
Monday, May 1, 2023
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Saturday, April 28, 2018
The Sinners and the Self Righteous
- The salvation of sinners was not unobtainable as they feared
- The self-righteous were not as close to salvation as they presumed
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
You Are The Man! (2 Samuel 12:7)
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Friday, July 1, 2016
Don't Be Jerks About "Don't Be Jerks" Posts
Pope Francis recently called for Christians who did wrong to people with same sex attraction to seek forgiveness. This was widely misrepresented and some Catholics wound up thinking the Pope was saying we should apologize for Church teaching. But a good number of Catholic bloggers rose to defend the Pope from these attacks, especially when they came from big names in Catholic blogging who had been defending the Church for years..
Unfortunately,there are some blog posts that seem to push an attitude of “we’re all guilty” of doing wrong to these people, and I think that will end up alienating faithful Catholics.
The problem is, the fact that some people do wrong does not mean all people do wrong and we need to avoid indicting every person who believes sin is sin. Many people were justly angered by Supreme Court justices striking down the defense of marriage laws and legalizing same sex “marriage.” They’re also justly angry when they suffer injustice.
See, anger in itself is not a sin. The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia makes a good distinction:
Its ethical rating depends upon the quality of the vengeance and the quantity of the passion. When these are in conformity with the prescriptions of balanced reason, anger is not a sin. It is rather a praiseworthy thing and justifiable with a proper zeal. It becomes sinful when it is sought to wreak vengeance upon one who has not deserved it, or to a greater extent than it has been deserved, or in conflict with the dispositions of law, or from an improper motive.
The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church (Kindle Locations 32267-32270). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.
We can, with prudence and balanced zeal, be angry at injustice and want it resolved—and we do not sin in such cases. We sin when our anger makes us want revenge on the innocent or by demanding more than justice allows. So, with that balance in mind, it is wrong to assume that all Christians angry at sin or for suffering injustice for their beliefs must be guilty and think they need to seek forgiveness.
As I see it, Pope Francis is talking about Christians who have treated people with same sex attraction as less than fully human, when our task is to show God’s love to our fellow sinners, even though their sins are different than ours. I believe he refers to those who think our faith justifies driving these people away and insulting them—those who go overboard in their rhetoric and those who think that we must ostracize them on account of their sins. The Pope’s message since 2013 was one of showing mercy, which is not the same as permissiveness. Each individual will have to look to their own conscience and see if they stand indicted by the Pope’s words. But neither you nor I can look at their conscience for them. We can only look at our own conscience and see whether we have failed to show love and mercy.
That means we need to stop using rhetoric that accuses and assumes that everyone must be guilty. Instead of saying "Don't be like that guy!” (which assumes bad will on the part of “that guy” and those who have similar concerns), let’s say, "Let us be merciful and charitable because that is God's will for us."
Another point we need to be aware of. Just because people take offense at us because we believe homosexual acts are wrong, does not mean we’re guilty of wronging them. Sure, if someone overlays the rainbow flag with Hitler, that’s seeking to offend. But if a Christian says, “I’m sorry, but these acts are sins,” and the person gets angry, the Christian has done no wrong. Yes, we must be careful to witness Our Lord in our words and actions. But just because someone gets angry when we will not call evil “good,” that doesn't mean we are to blame for that anger.
We should avoid both the idea that everybody is to blame and the idea that nobody is to blame. The Pope’s words call each of us to honestly examine our conscience, and see if we have done right or wrong. But let’s not use rhetoric that sounds like we think everybody has done wrong on this topic.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Love and Justice Both: Losing Sight of the Big Picture
In dealing with the concepts of the love of God and the justice of God, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. It’s easy to get so caught up in focussing on one thing that one forgets that there are obligations to the other side of thing which God calls us to do. We are called, for example, to love those who hate us and to admonish the sinners.
For example, one of the things I notice when it comes to people being offended by the Church is that they tend to be too close to the issue to consider it objectively. It’s natural to feel threatened when someone is personally affected by an issue. But the problem is, when a person takes it too personally, they may lack the objectivity to listen to what needs to be said. It’s important to note that this is not limited to one faction or another. It’s not something that only happens to other people. Each one of us can feel attacked by something we need to hear and respond by refusing to listen. It’s common to hear things like, “God doesn’t care about your rules,” or “you need to stop being legalistic."
This becomes a problem when it comes to denying Church teaching because, as Catholics, we believe that the Church teaching has authority because Christ Himself gave the Church authority to teach, and so the denial of the Church is a denial of Christ. For example, if Jesus did tell Peter in Matthew 16:19 and the rest of the apostles in Matthew 18:18 that what they bound on Earth is bound in Heaven, then God does care about the rules of the Church.
Of course, God also cares about how we apply His rules. While we cannot set His commandments aside, it is possible to forget about the side of compassion and mercy required in teaching His commandments. The possibility of being so focussed on punishing the guilty and worrying about somebody “getting away with” things is dangerous. The possibility of a past mistake or sin repented of is not seen as relevant. If Bishop X once held a problematic position, he cannot ever be trusted again and whoever considers the possibility is not to be trusted either.
So it seems there is a problem with people confusing both what truth requires and what compassion requires. It seems like certain people think that God being loving and merciful cannot condemn the actions being done. From that error, it becomes easy to make one of two opposite false conclusions. Either the person...
- wrongly assumes that compassion and love means the Church cannot say things we do are wrong.
- wrongly assumes that compassion and love means the Church is failing to teach right and wrong.
That’s the danger of becoming so rigid or so attached to one’s sins that one loses sight of the big picture—that God is both loving and just. Ignoring one of these in favor of the other is going to give a person a distorted view of God and what we are called by Him to be. Losing sight of God’s justice means expecting God to just turn a blind eye to our sins. Losing sight of God’s love means viewing the sinner as an enemy to oppose instead of a person in need of salvation that we have to reach out to.
Both views need to be opposed. The person who does not want to change his or her ways, and thinks of Church teaching as “manmade rules” are creating a false image of God and risking their souls over a lie. The person who thinks of the sinner as “the enemy,” are claiming the role of judge that they are not allowed to have, risking becoming alienated from Christ and His Church. We need to realize that the role of the Church does not embrace either extreme. Rather, the Church loves the sinner, while rejecting the false ideas the sinner clings to. The role of God’s teaching is to lead us in living according to His will. Those who have not fallen into a particular sin are called to help their brethren who have and love them—even if the response we receive from them is hostile.
We are called to love and follow Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that means heeding the Church He established (Matthew 18:17). That also means serving in love in doing so. We can’t just point to the failures of the “other side.” We have to consider our own actions in relation to these two pitfalls.