180 but also the reality of the way in which people utilize these gifts. Through that door sin enters the Church. For this reason, we speak about the “holy Church of sinners”. The Church is not a community of the pure. She continuously purifi es sinners of their sins and she is the instrument of Redemption. In this dimension, the Church is semper reformanda. 3. Speaking in the third sense of “the Church” we mean the hierarchy. (J. Maritain calls them the “personnel of the Church”). We say: “The Church in Poland took such and such a stand,” and we also say: “These are the rules of the Church.” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “The Church shall not be defi ned on the basis of her offi cials and structure, but on her service for God: as a community of the table around the Risen Christ. People united by participation in the Eucharist create a community that crosses over the boundaries of death.” In another place, he wrote: “The history of the Church is not the history of an institution; it is the unfathomable acts of the saints.” 4. One should not confuse these dimensions nor separate them. One must differentiate them properly, when inquiring about the “service for the Church”, contained in this conference’s title. Narrowing the service for the Church exclusively to the fi rst dimension, while forgetting others, brings about the threat of disembodiment, individualism, subjectivism, endangering of the community, and sectarianism. The second dimension, taken separately from the others, can transform the service for the Church into a “horizontal” society. Building effective Church institutions does not necessarily mean building the Church. For the same reason, the goal of our Congregation is not its growth, just like its proper functioning is not the Congregation’s goal, but the realization of everything that emerges from the fi rst meaning of the term “Church.” Bringing the third dimension to the fi rst plan, may effect, that the measure of the quality of “serving the Church” will be a reaction to the response of the hierarchy. It is easy then to fall into (ecclesial) opportunism, let alone the temptation of careerism. If it falls short of the bishop’s approval, it is easy then to become depressed or to lose a sense of that kind of service. And then, what is to be done with the failed instruments (ministers), often so typical of this world? Thus, it is imperative to differentiate what is constant from what is prone to change, under the infl uence of historical, cultural, political or other circumstances, and also thanks to the constant deepening self-awareness of the Church, through the actions of the Holy Spirit.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI2Mw==