writing my Lectio is a part of those times.
     • Eucharist at home delivered by the Priest or Deacon as often as I want.
     • The Rosary once a day.
     • The Penitential Rosary (Sorroful Mysteries only) in reparation for my sins and to pray for those on earth and in Purgatory that they be loosed from their sins.
     • To move away from being sin-centered to having in me the mind of Christ Jesus each day, as much as I can remember to do so. (Philippians 2:5)
     • Not to gossip about the Church Magisterium or politics, which were, and always will be present as long as humans run it. Gossip causes factioning and divisions (Galatians 5) and is one of the most potent ways Satan can seduce us into thinking we are God. Anything but focusing on Christ and daily converting the false self to the true self is a waste of time. Seek first the kingdom of Heaven, and all else will be given to you besides.
     • Read at least some portion of the Rule of Benedict, especially Chapters 4,7, and 10.
     • With all my mind, my heart, and my soul, I ask God for mercy for a life full of thinking I served God, when I was only serving myself. What a wake-up call! As a result of reading the website of Our Lady of Akita, I pledged myself, within the context of the Nicene Creed, to a life of penance and restitution for my sins, by asking for God’s mercy for myself and all those in Purgatory awaiting their purification.
     • At my age, I am doing what I can rather than what I should in my spiritual or temporal practices.
     • Update my schedule every day to have a spiritual agenda, such as:
       • Drink 8 bottles of water per day.
       • Take my medications in the AM and PM at 9:00.
       • Exercise twice a day for one hour, using walking exercises (four times around the house) for five or six iterations. Set a fixed time for these exercises, such as 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.
       • Say a sixty-second morning each day that asks for the grace to see Him in all I do and to have mercy on me and those I pray for on earth and in Heaven.
       • Keep saying the mantra to my four heroes on Mount Rushmore:
         • Mary, Mother of God, to sit with me and hold my hands as she did with Christ, and put in a good word with her Son for me.
         • Joseph, the Foster Father of Jesus, walks beside me as a guide, as he did with the Holy Family.
         • St. Michael, my namesake, to watch my 6.
         • Jesus, my Lord and my God, have mercy on me and all those who have died trying to do the will of the Father.
5. These four quantum threads are the energy from God to humans, transformed by Christ into grace that I can use to maintain my equilibrium in a world hell-bent on knocking my center, Jesus, off its place as number one in my life. Each day is a challenge to keep Christ at the center, but Christ gives me all the gifts handed down through the authentic Church that I need. Christ won’t do it for me because I must take up my cross daily and follow in His footsteps, but He will do it with me.
6. If you want to know what the Apostles and those disciples who followed immediately after He died thought, read the blog that I wrote on Church and authenticity. (Later on in this book). I share with you the very sources I used to come to my own conclusion about what the four marks mean for my personal transformation and to set boundaries for the Church Universal.
7. To tell you the rest of the story (aka Paul Harvey’s radio broadcast), you must endure a bit of backstory to appreciate the context. Some fifteen years ago, I was unhappy that my Catholic Church was so unresponsive to my need to be laicized from my priestly vows, so I thought I would try another religion and see if they would satisfy this hungry heart and its need to find truth in the midst of what seemed like spiritual chaos. I chose the Anglican tradition (having recently separated from the Episcopal Church) and underwent a series of weekly sessions on Anglican beliefs and practices. I found them to be compelling in that they were the same practices, and in some cases, the same beliefs that I had come to cherish as a Roman Catholic. I was so pleased at the way the local Church swept me up and covered me with their wings and made no demands on me to believe this or that.
8. As time went on, I attended Anglican services and sat through their liturgy, which was comfortably similar to my own Eucharist. However, I could not receive Holy Communion there because I had a deep-seated feeling of dissonance, as if something was amiss, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Time passed, and the classes ended, and I was invited to join the community, with whom I had developed a fondness due to their sincerity and shared sense of service. I remember agonizing over this decision because, if it were just about being part of the community, I would have jumped at the chance to join the community of Faith.
9. I bring this up, not to denigrate Anglicans, because it was they who started me on the path to realizing the value of my own Church. Ironically, I sought refuge with the Blessed Mother, St.Joseph, St. Michael, and the purpose of my existence, Christ Jesus. This was a few years before I applied to become a Lay Cistercian and plunge into the depths of the Mystical Body.
