Driving through Iowa, and the corn is doing well. Storm fronts are moving through, bringing alternating patches of sunshine and torrential rain. Is it the sun or the rain that makes the corn grow? Or perhaps the rich Iowa soil?
The answer is "all of it," of course, sun, rain, soil each contributing in their own way, together making corn that is a living thing and nothing like any of them.
Today is the feast of Peter and Paul, upon whose multiple witnesses the Church was built. They are so different from each other. Peter, who never understood while Jesus was alive, who denied him, and yet whose faith finally solidified so as to become the rock upon which all our faith is built. Paul, always so faith-filled, even when he was persecuting Christians, whose explanations of the faith were so clear that they are still essential and unassailable.
The Church needs them both to be what it is. In the same way, it needs all of us, in all our variety to be all that the Church needs to be.