Mark Shea: "Faith and Religion"

In "Faith and Religion," Mark dismantles the premise that faith should abandon (organized) religion. In a newsgroup this morning, someone explained that the personal faith crowd (my own tag, to simplify) should realize that there are too many references to Christ and his Bride, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, to ignore the necessity of the Church on earth. The same crowd should also be astute enough to observe that the unchurched are easy pickings in this crooked and highly anti-Christian generation. The world rushes like a river away from God and we're called to be witnesses to the good news that the world doesn't have to do that. Pebbles thrown into that river wouldn't cause a ripple. You'd have better luck with a rock -- a big one. Christ gave us a huge rock, a kepha -- the Aramaic name (transliterated as Cephas in most Bibles) that Christ gave Simon Peter. And on this kepha did Christ build a Church, the same Church that St. Paul refers to as the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim 3:15). Detach your faith from the foundation? That would be spiritual suicide.