The Church–The Mystical Body of Christ: Friend or Enemy? On Scandals in the Church

This article deals with the problem of scandals in the Church; however, it does not treat about individual scandals in the Church, no matter how appalling they may be, but about the scandal of scandals: the Church herself is holy but also sinful at the same time. This is not a new topic in ecclesiology, yet in recent studies on this paradox, or scandal of the Church, there are divergent points of view. Charles Journet, André de Bovis, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Gustave Martelet, and Hans Küng have studied the problem. Despite the divergences, there is a general agreement on several points. This article will show that two points of them are the most important: first, sin cannot be attributed to the Church as such. That is, the subject who sins is not the whole Church but a person or a group of persons. Secondly, the Church, in its constitutive and formal principles, is holy despite the sinfulness of her members. On the institutional level, the Church’s response to sin is through reforms, through which the Church returns to her initial task: holiness. On a personal level, it is helpful to realize that, in spite of the human mistakes of the Church’s members, she is more than a community made of sinners; she is a presence of God, grace, forgiveness, and charity.