Monday, July 20, 2009

She'll talk about 20 or 30 different people, many of whom I know only from her description of them. Of these people, she'll zero in on one and rant for ten or fifteen minutes. Invariably the person has been divorced and remarried at least once. There may be charges of embezzlement. This was the case with the former parish priest. In fact, that is the punch-line to all these intense scrutinies: the guilty party is a Catholic who goes to church every Sunday.

And she prefaces these diatribes with, "Now I know you belong to the Catholic religion but what gets me about Catholics ..." In this case, her objection to Catholicism was the practice of confessing sin. Yes, to a priest, but then in general.

"If you know it's wrong, don't do it in the first place!"

I don't think the sacrament of penance encourages sin any more than those who lean on 1 John 1:9.

I was on the verge of reminding her of the Lord's Prayer which she probably knows:

"And forgive us our trespasses, ..."

But instead I just became keenly aware that Christianity presumes guilt and, therefore, doesn't have anything to say to people who live right.

2 comments:

Matt said...

We run in very different crowds. I wish I met people with those dispositions. Is she really saying we should acknowledge our sins?

But instead I just became keenly aware that Christianity presumes guilt and, therefore, doesn't have anything to say to people who live right.

Well now wait a second. Yes it does...the Eucharist? Growth in holiness? The Spiritual and Corporeal Works of Mercy? HEAVEN? The Beatitudes? etc...

I think there's more than you first realized. After all, living right gets you everything you should be desirous of.

Moonshadow said...

Is she really saying we should acknowledge our sins?

She's saying that forgiveness and mercy make it too easy to live carelessly. Christianity is an enabler of bad behavior. Immorality is expected.

Growth in holiness?

If one lives in constant comparison to others then it's pretty easy to be satisfied with where one is.

I would love to know what I could have said differently. Although I have no doubt that her life drips with God's grace ... she may have only an inkling of it.