The Basillica and the Mid-Life Melt-Down.
Ever watch the sad tragectory of a married family stricken with the disease of "affluenza" (thanks Marion Wright Edelman for coining that term).
You know the story. A young couple, madly deeply in love- can live anywhere and make do with anything just so long as they are together. It's them against the world in their undying love.
They forsake all others, women give up careers, they give up anything to be with the man they love for the ring and blessed union. They start in a one bedroom apartment with a tiny galley kitchen and don't care. They get married. They have kids. One, two , three, four, five, etc...Kids. Then all the worldly stress comes- bills, OMG. electric bills triple, they have to get a bigger house. They have to move to the schruburbs. The woman gets chunky. The guy gets annoyed. He deals with work stresses and comes home to "how are we going to pay for all these private school tuitions! " The woman wants to be envied by the other ladies who lunch. She needs a better wardrobe all of a sudden- Marshalls isn't good enough, now she needs Saks, because Mrs. Jones down the street just got something spectacular. They have to move to better bigger digs in Chevy Chase because Rockville is too pedestrian now. More stress, higher property taxes, and now your wife wants you to buy more life insurance because your kids want to go to more expensive colleges and you already had one heart scare. The guy thinks she can't wait till he kicks it- his paralegal starts looking really hot and lives in a one bedroom with a galley kitchen in a cool part of downtown. Oh No Mr. Bill.
This is where the mid-life fantasy can dangerously evolve into the mid-life divorce.
And this is what the church is sort of experiencing now historically. The church was born in a rustic stable in a manger-an animal feeding trough. You cannot get much more humble than that. Jesus could not have picked a lower place to not brag about being born in. No silver spoon, no Macy's carriage, no staff of wet-nurses. Just mom, dad, a bunch of cows, ox and ass and a bed that smelled of Ox saliva. Humility. The church was born in humility.
Over the years the congregations that met in catecombs got to surface and built cathedrals to rival and outdo Palaces and Chateaus as Clerics vied for power with secular Princes and Kings.
Eventually the status, the power and the buildings eclipsed their message in part and over-rode the people. There were some major historical corrections- like the Reformation. This is like a marriage getting to the marriage counselors office for a major talking to.
Basillicas became more important than the people in them. Policies and programs were directed toward maintaining properties and school buildings. And the people- they fended for themselves.
Now the church is dangerously tinkering on the edge of a divorce- and it needs a major date night out with it's people--alone without the buildings.
The Basillica is not the Body of Christ. It is a piece of rock and mortar and a lot of expensive paintings, stained glass and sculptures. It is a museum without the body of Christ present in it.
It is a fancy fortified Manger with no baby in it. in fact a lot of the churches in Italy are now actual State run Museums and you have to pay a museum fee to get inside them. Relics of a
marriage that lost the love and got swamped with the worldly cares of tuition bills and electric bills and vain old women who want to keep up with Mrs. Jones and things that drive love out of a marriage.
You can't kick the love out of a church and call it Church. You can call it anything but church. Like Yuppiville or Affluenzaland.
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