Statements like "you'd better knock us out now cause you've awakened a sleeping giant" pump me up and remind me first of my mom explaining how the Church works to me but also of a few metaphors for the Catholic Church which are both frustrating as well as powerfully inspiring.
The Church is like a glacier. It moves oh....soooo......slowly.... in pretty much all of it's actions, decisions and rulings. Like a glacier though, the movement is constant and unchanging flattening anything in it's path. However I'll clarify for fear of being too simplistic. Has any nation survived as long or successfully as the Church? No. So it's more of an outlasting than a flattening.
The Church is also like the Ents from J. R. R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings". They take forever to decide what to do and yet when they are forced into action Saruman, the servant of the evil one, stands no chance at all. Notice that by the provocation of the Ents by the burning down of the forrest Saruman brings the Wrath of the Ents, who were frustratingly predisposed to inaction. When the Church, then, sees the burning of souls by servants of the evil one, have no fear, the Church will release the dams and the waters of the Holy Spirit will rush into the world. How this will manifest itself, we shall see in due time. It might take longer than we want, but that's the nature of the Church, and ultimately...it's not about us. This was obviously an intentional symbolic metaphor by the Catholic Tolkein.
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