By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Reaction to my column last week titled “Where Is There Room to Disagree With Jesus? In Hell!” included the following note from a Facebook follower.
Kim wrote, “Perhaps the question posed to you was not worded correctly. How about this onea. . . . Is there a line where Catholic teachings are not something Catholics are mandated to vote to be incorporated into the government’s policies…? Catholics teach giving to the poor. But I don’t want government forcing me to give to the poor. Is there a similar difference on this topic? Now my mind goes to abortion and I say there is no line. It’s unequivocal . . . abortion is murder . . . and the government is there to protect life. So, in that case, Catholics should be voting to incorporate Catholic teaching into government policy. . . .
“On a personal note — I will always teach that marriage is between man and woman and that the government should do the same in its best interest…just trying to frame the intellectual question better so we can learn more clearly. Thanks!”
My response to Kim and all of those who, like her, who seek to be faithful to Christ, would be to say that marriage is like abortion — “there is no line,” as Kim expresses it, because both abortion and marriage involve our faith, they are both moral matters. Matters of faith impose the demand that we change our minds in order to agree with God.
The Sacrament of Confession exists because our actions don’t always match up with our assent to truth as revealed by God; He is merciful. We don’t need to change Church teachings not only because they reflect and hand on truth which by its nature cannot change but because God relents and forgives us when we fall short or miss the mark.
Perhaps we could teach this truth more effectively by salting our homilies and writings with more frequent invitations to Confession and by sharing more testimony about our personal experiences with God’s forgiveness. Offering Confessions prior to all weekend Masses at our parishes certainly goes a long way toward encouraging people to receive God’s forgiveness simply by making Him more readily available at the time when most of our people already come to church each week. We must always remain grounded in the practical if we are to improve pastoral care.
I need to make a retraction of sorts as a result of my comments about Laudato Si in an earlier column, when I stated that I thought Pope Francis said that polluting is a sin. Upon a closer reading of the encyclical I would now modify that to say Pope Francis is quoting the Ecumenical Patriarch in the encyclical where that statement is made and thus cannot be said to be agreeing for that reason. The Pope does not further restate the matter in his own words but lets the words remain those of the Patriarch. No attempt to change Church teaching there, evidently.
When it comes to Church teaching and the many challenges to it we should keep our focus on the fact that we are called in faith to assent with intellect and will to the truths revealed by God. As I shared on Twitter, “It doesn’t matter what we ourselves think we are; the faith judges us. If one rejects any part of the Depositum Fidei, that one is a heretic.” This assent of intellect and will to truth is a matter quite apart from however weak we may be or how many times we have failed to live up to the truth in the past.
God does not judge us based upon our weakness. How many times in Scripture do we see that those who loved the Lord the most also failed Him the most? We need only look to Peter, the first Pope and a personal friend of the Lord, who not only denied the Lord three times but was blessed with the grace of knowing ahead of time that he would be tempted to do so. Though Christ Himself warned Peter clearly that he would do so, yet Peter nevertheless trusted not in Christ but feared the crowd and the enemies of the Lord, rejecting His friendship with the Savior.
From this scriptural episode we learn of the beauty of forgiveness and its necessity for each of us if we are to be saved. All of us who are capable of knowing the truth are also capable in faith of assenting to it, no matter how weak we sadly know ourselves to be as a result of the humbling experiences of our lives.
We reaffirm that priests, as they give absolution in the Sacrament of Confession, are willed by God to be such instruments of His personal mercy as we learn from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“ ‘In the forgiveness of sins, both priests and sacraments are instruments which our Lord Jesus Christ, the only author and liberal giver of salvation, wills to use in order to efface our sins and give us the grace of justification’ [Roman Catechism, I, 11, 6]” (CCC, n. 987).
In fact, our journey to Confession itself and to the personal meeting with Christ it promises begins for each if us in the assent of intellect and will also to this truth revealed by God.
Let us pray and sacrifice for all who are in a continuing state of mortal sin because they refuse or neglect the regular practice of sacramental Confession.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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(Follow me on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. I blog occasionally at mcitl.blogspot.com and APriestLife.blogspot.com. You can email me at mcitlblogspot.com@gmail.com.)
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