Why did Jesus want to build a Church (Mt 16: 13- 19)? Why have a Church at all? Why can't we just believe and live our life as well as we can on our own? Who needs the whole Church thing anyway-- look at all the trouble it has caused over the years. I'm not talking about the Church in the sense of a building, whether it is a wonderful cathedral or a small country structure. Nor was Jesus. Jesus was talking about a group of people, a body of believers. I suppose the answer is that there is something in human nature that wants, or needs, or is benefitted by, working in a group. We get support from others that way. We have someone to whom we can take our questions and concerns and problems. We have people who can teach us and model for us how to live as believers. Obviously those are all good things. Where the difficulties arise is in the question of "what" the group believes. What do you have to believe to be part of the group, and how detailed does that belief statement need to be? Must we agree on absolutely everything to be part of the same Church? I think this is the area where great discretion, and prayer, is required. It is easy to say that to be a Christian you need to believe in the basic statements of the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed. All Christian denominations agree on those things. At the other end of the spectrum, it is easy to say that we don't all have to believe that a particular saint worked a particular miracle on a particular day 1000 years ago, or that the piece of chain link in the Treasury at Cologne Cathedral is really part of the chains that bound St. Peter. There is a saying commonly attributed to St. Augustine (although probably actually said by a Lutheran theologan in the 17th century) that goes: "In the essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Maybe that captures what it means to be a Church. We need to agree on the essentials, and we need to draw the line on what constitutes an "essential" with charity. Draw it too broadly, and we spend a lot of time throwing people out because to be "in" you have to agree on a lot; draw it too narrowly, and nothing is essential, so there is nothing about which to be united. But if we draw the lines with charity, if that is our real motivation rather than politics or power or soomething else, maybe we'll come closer to getting it right. Maybe that's how we ought to think about the thorny questions of whether someone can disagree with the Church's position on abortion or gay marriage or "artificial" birth control and still be Catholic. After all, we should be looking for ways to keep people united in the Church, not divided. We should be trying to bring everyone to Christ, and to avoid putting up barriers as much as we can. Maybe the path of charity is the way to do that.