10. I finally made a choice that, even though my applications for Laicization had been rejected or probably stonewalled, I would rejoin my heritage as a Catholic, passed on to me by my parents, but, sad to say, I squandered it like the Prodigal Son. I bring all of this up to share with you how I used the four marks of the ChurFaith to renew the Faith of my ancestors, both parents and all those faithful who had died in the peace of Christ. I had to fight to regain my status as a Roman Catholic and be relegated to finding some other religion that was similar to my beliefs. To my surprise, I found none that met my expectations.
11. When I examined what I understood the four marks of the authentic Church to be, which have always been before me from the beginning, I recognized that the authentic Church is one, even though each of its members is diverse. I did not see this in the Anglican Church, which split off from the Episcopal Church recently over interpretations of Scripture about gay ministers and marriage. Further confirmation came when I asked in one of the sessions if ALL Anglicans believed in the Eucharist. I was told by the priest that some do and some don’t, and that there are actually three different approaches Episcopal members can choose. One is called the Anglo-Catholic, which is wnat I think I was experiencing in my convert instructions; one is called Evangelical because it uses more Protestant thinking about the Euchrarist and the Real Presence; and, the final one is called Progressive, which I understood was the position of many in the American Episcopal experience, although I am probably not giving enough credit to the complexity of Episcopalianism. The sincerity of the members who were living the Gospel was not the issue for me. It was the fact that, when asked if all Anglo-Catholics believed in the Eucharist as the Real Body of Christ, the answer I received was that it was up to the individual to decide. Again, it has been so long since this transformation happened that I may have understated the context of what was happening in that one course on Anglicanism.
12. I found the Anglican Church falling into the category of all other Churches that have reformed their Creeds and practices, thereby cutting itself off from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that Christ founded on the rock, St. Peter, at the time of the Protestant Reformation. One cannot look back on the history of the Church and claim to hold its beliefs if one does not have an unbreakable link (ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, and APOSTOLIC) going from Christ forward in time. It is an accumulation of both successes and failures that causes the authentic Church to show it has weathered many conflicts, internal and external, in its quest to keep that line of Christ and energy of the Holy Spirit as it flows forward down through the centuries FROM CHRIST TO ME, so that, when I receive Jesus, it is not up to me if Jesus is present or not. Still, the REAL PRESENCE is indeed that same Christ that the Church for all these centuries has tried to protect and safeguard from fragmentation of belief and practice. The authentic Church has nothing to do with another person who is not Catholic being right or wrong. They must do what they must do and will be saved according to their belief in some of the dogmas of Christ. (See Gaudium and Spes for an excellent teaching of The Church in the Modern World) Each of us must follow our conscience. That is what makes free will such a defining element of being human.
13. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html
14. I did find the Anglican Church local, both Holy and Catholic, in the sense that they were open to all people who would confess their tenets of belief. My problem was that they were not one nor apostolic, and again, I am speaking as one who was and is searching for something to fill the longing of my deepest self, to become more human, to love with ferocity, and to have a truth beyond human rationalism.
15. Here are some of the ideas I had to throw around in that restless mind and heart of mine. Read these as I did and then answer the question at the end, as I had to do.
    • Read St. Ignatius of Antioch (c.100), the letter to the Smyrnaeans. Ask yourself this question: Do I see my Church present in these writings? If so, you have the authentic Church, founded by Christ, which allows me to be an adopted son or daughter of the Father and an heir to the kingdom of Heaven. Pay attention to Chapter 8. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm.
    • Read Eusebius’ History of the Church and ask yourself this question: Do I see my Church present in these writings? Read Chapter 7, Books 8 and 9. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250107.htm
    • KNOW YOUR HERITAGE: Early hymns that are part of your Catholic heritage.
      Posted on August 11, 2025, by thecenterforcontemplativepractice
      
