Nigeria, July 2 -- A quiet but critical confusion is emerging among members of the Christi fideles - the lay faithful of the Catholic Church - in recent decades. Increasingly, the Church is being understood not as the living Mystical Body of Christ, but as a merely human institution: a kind of global organization managed by policies, shaped by politics, and evaluated by worldly standards of success. While such a view may arise from understandable frustrations - scandals, ecclesial disputes, and structural inertia - it ultimately reduces the Church to something less than what she truly is: a divine mystery, a communion of grace, and a sacrament of salvation.

This tendency to view the Church through institutional optics reflects a theologi...