THE METAPHOR AND THE REALITY OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH AS A FIELD HOSPITAL IS A JOKE IF THAT HOSPTIAL DOES NOT PERFOM MAJOR SURGERY, AMPUTATIONS AND CHEMOTHEREAPY

 We hear so much talk about the Church being inclusive. Back in the day, that usually meant that parishes needed to integrate blacks, Hispanics and all races into one happy place to be where everyone, no matter the color of their skin, was welcomed.

It was presumed that all Catholics were poor, miserable sinners in need of God’s healing and forgiveness and thus the Church was seen as a hospital with Christ the Divine Physician. 

Today, when you hear Catholics bloviating about inclusivity, it usually means welcoming LGBTQ++++++++ people to parishes. They forget to tell us, though, that Church Law, one of the six precepts of the Church, is that all Catholics are obligated under the pain of mortal sin to attend Mass each and every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation and must make their Easter Duty each year by going to Confession, at least once a year and receiving Holy Communion once a year! 

Sinful Homosexuals  and heterosexuals are welcomed in all Catholic Churches and to Mass if they are in prison. They are not allowed to wear T-shirts with slogans glorifying their  particular sin or telling someone to F off. If they are known to be a man but come to Mass in drag or white with blackface because they say their race is not white but black, they may well be turned away until they wash their face or wear clothing proper to the gender assigned them by God at conception and easily confirmed by science, biology and DNA proof.

Social mores while ever changing don’t always change if the common good is dangerously diminished. For example, proper dress is expected for some occasions and most churches would turn away some one who decided to wear a speedo, g-string or skimpy bikini to Mass. Nudity would not be welcomed or Halloween costumes that were of the horror variety or licentious.

We would say, get rid of those, dress properly and then you can enter. They do this in Italy when tourists try to enter churches in shorts and tank tops, How unwelcoming!

In the early Church public sinners were publicly excommunicated and not allowed to enter the church for Mass until they decided to repent of their sin, enter a penitential season, like Lent, wear sackcloth and ashes and then be publicly welcomed and reconciled to the Church, normally at Easter. 

Exclusion and labeling them as sinners in need of change, repentance and forgiveness marked their public experience. These sinners were not “snowflakes” outraged at being called out and excluded, but took steps to renounce what excluded them. 

Christ as the Divine Physician and the Church as His field hospital require the person who needs the Doctor and the hospital to submit to a regime of medicine. For the Church, it is mediating God’s healing and forgiving grace that moves a person to repent of their sin, feel sorrow and shame and to be forgiven and reconciled through the Ministry of Christ mediated in the field hospital.

Grave or mortal sin can be likened to gangrene and needs serious antibiotics or even amputation if not chemotherapy. 

To say to anyone, let alone LBGT++++++++++, that there is no need to repent and return to the baptismal garment rather than the sullied costumes of public sinners reticules the Church as a field hospital and Christ and the Divine Physician. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it right during the time of Hitler when he said the following:

"Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."