Hindering the Gospel

A local Roman Catholic Church continues a practice which I believe is reeking of arrogance and, I believe, presents a hiindrance to the presentation of the gospel. I struggled mightily about whether or not to actually name the church in this post and decided against it at this time. The problem is not restricted just to this one church and, to many, it will seem to be a trivial complaint. Let me assure you that it is not trivial.

The church has a large, active, and very faithful congregation. This is wonderful. The problem is that they have very limited parking and insist on filling up the parking lot of the public library across the street. They have been asked repeatedly, for years, to not do this, but continue. The argument that the spaces they are appropriating are public property for use by library patrons, those who are Catholic and those who are not, falls on deaf ears. The idea of the church as the servant, reaching out to the unsaved, falls to the wayside. The exhibited attitude is "Get out of my way!"

This current situation is brought into sharper focus when one more piece of information is added. The public library sits on the campus of a former Church of Christ which moved to another location in frustration when its members were unable to find a place to park in their own parking lot, which was private, not public property. Again, the exhibited attitude was "Get out of my way!"
Not the attitude of the servant.

"If others be partakers of [this] power over you, [are] not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ. … For though I be free from all [men], yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some." 1 Corinthians 9:12, 19-22.

A Father of the Catholic Church, Origen, said of Paul's statement that only someone mature in faith could do such a thing.

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For full disclosure purposes, I have no connection to either the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of Christ. I'm one of those mean old Baptists.