Belloc on The Church

For those who may despair over all the grievous flaws of the Church, take heart. Hilaire Belloc famously observed that the Church was... "an institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.".

Comments

[Michael]

The rough edges of Church history have always seemed to me to be evidences of her veracity. A slickly polished P.R. machine like the Scientologists and even the Mormons strike me as just too engineered to be true.

I hope its not disrespectful to say that only God could preserve an organization run like the Vatican for two millenia.

Apropos, you could say the same thing for the Jews as a people. Rich Mullins (the late Catholic-leaning Christian musician) once observed that you know the Jews are the chosen people, because when was the last time you saw a Hittite in New York City?

An excellent literary picture of this is, of course, Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory". The very last scene makes the entire book.