The Church Bends But Doesn’t Break

I was 21 years old and having a religious existential crisis.

I’d become convinced of the evil of abortion and dedicated myself to the pro-life movement. But I had a problem: I was a United Methodist, and the United Methodist Church was “pro-choice.” Sure, it couched its support of abortion in Christian language, but ultimately this church I belonged to believed it was moral to kill unborn children in the womb. I knew I had to leave this church and find another.

But which one? Maybe the Southern Baptists? Or the Evangelical Free Church? Or perhaps a nondenominational church that was strongly pro-life.

But then I realized something that sent a shiver down my spine: what if the new church I joined eventually caved on the issue of abortion, like the United Methodists did in the 1970s? Would I just have to keep church-hopping? Constantly re-evaluating our denominational attachment didn’t seem the path that Christ wanted us to follow.

So I asked my roommate, a devout Catholic, “How do you know that the Catholic Church won’t one day accept abortion?” He stared back at me as if that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. He simply responded, “It just won’t.” His confidence took me aback, and in fact that simple answer ended up leading me on a path to reception into the Catholic Church about a year later.

Essentially, I joined a church that I knew wouldn’t break. Sure, it might have scandals; it might have corruption; it might have low points in its history—in other words, it might bend, but it wouldn’t break. And almost 35 years later, I’m still in the church that hasn’t—and won’t—break: the Catholic Church.

Of course, over these years I’ve seen the Church bend quite a bit. Boy, has it bent. Back in the seemingly halcyon days of the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Americans every year were converting to Catholicism and our pope dominated the world stage. But since then we Catholics have endured scandal after scandal, even (especially?) at the highest levels of the hierarchy. And we shouldn’t discount in any way the terribleness of these scandals and failures: sex abuse, corruption, insipid liturgies, poor catechesis, doctrinal confusion from the hierarchy—which have all led to the loss of souls.

Yet, we also shouldn’t fail to appreciate how significant it is that the Church, while bending, hasn’t broken.

Take, for example, the push to ordain women to the priesthood. Behind this ecclesial movement is one of the most powerful cultural movements in history: feminism. A cultural tsunami since the 1960s, feminism wrecks everything in its path.

Except the Catholic Church. While the Church of England and countless other denominations have caved to the immense pressure to ordain women and appoint them to spiritual leadership, the Church has refused to comply. Yes, many high-ranking prelates have supported women’s ordination and advocated for it in the Vatican, even publicly at Vatican synods. I remember once a friend bet me that the Church would ordain women as deacons within a year. That was back in 2018; I won that bet. Even if it seemed at times the Church would give in, it never yielded. The Church has bent—it has swayed in the tsunami’s torrents—but has not been broken; it has not fallen.

To my mind, there’s only one explanation for this incredible feat: divine protection. What else could explain how an institution run by clearly flawed men could withstand the pressures of this world—as well as pressure from within—to stand firm and follow Christ’s reservation of the priesthood to men?

Living in the midst of a crisis, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. All around us we see trees that are rotting; yet if we could see the view from above, we could see we’re still in a beautiful forest, one that has lasted for two thousand years and will continue to exist until the Lord returns. Yes, we should work to restore the trees around us, but always with the understanding that the Lord is protecting the forest even when our area might have problems. We can’t ever forget that.

When my Catholic roommate stated with full confidence that the Catholic Church “just won’t” one day support abortion (or women priests or gay marriage or whatever the world is throwing at us at the moment), I was both annoyed and impressed. I was annoyed that he could be so sure—even cocky—about his church when I knew mine had already surrendered to the culture, but I was also impressed that there existed a church that could inspire such confidence. I wanted that confidence, and by the grace of God, I now have it.

We must continue to struggle against the forces both inside and outside the Church that work to weaken it. But we do so with full certainty that while we might see the Church bend—even bend significantly—it will not break. Not because of our work, but because the Lord has promised to protect it always, until He comes again.