Aug 14 Mon
Like the father of the Prodigal Son, God welcomes the repentant sinner. Thus, the Church cannot do otherwise; she welcomes all, while condemns sin.
Yet some, in irregular situations, may feel “hurt,” “excluded,” or “unwelcomed” by the Church when they hear about sin.
But the Church does not teach anything of her own invention, but what she has received from God. So, if some feel “hurt,” “excluded,” or “unwelcomed” by the Church’s teachings on faith and morals, then they feel “hurt,” “excluded,” or “unwelcomed” by God, supposedly. Because His word establishes that marriage is made up of a man and a woman, and that the marriage bond is indissoluble, and that homosexual acts are sinful.
Some others may try to legitimate the opposite. Yet Jesus Christ said: “And whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me; it were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and he were cast into the sea” (Mk 9:42).
However, if for two thousand years the Church had been wrong, teaching something different from the Will of God on essential questions of doctrine on faith and morals, she can no longer demand faith on any other question. Because then, what is still certain?
But how can one think that God would create the Church – the body of Christ living in this world, to which God gives his Spirit of truth as assistance – when at the same time he would let this same Church and millions of believers lose their way on essential issues for two thousand years? Is, then, God bad? Can Goodness be evil?
Is the Church actually “exclusive”? No, for two thousand years she has lived inclusion. Otherwise today it would not be widespread throughout the world and today would not comprise 1.3 billion believers. But the Church’s tools of inclusion are not the “recognition” or “non-judgment” of sin. The “tools” of the Church are prayer, the baptism, conversion and the sacrament of penance, the Eucharist. For this reason, the Church speaks of God’s commandments and the moral law, of sin, of the sacrament of penance, of sacrifice, of chastity, of holiness, and of the vocation to eternal life.
A few think now that they have another way to take away the sin of the world. They would like to be given the praise: “Behold him who takes away the sins of the world” to the point of making sins disappear. These aberrations were condemned repeatedly by the ecclesiastical Magisterium. Because THEY are certainly not the ones who take away the sin of the world. It is the Lamb of God.
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