{"id":4837,"date":"2010-08-30T05:52:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T05:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2010\/08\/the-church-does-not-exist-to-affirm-our-ideological-preferences.html"},"modified":"2010-08-30T05:52:19","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T05:52:19","slug":"the-church-does-not-exist-to-affirm-our-ideological-preferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/08\/the-church-does-not-exist-to-affirm-our-ideological-preferences.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Church does not exist to affirm our ideological preferences”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Sorry, but the Church does not exist to affirm us in our ideological preferences. It exists to teach us (among other things) and challenge us with the truth of the gospel. Our posture is to be one of docility to the voice of the Magisterium, not to be blogospheric popinjays who glance at the teaching, declare it nonsense, and return to our comfy ideological holes. We are not, as Catholics, to play the game of Simon Peter Says, in which the Faith is reduced to nothing but a few dogmas, while all the rest of the Church’s wisdom is to be reflexively spat out if it does not comport with our cramped tribal pieties. Only thus and not otherwise will our Catholic faith fulfill the truth Chesterton spoke when he said, ‘The Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.’ <\/p>\n

— Mark Shea, telling people what they don’t want to hear <\/div>\n
about the Church teaching on death penalty. <\/div>\n
Read the rest.<\/a><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Sorry, but the Church does not exist to affirm us in our ideological preferences. It exists to teach us (among other things) and challenge us with the truth of the gospel. Our posture is to be one of docility to the voice of the Magisterium, not to be blogospheric popinjays who glance at the teaching,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Church does not exist to affirm our ideological preferences" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/08\/the-church-does-not-exist-to-affirm-our-ideological-preferences.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The Church does not exist to affirm our ideological preferences" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Sorry, but the Church does not exist to affirm us in our ideological preferences. 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