Catholic morality today is in a mess from clergy to laity. It has been in a mess with the “new moral theology” of the early to late 70’s epitomized by Fr. Charles Curran of Catholic University in Washington, DC and by others.
What would happen in an ordinary form parish if a priest preached this one Sunday, obviously being somewhat delicate with some of the delicate mortal sins there are, in describing them in a public way? I feel the priest who wrote this article becomes a bit too pornographic in his description of sodomy. Is that necessary today? How would EF Catholics react to such a graphic description????
The modesty issues highlighted here appear to me to be somewhat puritanical or Jansenistic. Catholics from the Mediterranean area, not to mention the Orthodox, as well as those of us in coastal regions where beachwear at the beach is quite common and dress for Mass a bit more relaxed, would snicker!
What say thou?
4 comments:
Father, you KNOW what would happen.
I once confessed to a priest that I feared that I had received Holy Communion and was not in a state of grace when I did so. He almost chuckled and cautioned me about being "too dogmatic".
A young priest once preached a homily at our local parish against artificial contraception and IVF and people got up and walked out of the Mass. Of course, calls and complaints came to the rectory and the chancery.
Another semi-retired priest I knew, who would fill in at Sunday Masses, preached passionately about how we should reverence the Blessed Sacrament and expressed his dismay about finding Hosts on the floor and pressed between pages of the Monthly Missalette. People in the parish groaned about what a "dinosaur" he was and, eventually, the parish stopped calling on him to fill in when their priests were out of town.
Make no mistake: The Novus Ordo Establishment has created a Catholic who wants his ears tickled and his sins blessed.
Leggings....
I wonder why, in writing about modesty in dress, hermit Fr. Nix makes mention only of the need for women to dress modestly?
Were a mother to "confess" to me that she had committed a mortal sin by allowing her daughter who was wearing leggings at the time to "prance" around Target, I would explain to her that her concern was entirely unwarranted and that wearing leggings or allowing one's daughter to wear leggings is not a mortal sin.
Fr. Nix posts about leggings: "What could be more revealing than something that shows every nook and cranny below your waist?" It seems to be that the good father has been, shall we say, noticing.
The list is mostly correct, although I would push back on the modesty one, not because being immodest in dress isn't sinful, but that I think it's not easy to draw a line that is reasonably objective.
As far as Friday penance, I would like a little more support for that proposition.
But what is crying out for clarity is the three necessary elements that make one culpable of a mortal sin. Too often, it is boiled down to the "matter" -- i.e., the act in itself. But this is not what the Church teaches; rather, we believe that two more elements are required: full consent and full knowledge. KNOWLEDGE...KNOWLEDGE...Please take note of that word!
Ergo: it is IMPOSSIBLE to be guilty of a mortal sin UNKNOWINGLY. So many people get balled up with dread at the thought that maybe they committed a mortal sin without realizing it, and they fear going to hell; or they fear that God only forgave the sins they knew to confess. No, it doesn't work that way. God forgives ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL! your sins when you make a good faith effort, including those who forgot about, or didn't realize the full gravity of, or even didn't know were sins at all.
While there are many people who take all this way too lightly, there are also many people who get bound up in fear and scrupulosity and this is not what God wants.
Post a Comment