Gore: the perilous use of ecclesiastical authority

Monday, January 17, 2011
    Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356
    Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932
Meditation:
    Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
    —1 Corinthians 11:27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Now what ought to have been the attitude of thoughtful Christians towards ecclesiastical authority, resulting from our Lord’s whole attitude towards it? I think that the Catholic Church ought to have maintained and used ecclesiastical and sacerdotal authority, but that its maintenance and its use ought to have been accompanied with a continual fear. Because they had before them this fact, that however divinely authoritative, however securely resting on a basis of legitimate and genuine inspiration, yet the ecclesiastical authority of the Old Covenant, by no process of sudden revolution, but simply by a process of gradual development, was capable of becoming something so utterly alien in spirit from what it was intended to be, that when the Christ came, to prepare for whom and to welcome whom was the one reason for which it existed, it did in fact reject Him utterly.
    ... Charles Gore (1853-1932)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, correct Your church as you correct Your children. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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