      
    • Early-Christian-HymnsDownload
      One aspect of the authentic Catholic Church is found in the hymns sung by those early disciples and communities of believers. I offer these hymns not only for your edification but also to show you examples of how the Church evolves over time, each age adding complexity and increasing consciousness. Do you see your Church in what these very early hymns say about what Jesus handed to the Apostles to give to you and me?
      
    • Here are the core resources I use to look up what is true about the Catholic Church that every Catholic family should have on their computers. This tells you WHERE to dig for the truth that is beyond human understanding.
    • ww.newadvent.org
    • www.ecatholic2000.com
    • https://www.usccb.org/
    • https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM
    • https://www.iamcatholic.net/
16. To be Catholic, at this stage of my evolution of spirituality, is to be open to the ontic possibility of all being encountered. Like the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, whose notions of I-Thou and I-It have influenced my perspective on reality as a Lay Cistercian, I must let all being be what its core purpose is, and not try to make it into my own purpose in life (I-It). Buber’s approach is a mindset for examining reality from a deeper and more humanistic perspective. I try to be alert and open to all nature, indeed all creation, as it presents itself to me. For example, right now, I am looking out my window at an orange tree (satsumo). It is the season when buds are being generated to become fruit, which my wife and I enjoy eating and sharing with our neighbors. This orange tree presents itself to me as it is, when it is. It makes no pretensions of being an apple tree or anything other than what it is. As a human being, it is the same for me. I am created in the image and likeness of God and am therefore the stuff of which will one day be an adopted son or daughter of the Father, but not quite there yet. If I understand Martin Buber correctly, it is that I should judge the orange tree with the human characteristics I use for myself, but rather let it be what it is and appreciate it for what it is. This is an I-Thou relationship with all reality, including other humans. An I-It relationship judges all reality in terms of what it can do for me, in the present. Read a bit from Martin Buber, as I did, and ask yourself, “How does this apply to all those with whom I relate, and how does Christ’s admonition of ‘loving others as I love you‘ help to explore deeper meanings of what it means to be human?” https://www.google.com/books/edition/I_and_Thou/4ZNc23oZgTYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PT13&printsec=frontcover, and also, a website: http://www.organism.earth
17. Most Catholics are not challenged to dig deeper. However, to gain a deeper understanding from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is designed to lead me to uncover the unfathomable riches right under my feet, requires taking the time to dig and getting my hands dirty. Original sin is the condition of existence for humans, where we all make the choice of what makes us happy and is easy rather than what is right. How can you teach your children to dig deeper into the riches of their Catholic tradition when you yourself don’t think it is important?
18. I suspect that most of us fall into the category of social Catholics, that is, we go to Church to satisfy that urge to be one with Christ on Sunday. We hear what we think is the same format of the Eucharist each week and assume that this is what is meant by ‘Catholic’ (which it is, but, at least in my case, not deep enough to make all things new in Christ). A recent poll of Catholics revealed that 70% of those interviewed said they did not believe in the Eucharist. I looked into that and found that the sample size of those interviewed who identified as Catholic was far smaller than the total claimed by the study.
19. We all need to evolve to a place where we can listen “with the ear of our heart” as St. Benedict writes in the Prologue to his Rule. God speaks in silence in that upper room of our inner self, and we must learning the skills of profound listening in silence and solitude in that room. (Matthew 6:5) This is an acquired skill and takes work and practice.
