Editor's personal note:
I would like to point our readers to an article by of Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington in the United States of America, to give a hint of the article, this is how it ends:
12 / 01 | January / 2008
"Complementary images but one reality – But you may wonder how can the Church be both Bride of Christ and Body of Christ? And yet this is not only possible but it is essential to understanding the Church as a marital union of Christ and His Bride. The scriptural teaching about marriage is that the two spouses become one. And thus it is that the Church is at one and the same time the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ. Christ says of Bride and Groom, They are no longer two, they are one (Matt 19:6). And St. Paul directly links this mystery to the Church and Christ: Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church(Eph 5:28-32).
In terms of her human members the Church is imperfect and sinful. But she is no less loved by Christ. In her Bridegroom and the Divine Head of the Church, the Church is perfect. We ought to love her personally and intensely. She is not an institution, not an “it” she is Bride, She is Mother, The Church is the Body of Christ.
As a priest, I am not a bachelor. I have a bride, the Church. She is a beautiful (and demanding) bride. Religious Sisters are not single either. One of the beautiful images of women religious is that they are Brides of Christ. In this video from the Nun’s Story, the postulants are invested in their habits. In the traditional ceremony the women come in dressed in bridal gowns of the world and and then depart to be invested in the bridal gowns of their religious habits. They are brides of Christ, imaging the the Church as Bride and mother. "
http://blog.adw.org/2010/01/the-problem-of-a-depersonalized-church/
If God's body is that unsatisfactory, that those married to it need another spouse, then perhaps it is not so divine as one may desire. I personally believe myself called to marriage, not the priesthood etc. Therefore, I shall then have a spouse who is human, but would be no less married than the priest who marries Mother Church!
