How To Be A Christian In A Church Full of Sinners

I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do – if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge player or the man with squeaky boots is a miser and an extortioner – then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question ‘If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?’ You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won’t come into his head.--C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter 2

John Allen has addressed the latest rumor and scandal out of Rome.  Excerpts:

...I've received numerous requests to comment on the sensational story in an Italian newspaper Thursday suggesting the existence of a shadowy "gay lobby" in the Vatican, linking it to the prospect of blackmail and suggesting that such dark forces may have factored into Benedict XVI's decision to resign.

For what it's worth, I'll lay out my initial reaction here...

In terms of the story's specifics, I don't know whether it's accurate that a commission of three cardinals created by Benedict XVI to investigate the Vatican leaks affair, composed of Cardinals Julian Herranz Casado, Jozef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi, actually considered possible networks inside the Vatican based on sexual preference, but frankly, it would be a little surprising if they hadn't.

Here's why. In 2007, Msgr. Thomas Stenico in the Congregation for Clergy was suspended after being caught on hidden camera making contact with a young man posing as a potential "date" in gay-oriented chat rooms, then taking him back to his Vatican apartment. In 2010, a "Gentlemen of the Pope" named Angelo Balducci was caught in a wiretap trying to arrange sexual hookups through a Nigerian member of a Vatican choir. Both episodes were highly public and caused massive embarrassment.

In that context, it would seem odd if the cardinals didn't at least consider the possibility that somebody with a big secret to hide might be vulnerable to pressure to leak documents or spill the beans in other ways...

In the comments, "CAELewis" shares a common complaint:

It is so (expletive) difficult to focus on the good that the global Church does when the "leadership" is embroiled in all the evil and corruption that is constantly reported. It's hard to remain a proud, faithful, involved member in this institution when its leadership doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to a picture of a Christian based on the Gospel. Apostolic succession or not, can this really be Jesus' church?

Which prompted me to add my two cents.

Yes, since it's the Church of he who came for sinners, not for the righteous; for the sick, not for the well. We keep on going out to the nations to draw in the rest of the sinners of the world to join us--of course there will be scandal. Of course there will be trouble. It's a Church-full of sinners on the long, slow road to Calvary to die and be raised again.

What do we do? Walk the road to Calvary, fasting and praying, doing penance for our sins and the sins of others. We pour ourselves out to God and receive him in return, then, deified and sanctified, strengthened beyond our own finitude into everlasting grace and strength, we can be God's face in the word, God's hands, God's feet, doing works of mercy, mediating divine life and love into the cosmos at large. We can raise up our neighbors, our brothers, our enemies, our friends, into communion with the life and love of God.

See Father Barron's The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path; Dorothy Day's retreat master Father John Hugo's writings in Weapons of the Spirit; Ralph Martin's synthesis of the teachings of several doctors of the Church in The Fulfillment of All Desire; Father Michael Gaitley, MIC's The One Thing Is Three: How the Most Holy Trinity Explains Everything; Pope Benedict XVI's What It Means to Be a Christian: Three Sermons; and Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's The Three Conversions in the Spiritual Life to see the road to be walked laid out in clarity.

Looking at my list, I see I've neglected to include a few key books--see below for the rest.