HMM! 🧐 PEOPLE ARE ABLE TO REPENT, BUT CAN STRUCTURES OF SIN REPENT? CAN BUSINESSES REPENT? CAN INSTITUTIONS REPENT?

Pope Leo gave a very good homily for Ash Wednesday. He not one time said “Todas! Todas! Todas!” But rather he called everyone (todas, todas, todas) to repent. But he also called structures of sin, businesses and institutions to repent.  The full homily is HERE. 

Perhaps he meant it as the Book of Jonah meant that cows and other livestock  should also repent and put on sackcloth. Of course, this was to add humor to the serious need to repent:

In the Book of Jonah (chapter 3), the king of Nineveh orders a, severe, city-wide fast, requiring both people and livestock (cows, sheep) to wear sackcloth and abstain from food and water to repent for their wickedness.

This is what Pope Leo said:

Naturally, sin is personal, but it takes shape in the real and virtual contexts of life, in the attitudes we adopt towards each other that mutually impact us, and often within real economic, cultural, political and even religious “structures of sin.” Scripture teaches us that opposing idolatry with worship of the living God means daring to be free, and rediscovering freedom through an exodus, a journey, where we are no longer paralyzed, rigid or complacent in our positions, but gathered together to move and change. How rare it is to find adults who repent — individuals, businesses and institutions that admit they have done wrong!

My most astute reactions: Of course I am a child of the 1970 liberal seminary formation and once I landed at our Cathedral in Savannah in 1985, I was imbued with what Pope Leo, who must have been taught was I was taught in the 1970’s, that structures of sin should repent.

When my then-bishop, also the chair of the USCCB’s Doctrine Committee at the time, Bishop Raymond Lessard, heard me say such an absurd statement, he corrected me and said, people sin and repent, but not institutions and businesses or so-called “structures of sin!”

And you know what, Bishop Lessard was/is right. The KKK can’t repent, but people who belong to it can and then they must repent of having been a part of an organization, organized by people, who promote hatred and discrimination. The organizations of hate groups or groups that promote death and laws opposed to the true God, can’t repent. Can the KKK repent and keep that name? Can the Nazi Political Party, in the Germany of Hitler and now in neo-forms, repent and been seen as good? Can you be a good Nazi if the organization of Nazis repents and changes it name? Repentant people must distance themselves from the affiliations they had that promote hate, death and evil ideologies. They must work at eradicating organizations, businesses and structures that people join in order to promote those institutions.

Can the American Democrat party repent of its pro-death, anti-God ideologies? Its rabid pro-abortion advocacy and promotion of laws that lead to the genocide of innocent children? Laws that promote active euthanasia and assisted suicide? Advocates for the sexual mutilation of children and teenagers and promotes sinister LGBTQ++ ideologies?

Can a Catholic belong to the Democrat Party and be a Catholic in good standing? If they can be excommunicated for belonging to a schismatic religious sect, let’s say, like, the FSSPX, shouldn’t they also be excommunicated for belonging to the Democrat Party, that promotes the anti-God culture of death, sexual mutilation of children and teenagers and contempt for natural law and all the laws of God and true religion? 

There are certain things, too, that we can complain about the Republican Party, but I don’t think there is anything there on parr with what the Democrats promote.

Of course even the Nazis, fascists, KKK and Democrats do/did some good things. But can institutions repent of the evil they do that cannot be masked by the cotton-candy facade of good they think they promote? Only people can repent and in terms of evil, corrupt institutions, those repentant people must distance themselves from the organizations that formed their evil intents. Those institutions must be disbanded by repentant people.