20. There are numerous rich spiritual resources available to help me have the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5-11). I have selected the Cistercian Way of silence, solitude, and work within a community of believers. Not all Cistercians are of the strict order of observance (O.C.S.O.) or Trappists, contemplative monks and nuns. I petitioned and was accepted by Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers, Georgia, and was allowed to begin my discernment for being a Lay Cistercian (5 years of attending monthly meetings at the Monastery). I made my final profession of desire to be in the mind of Christ Jesus, using Cistercian practices and charisms, before the Abbot, Dom Augustine, O.C.S.O., in 2018. I am the large guy in the Blue Blazer; the other two witnesses who also had to sign my pledge of commitment to Christ are my daughter, Martha Conrad, and my friend, Deacon Jerry Haynes. https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-11.png and http://www.trappist.net
21. If I have all the riches in the world but miss how to get to Heaven, with Christ as the Way, the Truth, and indeed the Life, and totally neglect what Christ has handed down to us through the Church Universal, how rich am I? Only the rich get to Heaven (don’t think money), but it is God’s riches you must take with you if you wish to gain entrance to the place Jesus prepared for us since the beginning of time.
22. The Popes down through each century are the guardians of truth that Christ entrusted to the Apostles and, along with the bishops (including Orthodox), are the architects and builders of the train tracks they had to lay down in each century, so that when those train tracks are eventually available to me, and to you, we might take them back to Christ as choo-choo trains, carrying with us how I have been steward of Christ’s bounty in my life. I am an adopted son (daughter) of the Father and need a direct line from Christ to me, personally. I liked the notion that Rev. Dr. Billy Graham had about Jesus being my personal savior. Bless you, Dr. Graham. Like all train systems, each Church or denomination can only lay track forward from its inception to the present. Anyone wanting to return to the authentic Chruch Universal can only go back as far as they have laid their tracks. For example, someone who reads the Bible for inspiration praises God and receives grace from the Holy Spirit, but cannot trace those train tracks all the way back to the Apostles and from them to the words of Christ. Read the encyclical Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) to see all of this in the context of train track building from Jesus to me, personally, through the Catholic Church (railroad hands in each age who sweated and had to figure out what to do in each age).
23. My heritage as a Lay Cistercian emcompasses twenty centuries of struggling to determine what Jesus wanted for each age, so when I do read the Sacred Scriptures, pray Lectio Divina, or receive the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, to name but a few practices, I know it is the authentic Jesus, because the Church has treasured in each age what was handed down from the previous one. I can go back to the early writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, from around 100 A.D., and know that the words I see today are the exact words they used back then, perhaps refined for clarity and improved upon for my reasoning and choice. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm This is the Church I belong to today, only with twenty centuries of slipping and sliding down the flow of life. I dip my toes in this flowing stream of reality from September 24, 1940, to now (84.11 years of age) and drink from the waters of reality as the stream continues to flow inerorably from Alpha to Omega. It is the heritage my mom and dad tried to teach me by their fidelity to the Catholic Church, even when things were a bit dicey. What is authentic about the Church of the Apostles (annointed with tongues of fire at Pentecost) is the very same structure I see now, although it has been cleaned up a little from the ages of useless baggage.
24. https://iamjesus.net/our-lady-of-akita-asks-us-to-pray-the-penitential-rosary/ I am very keen on using this website as a guide to help me be in the presence of Christ and ask for mercy for myself and all those in my lifetime. I will not ask you to practice the core values of Our Lady of Akita, as they allow me to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5-12) I will strongly urge you to check it out to see if the Holy Spirit speaks to you (remember you must listen “with the ear of the heart.” (St. Benedict’s Rule)
25. My “Go To” map of reality is from Teilhard de Chardin (unattributed), which helps me see where I fit into what I have discovered about spiritual reality and how it has led me to become an adopted son or daughter of the Father. The Catholic Church, like the Blessed Mother herself with Christ, holds me in her lap (like the Pieta statue) and intercedes for me with Jesus, her Son. This illustrates the evolution or flow of complexity and consciousness as humanity inexorably progresses through time and space.

