Trust in the Church

by Presbyter Joshua Frigerio

After his transfer to a new parish, a certain priest was graciously received by his new flock. Following his first Sunday Liturgy, he formally introduced himself to the parish, adding, “Some of you may like me and some probably don’t. But rest assured: Sooner or later, I will certainly disappoint each and every one of you.”

The Church, being the Body of Christ, is divine and lacks nothing. But in another sense, because the Church is also human, it is often sorely lacking. Those who are entrusted with its earthly stewardship will inevitably and regularly disappoint and scandalize. It doesn’t take much study of Church history, or indeed of current events, to know this to be the case. Since Saint Paul wrote his letters to Timothy, we’ve tried to weed out wayward clergymen. Many ancient canons and modern guidelines for ordination have that as their goal.

We know representatives of the Church will fail us from time to time despite our precautionary measures. But what effect does it have on us personally? Can we inoculate ourselves such that when they do, our faith will not be mortally wounded? And moreover, if we do inoculate ourselves, how do we avoid becoming numb? Are some of us already so proficient at being disconnected from the Church that a scandal that should affect us deeply does not? Is there a spiritually healthy, moderate approach to this issue?

It’s easy to observe how our lack—or abundance—of trust can fail us at either end of the spectrum. Those overly susceptible to a personal faith crisis in the wake of some kind of Church infidelity are typically those for whom trust in the Church plays an exaggerated and immature role in even the most trivial aspect of their lives. Such persons might consult the holy canons before choosing a living-room paint color, and then perhaps show it to their nearest holy elder to make sure. There’s a story told on Mt. Athos of a man who traveled all the way from America to his spiritual father on the Holy Mountain simply to ask if he should quit smoking (uh, yes!). Not only are such people more disposed to despair of faith when pressed, but they also tend to take it in strange directions, like following the latest schismatic spinoff because, after all, that’s where the truly pure and holy people are. Forever seeking the perfect church makes it easier to overlook one’s own failures.

If we are not willing to take responsibility for our choices, then we’ll end up handing over our discernment process to anyone who offers to take it from us—and there is no shortage of people offering. Taken too far, the result is something more cult-like than Christ-like.

But this is a temptation for all of us, albeit in subtler ways. Even those in a healthy, balanced relationship with their clergy and the Church can be severely shaken when those individuals, whom they trusted with their souls, betray that trust, whether out of malice or weakness. A common response is to seek, at the very least, a new parish, if not to step back from the Church altogether for a time. This happens to clergy too, perhaps even more profoundly, as they have given so much of their lives and trust over to people whose decisions sometimes seem, at best, arbitrary. Sacrifices made deeply leave tender spots.

The temperament of the American Orthodox population, however, predisposes us more to the inverse problem. Having too little trust, or even being completely jaded to Church matters, is at least as serious a challenge. Many of us never even think to check with the Church or our clergy about anything we do, even large life decisions. We live parallel lives: one secular and one spiritual, with a nice, neat separation between them—a consequence of accepting the “two-storey universe” paradigm that Father Stephen Freeman writes about. Father Alexander Schmemann addressed this eloquently in the third part of his essay, “Problems of Orthodoxy in America”:

This unconscious capitulation to secularism makes us safe from scandal, because we cease to be invested enough, and vulnerable enough, to care. Realistic expectations are well and good—who among us hasn’t indulged in a bit of cynicism about Church administration? But when this is pushed to include all the pastoral guidance that the Church offers, we are left with the most foolish of all spiritual guides—ourselves. The Greek word scandalon refers to a stumbling block in our path. It’s certainly safer to stay off the path altogether rather than risk the openness and vulnerability of walking the path, lest that rock trip us up. But what do we give up by staying safe?

How do we become malleable enough to be changed by our participation in the Church, while also remaining immune enough to the inescapable disillusionment that will tempt us to despair and gossip in the face of scandal? Recalling that the Church is the Body of Christ, that is, a person, it stands to reason that Saint Paul’s identification of Christ’s relationship to His Church as marriage might serve as our guide.

The crowns of the wedding service remind us that a successful marriage requires martyrdom: an inhuman amount of vulnerability and sacrifice, even a kind of death to oneself, so as to live to the other. But this is not a naïve trust; it’s not simply submitting blindly for the sake of peace, which often brings calamity instead. It is a long string of fully conscious decisions to surrender one’s will for the sake of the union of the two in Christ, being well aware of the hazards involved, and being willing to endure them. Indeed, this is not a “bug” in marriage, it is a feature! It is often exactly the fallibility, the humanity, of our spouses, that teaches us to love, to forgive, to endure. Surely the Church is the same: it has nothing less than union with God as its goal for us, yet accomplishes it, not in spite of her imperfections, but exactly because of them.

As we have seen, first with Israel and now with the Church, God allows exile and tribulation to happen from time to time so that we might repeatedly repent and be cleansed for our return from wherever we have strayed. Likewise, in marriage, God allows us to experience our failures as opportunities to learn humility and repentance. In fact, many couples have found that it was precisely a serious breach in trust of some kind that forced them, through the long and arduous process of finding trust again, to finally learn the openness and vulnerability that they believed they had been practicing all along. A naïve picture of marriage as some kind of continual bliss must give way to the better reality that Christ has provided for us: that deep relationships are born of a steady diet of contrition and renewal. Similarly, if we expect all those entrusted with any kind of Church authority to only ever behave benignly, it will take a struggle to regain a healthy perspective. Grueling as it may be, it is the way we learn to be “as shrewd as snakes, yet as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) Few indeed are those people who learn this by any means other than experience.

The Rev. Joshua Fr iger io is the rector of Holy Ascension Orthodox Church in Albion, Michigan.