Is The Church a Political Animal? (from Nisi Dominus)

   You’re going to find politics wherever people gather, or so someone once told me when I had objected to using the secular political terms “liberal” and “conservative” to describe different factions within the Church.  And he was right, if by “politics” we mean the small-p wrangling that unavoidably accompanies any human enterprise requiring two or more people.  But that is a very different thing from Politics, of the partisan variety.  The Church is not a political party, and does not work like a political party.

The Synod on the Family, 2014

     That may seem an obvious point to you, but it’s not at all obvious to very many people.  It’s a distinction lost on most people outside of the Church for instance, for many of whom politics has taken the place of religion, and so has become the lens through which they interpret everything. Many such people have come to dominate the secular media in the developed world, with the result that the mass media projects the secular political model onto the Church, with “bad guys” called conservatives working to thwart the “good guys”, the liberals (sometimes referred to as progressives), who are fighting to bring about a kinder, better future.  This is the only image of the inner-workings of the Church most people see, including most ordinary Catholics . . .

(Please read the entire post HERE at Nisi Dominus)