New to my repertoire of websites is one I discovered yesterday (September 12, 2025), which promises to be a valuable resource for me. It is called “Iamcatholic” and I am checking it out. I will never ask you to join something I, myself, will not join and use to help me become more like Christ and less like my sinful self. (capacitas dei) What I would like to do is ask that you take a moment to review it and see if this approach is one you would like to include in your portfolio of Catholic Church resources.

ww.iamjesus.net

What Jesus said and did was entrusted to the Apostles and passed down through the halls of time until I could use those practices from the mouth of Jesus that He wanted me to use to get to Heaven, but also to strengthen my Faith in the midst of the trauma of being human.

The authentic Church of Christ moves forward in each century, ever growing in complexity and consciousness of what Christ intended for me to do. I am the reason the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, so that I can be confident and assured that the practices Jesus wanted me to follow actually came from Him and not someone along the way who thought they had a better way to do it.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE CATHOLIC (LAY CISTERCIAN IN MY CASE)

I offer you my personal reflections on spiritual reality, drawing on the complete integration and rejection of various ways of thinking and the people who have influenced me, whether positively or negatively, to where I am today. (85 years of age and counting)

I like the title of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Catholic (Lay Cistercian) because, as I am in the flow of complexity and consciousness of life, it is an individual choice for me to ask the perennial questions, “What is good and what is evil?” The loneliness comes because I am the only one who can make new wineskins to hold the new wine I now receive daily from Christ. I always had this opportunity from the moment I was baptised, but only realized how to make new each day in my life, the sufferings and death of Christ, with whom I eagerly desire to be, sitting on a couch and just waiting. I remember my mom and dad sitting on a swing at night, not saying much, but expressing their love just by being there together. I have the same feeling as Christ. Meditation is when I control the activity, most of it being mental, and all of it initiated by me. I am not saying meditation is bad, nor am I saying I don’t do it. Contemplation is when I abandon meditation and step out into a presence where I don’t know the topic, nor do I physically see Christ. If I sit long enough in contemplation, I may be able to hear the whispers of Christ and the energy of the Holy Spirit overshadowing my mind and heart to the deepest extent my humanity can tolerate. Like going to the gym and working out, each time I go, or used to go, I gain more and more durability and strength in my body. In contemplative reflections without any agenda, I gain the strength to say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner.”

I like to think of my focusing on Christ and trying to see how it all fits together using just the tools I have accumulated in my toolshed of life, requires work and fidelity to a notion that I talk too much and I need to “listen with the ear of the heart.” (St. Benedict’s Rule)

The tools I use are those that Christ gave to his Apostles to give to me. I just borrowed them from the Church of Cistercian spirituality (A way to practice love as influenced by St. Benedict (c 540 A.D.) and interpreted by Cistercian monks and nuns from the time before St. Bernard of Clairvaux.) (c. 1090 A.D.)

The loneliness arises when I must absorb all these external ways into myself and make sense of them. I am the only me; you are the only you; Christ is the only way, truth, and life, and I must discover a way to dig beneath the dirt and rocks of my human nature to discover the gold right under my feet, or more accurately, in the upper room of my inner self. It gets lonely there because everything has to be transported to my room by me. Each one of us as Catholics (or humans) has such a place where it is like the holy of holies of the Temple of Jerusalem, and only I can enter. What I have discovered late in life is that I can invite Christ and the Holy Spirit in to join me on the couch and just be there. I can testify that no one can be in the presence of Christ with the energy of the Holy Spirit, our second Advocate, without making all things new in our minds and hearts. Each time this happens, and I try to do this every day in my Lectio Divina tool, I become more and more like Christ wanted me to be at the deepest part of my humanity (an adopted son or daughter of the Father) and less and less like my false self. (capacitas dei) Each day, I now look forward to sitting on that couch next to Christ (Matthew 6:5) and sitting next to the one who gives me comfort as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Jesus said He would not leave those He loved as orphans. He told us that if we loved Him, we should keep his commandments. There is but one commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The Church is that great train that each age builds forward from Christ to me (and all of you), where we can be assured that what Christ taught the Apostles is what we do today. Without train tracks being built by the Church in each age, digging through mountains, building bridges, in the heat and cold of each century’s challenges, there would be no authentic Church that would allow me to be an adopted son (daughter) of the Father. I can’t go from me to the Father, through Christ, by the energy of the Holy Spirit, if there were no train tracks to guide me back. Like Ariadne’s Thread in the maze of the Minotaur, it is only because Christ loved me enough to inspire mortal and fallible humans to build the Catholic Church Universal forward in time that I can benefit from what Christ wanted me to have to help me reach Heaven.

