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Imagine you are a novelist, and you write a very long novel, and in it, toward the end, appears a character who is you. You have written yourself into the world of the novel so that you might testify to the other characters of that which you know to be true. You love these characters, for you yourself are love, and from that love which you yourself are have you created the fabric of the reality in which these characters came to fruition. And you could reveal this to them if you so wish, and in some instances you do, for, as the writer of the novel (as well as a character within the novel), you have power over the properties by which the world of the novel operates. But you would rather, for their own sake, that these characters believe you, without proof, for then they become like children transformed by faith, who, though they must die, as a consequence of events that occurred near the novel’s beginning (and that you did not force to happen, though you wrote them) can find again the paradise that was lost to them then.

This scenario bears a very faint and insufficient resemblance to the relationship that God has with us, by way of the incarnation.

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The doctrine of the hypostatic union is as follows: God the Son (Jesus Christ) is, during his mortal life, at once fully human and fully divine. In other words, neither aspect of his personhood is more relevant or significant than the other. Both are equally present in him, at all times. Kierkegaard describes this condition as an essential paradox of the faith. There are, in the faith, many such paradoxes and mysteries, the inaccessibility of which a Christian must be reconciled to, and prepared to accept.

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That God does this not by divesting himself of his divine nature, but by uniting it with a human one, in the person of Jesus, is what Christians refer to as the hypostatic union.

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This is, to a Christian, a most sublime and beautiful event. For it means that God, instead of remaining distant from his creation, chooses to make himself known to it, by participating in it, as one of its creatures.

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To speak of the Son “entering history,” as I have here, is to describe the incarnation.

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The Son enters history at a specific date (two millennia ago) in a specific place (Bethlehem of Judea) of a specific woman (Mary of Nazareth). But the mere fact that he would enter history — that he was always going to enter history — reminds us that the Church is, in essence, preexistent, supernatural, both of time and out of time.

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Unless, of course, we conceive of the Church as ageless, and manifesting in time only when it is written that such an event will occur. Which is what Christians believe. Here is a prayer called the Gloria Patri:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen.

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The relative length of moments always changes. The age of the Church itself, for example, is but a blip in the age of the universe. To put it in perspective: if we scaled the age of the universe to one year (rather than its actual 13.8 billion years) the Church would be fewer than four seconds old.

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I say “at this moment,” although in the life of the Church that could mean a span of fifty years.

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I do not think it an overstatement to say that, at this moment, the ship has taken on water and is sinking.

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How can the Church be defended when those who would say they are her own are putting her, or her name, in an indefensible position?

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That I have reason to question whether she can be called seaworthy is disgraceful, and a shame.

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She doesn’t even need to be perfectly sound, this ship. She need only be seaworthy.

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This is true, of course. But if the lion is the cargo that has been entrusted to the ship that is the Church, then the Church must be sound of hull, so that the cargo can reach the shore where it is headed.

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I’m reminded of a quote by Saint Augustine. “The truth is like a lion,” he says, “you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”

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That this clergy is, by and large, male is a separate though related fact that is also daunting for any among the Church’s faithful who would defend her.

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Of course the clergy, at least in the Catholic Church, have so damaged their reputation, through the misdeeds of so many among them, that to know how to even begin to talk about them isn’t clear to me.

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The presence of a clergy, or a priestly caste, has always been related to the fact that not every person who belongs to any given religion will have the aptitude, resources, or inclination to dedicate themselves to the interpretation of scripture. And so we also have the laity.

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Not that everyone needs to read the Bible in its entirety. That would take a while, haha. If you spend some time with it though, you begin to get a feel for it.

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I’m reminded of something Saint Paul writes, in his second epistle to the Corinthians: “The letter killeth,” he says, “but the spirit giveth life.” Which can mean, I think, that a person who does not look for the spirit with which something is written, or said, but instead forces the words to account for themselves, in any context they appear, will kill the meaning of those words, by severity and exactitude.