Many people point to the troubles in the Anglican world as a sign of the inherent weakness of its theological underpinnings, or, even worse, as a sign that it is not a true branch of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. How have things gotten to where they are today in a mere 40 or so years? I have also heard people subject the Roman Church to the same criticism. After Vatican II, the convents and monasteries emptied; a great many priests dropped out of the priesthood; and proponents of controversial teachings were emboldened. Apparently this cataclysmic change hit Paul VI pretty hard. One man (a priest), after pointing this out to me, suggested that this sudden collapse indicated that there was just a "thin veneer" of order and piety in the Roman communion, and that underneath it was all rotten and messed up (same criticism about Anglicanism).
But really these two examples don't prove or disprove anything with regard to the integrity of an institution like the Anglican Communion or the Roman Catholic Church. All it proves is that it is much easier to instantly destroy something than to carefully build something up over many centuries. Chartes Cathedral could be destroyed instantly by some explosive device with the flip of a switch, but that doesn't mean that its foundations are lacking, or that it has no integrity. The same goes for a marriage, family, friendship, country, etc.; they all can be instantly destroyed by one reckless act as well.
Sin and rebellion against God is ultimately mindlessness and laziness. Even more, it is self-deception. We think that by destroying something in a moment of iconoclastic zeal that we are doing something good; we presume to have an Olympian view of life, and so we will "know" how our actions will turn out, and the "renewal" that they will bring. But when they do bring about what we have expected, only something horribly worse than ever, we not only have to fear the Frankenstein we have created, but we also must lament the Rome that we have lost by burning it to the ground.