The Catholic Church, despite its flaws in its individual members, is the only School of Love that can claim continuity with the past. This School of Love is not the Church itself, but that Church is the occasion in each age for you and me to make Christ more present as we traverse the loneliness of being human in a world that offers choices of both good and evil to help me reach the apogee of my humanity before I die. Christ, through His Church, allows me to reach the deepest part of my humanity, the spiritual universe, only because He first loved us, and the Father loved us so much that God gave His only-begotten Son as a ransom for many. (Philippians 3:5-12). This School of love is the real presence of Christ in the world, nourished by the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and resurrected each time by the Forgiveness of Sins in reconciliation. The School of Love is more than a mindset that thinks about Jesus when I attend church on Sunday or when I read Sacred Scriptures; it is a way for me to be present to an invisible God, one that makes no sense without Faith that comes from God.

Scripture says for me to not judge those in the Church and let God judge those outside of it, even though the context is the distasteful topic of how to deal with incest in the infant Church. The following is generated by Google AI on my computer when I put in “St. Paul do not judge others”.

“The USCCB references St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 5:12, where he instructs the Church to judge those within the community, not outsiders. This is to hold fellow believers accountable and remove grave sin from the Church, acting from a motive of restoration rather than condemnation. This practice, supported by the USCCB, contrasts with the general call to avoid judging others and instead focuses on fostering a righteous community and protecting its spiritual health. 

“Context of St. Paul’s Teaching on Judgment

• Judging Within the Church: In 1 Corinthians 5:12, Paul writes, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not your job to judge those who are inside the church?”. This indicates a call for self-governance within the Christian community. 
• Motivation for Judgment: The judgment mentioned is not about condemning individuals but about addressing grave sin to uphold the purity and integrity of the church, as found in the context of 1 Corinthians 5. 
• Restoration vs. Condemnation: Paul’s instruction is to judge with the view to restoration, guiding the person back to righteousness, not to embarrass or condemn them. 

The Broader Teaching from the USCCB

• Spiritual Works of Mercy: The USCCB teaches the Spiritual Works of Mercy, which include guiding sinners towards the path of salvation and correcting those who err, emphasizing guidance over judgment. 
• Distinction from “Worldly” Judgment: The standard for judgment within the church should be higher than that of the world. It is about holding believers to Christ’s higher righteous standards. 
• Accountability within the Body: By holding each other accountable, Christians in the church are fulfilling a role of righteous governance, which involves discernment and action regarding the behavior of those who are part of the community of faith. ” (Google AI)

So, how do all those Churches out there that hold Jesus meet their requirements get together as ONE? They can’t. I can pray with others, regardless of their faith or background. What I can’t do is to water down my traditions and heritage, won at a terrible price by Christ on the cross and sanctified by the martyrdom of blood and the martyrdom of ordinary living by the Faithful. Being ONE does not mean that I have to give up anything to make a single religion. Other denominations chose to withdraw from the corpus of dogma as it had been taught unbroken throughout all those centuries. My prayers are that we all be one on earth and later on in Heaven to the degree in which we try to convert ourselves daily to Christ (conversio morae) and to become more like Jesus and abandon our imperfections and sins. (capacitas dei)

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