http://www.commentarypress.net/cpn-essays/English/AD719468-561A-4A26-BC06-EC8FC9A3FFDB.html
I do believe this illustrates Ray's concept of organization. He told me once that as religious groups grow and get bigger, they lose the true thinking of Christ and actions. I could tell how much Charles Davis and his book A Question of Conscience affected Ray and why he never joined a church or formed an organization. (bold is mine)
For many it seems a difficult thing to achieve a sense of personal relationship with God and Christ, one not dependent on some subsidiary relationship with an institution. Some almost seem to fear any one-on-one relationship with their Creator and his Son.
Whatever its apparent benefits, organizational membership can never equal the beauty and strengthening comfort that such personal relationship brings. Christ likens himself to a shepherd who does not look upon his sheep simply as an anonymous conglomerate group, but one who "calls his own sheep by name". (John 10:3)
Following the death of Christ, a process of institutionalization set in among his professed followers. The personal nature of one's relationship with God and his Son was adversely affected, diminished.
The book it is based on was written by Charles Davis who left the Catholic orgaization.
Charles Davis was for many years a priest and prominent theologian (and editor of the British journal The Clergy Review) in the largest of the institutions that developed, the Roman Catholic Church. Explaining the reason for his decision to withdraw from his lifelong affiliation with that institution in the late 1960s, he wrote in his book A Question of Conscience : I remain a Christian, but I have come to see that the Church as it exists and works at present is an obstacle in the lives of the committed Christians I know and admire. It is not the source of the values they cherish and promote. On the contrary, they live and work in constant tension and opposition to it. Many can remain Roman Catholics only because they live their Christian lives on the fringe of the institutional Church and largely ignore it. I respect their position. In the present confused period people will work out their Christian commitment in different ways. But their solution was not open to me; in my position I was too involved. I had to ask bluntly whether I still believed in the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. I found that the answer was no. [Underlining ours] (continues)
