Thoughts Prompted by an Email
A friend and fellow blogger mentioned in an email yesterday that he's beginning to think what truly divides the Church today isn't abortion or contraception or the liturgy but between those who think salvation is easy and those who believe it is a mighty struggle even for the very best.
That's certainly possible. But I wonder if the Eastern church might have a healthier attitude on matters of salvation by virtue of having been somewhat insulated from the Reformation wars. My extremely limited view is that they don't go to the extreme of salvation as easy or hard, and consequently their liturgy seems neither too distant nor too familiar.
The divide in the Church could also be due to our problem with authority, in our construing freedom with the right to do whatever we want, which Pope Benedict spoke beautifully of recently. Perhaps it also reflects a dvision between those who want a system, who appreciate the coherence of Aquinas, and those who basically eschew system - more like Balthasar. Without a system, the whole thing tends to fall apart intellectually but with a system you run into hard cases that the modern mind simply can't grasp. Reminds me of an interesting comment made on another blog with respect to limbo: "The perils of scholasticism: it makes God a system before He's a lover."
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