Catholicity isn't all it's cracked up to be

Apropos of whether the Episcopal Church will be separating itself from the Church Catholic if it doesn't comply with the Windsor Report suggestions:   Catholicity, in the sense of a doctrinally-uniform church, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Variation is life. The history of the creation shows that progress comes from continually generating lots and lots of variations; testing them in the rock polisher of reality (cf. Deut. 18.21-22); and reproducing the ones that seem to work.

In organisms, a “catholic” gene pool can be exceedingly vulnerable to environmental changes, such as the introduction of a disease pathogen. [1]   And if there's one thing we're confident of in this life, it's that environmental change is a constant.  It’s not unreasonable to wonder whether organizations might have the same vulnerability — even the Body of Christ.  Maybe catholicity of doctrine isn't such a good thing after all.

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NOTES

[1]    The Irish Potato Famine is a testament to the dangers of "catholicity":  In the mid-19th century, Ireland depended heavily on a single food crop, the potato.  Because the potato reproduces asexually through vegetative reproduction, the potato population in Ireland had had little or no genetic variation — and turned out to be vulnerable to the fungus Phytophthora infestans.  When the fungus struck the isle in the 1840s, the potato crops were ravaged for several years; deaths and emigrations resulted by the hundreds of thousands, and the ripple effects of the Great Famine are felt to this day.

Comments

[bls]

But doesn't "catholic" actually mean "universal"? With the implication that all people, everywhere, can accept Christian belief? That, in fact, it's not particular to some small group, but works, in various forms, for everybody?

Maybe I'm nuts, but that's what I always thought....

[john s.]

CHRISTIANS, JESUS CHRIST DID PAY THE FULL PRICE FOR OUR PITIFUL SIN. NOTHING MORE CAN BE ADDED, ACCORDING TO PAUL. NOW WE ARE PRONOUNCED CLEANSED, WE WHO REPENT, AND BELIEVE.
OUR LOVELY SAVIOR, WHOSE BLOOD SOAKED THE GROUND AROUND THE CROSS, BECAME OUR STAND IN, OUR SUBSTITUTE, FOR WE WERE THE SINNERS, WHO HAD A PRICE TO PAY. YET, HE WAS A LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER...IN OUR PLACE. NOW, WE ARE FREED FROM THE ETERNAL DEATH PENALTY, WHEN WE REPENT, BECAUSE OF GODS GREAT AND PERFECT LOVE FOR MANKIND.