Lesson from St. Thomas

A commenter from The Curt Jester’s blog also had this observation that I found very appropriate for St. Thomas’ feast day today!
The Curt Jester: Dissent from reason

Maybe I’m mistaken, but doesn’t the story about Saint Thomas the Apostle teach us something about “dissent?” When Christ first appeared to the Apostles after the Resurrection, where was Thomas, and why wasn’t he with the others? Who knows? But we do know the immediate result — when they told him what they had seen, he scoffed at the possibility; when faced with the testimony of ten other Apostles, how did he answer them? “I do not believe you!” Of course, he qualified that statement with a great big “unless…” but imagine it! — an Apostle denying the testimony of an Apostle! If that isn’t “dissent”…
When, at last, Thomas encountered Christ in the midst of the Apostles, in the heart of the Church, and saw in Christ the Divinity of God, he also saw in the Church, the Divinity of Christ. “Believe,” he was told, and obediently, he believed to his last breath.
In other words, “dissent” itself kept an apostle apart from the Church, the Church did not keep a dissenter from being an apostle.