A Messy Church

My mom is paying me a visit soon. And, it'll be time to return the book she loaned me a while back. So, I'm taking an opportunity to leaf through the pages once again for some of the passages I've really enjoyed.

Here's one.

The Church's DNA is all over the place.

Being Catholic is a way of looking at the world. It isn't simply church. It's music and art and architecture and literature and philosophy. It's a language all its own. Good God, it's even food and drink.

It's also community. I go to Mass to be with people. I never tire of watching them go to the altar to receive the Eucharist.

It's a messy church. Filled with faults because it's filled with people. It's a church that often puts barbed wire around its own charisms. But, as James Joyce said, being Catholic means "Here comes everybody!"

I love that.

- R. Timothy Unsworth,
columnist and author
Chicago, Illinois.

Me, too.