As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think we are all trying to figure out what it means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.
With reference to other religions, the Church sees a great difference between them and herself. The other religions are expressions of the human soul seeking God, with some beautiful spiritual insights, but also not without errors. Christianity is rather God seeking humanity.
At the parish level, where the church lives and moves and breathes, that's where we need to be engaging our people much more in understanding the Word of God... the Word of God reflected in the traditional teaching of the church, the Word of God reflected in the scriptures, is as much a part of their lives as anything else.
The Church's teaching isn't an official statement, but the cumulative understanding of all the people who have loved and experienced Jesus through time.
About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing.
The Church is like a great tree whose roots must be energetically anchored in the earth while its leaves are serenely exposed to the bright sunlight. In this way, she sums up a whole gamut of beats in a single living and all-embracing act, each one of which corresponds to a particular degree or a possible form of spiritualisation.
Those who embrace belief in Christ Jesus are bound together in Him, in a real yet incomplete way, in his Body, the Church. Faith is never a solitary activity, nor can it be simply private. Faith in Christ always draws us into a community and has a public dimension.
There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.
I'm not a big fan of religion for that reason. But I am a true believer in God, and I have great faith, and I think that a spiritual connection with something is a really important part of our experience. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the church.
The Church's note must be a supernatural note which distinguishes incarnation from immanence, redemption from evolution, the Kingdom of God from mere spiritual process.