Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug 24, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Bishop Emeritus Miguel Esteban Hesayne of Viedma, Argentina, said this week the Church is not a corporation and should not be seen as “just another competing power” in the country.
Bishop Hesayne pointed out the erroneous view that some have about the Church in Argentina, where many politicians claim to be Christians but live in way that “has little to do with the attitudes and beliefs of Jesus Christ.”
The bishop went on to note that those who criticize the Church are not always attacking Jesus, but rather a false idea of the faith that the Church can fall into when she is influenced by ideologies or the powerful. This deformation of the faith in Jesus and in the Church He founded is unfortunately not uncommon, he said.
This concept of the Church, he added, is a “deformation of the authentic concept of Jesus for His Church. And in a deformed concept of the Church one cannot in turn discover the authentic face of Jesus and His very personal salvific mission.” Bishop Hesayne called on the faithful to live the Magnificat and recognize themselves as “limited in their humanity” and to open themselves “to the kingdom of God in history.”