To be sure, this is not a writeup or a review about the movie (which I personally thought was splendid, by the way). Surely, somebody's going to write a book on that novel/movie to debunk all the myths found within it about the (Un)Holy Catholic Church. For what it's worth, I have more to talk about the Church than I have to talk about the movie itself.

After just over ten years of serving a community that calls itself "Christian", "Church", "Body of Christ", "People of God", among many other titles it gives to itself, I find the real personification of the above statue to be a most adequate caricature of the Church.

It is strange how God brings into His fold all kinds of people, from those desiring to be holy to those who are rather content with pure evil. Of the latter, psychologists may call them the emotionally damaged or the psychologically disturbed, but the fact is, they love evil. Or at least, they seem to love being evil. And yes, they're found among God's fold; some even hold prominent positions among His fold.

Someone has recently told me, just after much less than a year of serving in a ministry environment, that he was totally disillusioned by the dynamics of ministry. He had every reason to be. He had higher expectations of people serving in ministry - and rightly so. But people in ministry had failed his expectations.

For centuries, the Church has taught about itself as being at once sinful and holy, at once human and divine. Holy Mother Church has understood, through centuries of her existence, that just as not everyone who is outside of the visible Church is necessarily damned, not everyone who is visibly within the Church is necessarily saved.

St Augustine wisely remarks in his homily: "How many sheep there are without, how many wolves within!"

Homilies on John, 45, 12

This picture of the statue precisely makes the theological statement that within the Church are to be found angels and demons. But lest we be quick to judge by trying to separate the angels from the demons, intentionally damning the latter, let us remember that in the one body can be found both the faces.

As I ponder on this issue, especially in the face of people to whom I very quickly attribute evil, I've often wondered if I was an angel or a demon. I have now realised... I am both.

If you aspire towards ministry, priesthood, or the religious life, thinking that it would mark the end of your confrontations with worldly evils, you couldn't be more wrong. Very often, that of the world which you try to escape can be found in the Church tenfold in magnitude. And worst of all, it forces you to be confronted by the other side of your face - the demon.

Welcome into the Body of Christ.