Our current secular cancel culture wants to wipe away historical people, once celebrated, and emphasize the bad they have done. Is it Jansenism to say that every person who have certain corrupt aspects was and is entirely corrupt and any memory of them should be wiped away?
Is that Catholic? Christian? Jewish?
What helps the Church in her ministry and mission of saving damned souls, is the call to repentance and the ministry of offering Christ’s forgiveness over and over again to the repentant sinner. But that call to repentance also entails some form of penance.
For a priest who breaks his promise of chaste celibacy time and time again, the penance could be laicization. If he is an artist, his art in churches might be removed and stored in a museum.
Penance is a necessary component to the forgiveness of sin. When that sin is corruption and has a corrupting influence on victims, more severe forms of penance need to be given especially for those in Holy Orders and Religious life given the nature of their professional and public standing in the Church.
If their corruption breaks civil law, the sinning cleric or religious should submit to civil law and its punishments as a penance.
I would suggest that Pope Francis’, who himself has been bringing the Church backwards, not to the 50’s but the 70’s, has revived the very core of the sexual abuse scandal, if a priest has done good, he should be praised and encouraged in that good which takes precedence of the bad and the corrupt. Thus clerics were sent to expensive facilities to get psychological and spiritual rehabilitation and then returned to ministry. That the 70’s and it appears we are recovering it.
Thus, what do you think of the Slovenian bishops who just released a statement on this nauseating case, just one more straw on an already sagging laity’s camel’s back:
“We beg you with this tragic realization in mind, to distinguish (Rupnik’s) unacceptable and reprehensible actions from his extraordinary spiritual and artistic accomplishments in mosaics and other areas.”
6 comments:
Archbishop Vigano commenting on Father Pavone's situation:
"…If serving the Church and defending the life of innocent creatures in this time of apostasy constitutes a crime worthy of dismissal from the clerical state, while promoting abortion and gender ideology and violating consecrated virgins is not deemed liable to excommunication, then Father Pavone ought to consider this shameful Vatican decision to be a source of pride, recalling Our Savior’s words: Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every manner of evil against you falsely because of Me (Mt 5:11). And whoever has inculpated themselves as an accomplice of this persecution against the good ought to tremble at the thought of the judgement which awaits them. Deus non irridetur – God is not mocked (Gal 6:7)."
If my remaining Catholic were based on my confidence in Pope Francis I would have been gone some years back.
Let the slobbering from MT begin!
To which the laity ask, to what end?
I think a recovery of the vertical aspect of the Church, where God, the Most Holy Trinity comes first and Jesus the Divine Son of God is at the center is what is needed. If Rupnik is allowed to celebrate Mass, may the way to go (after public penance and public reconciliation) is not allow him to preach at any public Mass and to celebrate the Mass entirely ad orientem. That would make his presence less and Christ presence more.
The post Vatican II emphasis on the horizontal and enclosed circle and the celebrity features of the celebrant priest have done us no favors in this on-going scandal that is leading so many Catholics, whose emphasis has been on the horizontal and not the vertical to leave the Church.
As for me and my household, Christ comes first, the vertical is my focus and those around me are all sinners in the hands of a merciful God we do not deserve.
Could a future Pope reinstate Mr. (Fr) Pavone?
Yes.
A decent Pope would
Post a Comment