Religion & Law

As I've suggested before, I think Newman most accurately capture the "messiness" of the Church that Michael discusses in his post, in this quote from Apologia pro Vita Sua.  It's a "large reformatory", a "training school", a "moral factory" -- none of which are tidy images of unity.  But, as Michael points out, the do represent miracles of unity, despite the messy, hard work that is going on inside of them, thanks to "beauty and the Majesty of a Superhuman Power."

Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide; -- it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the beauty and the Majesty of a Superhuman Power, -- into what may be called a large reformatory or training-school, not as if into a hospital or into a prison, not in order to be sent to bed, not to be buried alive, but (if I may change my metaphor) brought together as if into some moral factory, for the melting, refining, and molding, by an incessant, noisy process, of the raw material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purpose.