An Ironic nod to the Chair of St. Peter

I would nor­mally ignore the new attempt of the 60’s “Catholic” crowd to con the church into re-​defining sin to accom­mo­date their pro­cliv­i­ties, par­tic­u­larly after Mark Shea deliv­ered the per­fect one line take­down:

Some peo­ple have lived 44 years since 1968. Some peo­ple have lived 1968 44 times.

and a fol­low up by Tom McDon­ald longer but just as good:

Their com­plaints are the usual litany of tedious­ness: less pope, more sex. That’s really it. That’s what it all boils down to: chil­dren who don’t like being told what to do with their gen­tiles by an adult. It’s not like they’re in a scream­ing hurry to rewrite our under­stand­ing of the dual nature of Christ in the incar­na­tion, or dis­man­tle the pref­er­en­tial option for the poor. They’re only attack­ing this make-​believe boogey­man (“author­ity”) because it’s in the way of get­tin’ biddy.

Their pre­scrip­tion is lots and lots of vot­ing: vot­ing on every­thing from bish­ops to con­doms. Democ­racy may be a fine fit for run­ning the occa­sional town meet­ing and decid­ing who gets eaten first when the rations run out on the lifeboat, but apply democ­racy to eter­nal truths, and you’ll have those Ten Com­mand­ments whit­tled down to three in no time at all. And that’s what they’re sug­gest­ing: putting the faith up to a vote. First order of busi­ness is to amend “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” to add “unless she’s totally HAWT!” Can I see a show of hands? Sorry, Mr. Kennedy, you may only vote once.

But what really struck me was a par­tic­u­lar joke he led with:

Their motto for the past 40 years? “Too lazy to con­vert to Protestantism.”

But the more I thought about it the more the ques­tion came up, Why HAVEN’T they in all these year con­verted if they thought the church was wrong? Sure some are draw­ing church pay but surely some like Hans Kung could find an excel­lent finan­cial reward as a for­mer Catholic, and oth­ers would be lion­ized by press and by var­i­ous churches for aban­don­ing the faith.

That’s when it hit me. The prob­lem isn’t because they don’t believe in the church, it’s because they still do.

One of the impor­tant aspects of con­fes­sion is con­tri­tion, even if you are trapped in a cycle of repet­i­tive sin, like say gam­bling or porn at the time of con­fes­sion if you actu­ally regret your sin and attempt to amend your ways you are for­given. You may relapse, you may sin again but if you are actu­ally try­ing, actu­ally resist­ing and actu­ally try­ing to amend your ways that makes all the difference.

But what if you aren’t sorry for your sins? What if isn’t a ques­tion of being trapped in a cycle of sin, but enjoy­ing, cel­e­brat­ing and lov­ing your sins and don’t want to give them up? What if you go into that con­fes­sional know­ing you aren’t sorry for your sins and can’t wait to com­mit them again?

Can this be done? Well there is in fact a way:

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the nether­world shall not pre­vail against it. I will give you the keys to the king­dom of heaven. What­ever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what­ever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matt 16:15 – 19 Matthew 16:18 – 19

Note how Christ phrases this, not might be bound, or could be bound but shall be bound.

That leave them an open­ing, if they can some­how, by some quirk of fate, by some mirac­u­lous shift by the Church and the Holy Father their sins can van­ish, not by repen­tance of sin or absti­nence of sin, but redefin­ing what sin actu­ally is sud­denly all the things they cel­e­brate become pure as the dri­ven snow, some­thing to be enjoyed again and again with­out the slight­est fear of eternity.

The log­i­cal ques­tion would be: Why bother with such an impos­si­ble task? Why not sim­ply choose a Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion that embraces those par­tic­u­lar sins or even one that sim­ply preaches “Once Saved Always Saved”. That would solve the prob­lem wouldn’t it.

Well it would except for one thing. They under­stand the truth of the Church..

Moral sin, the recipe for damna­tion, requires three things: 1. Grave Mat­ter, 2. Delib­er­a­tion 3. Under­stand­ing. If one doesn’t know the church due to never being prop­erly taught (either from the inside or out­side) that third vital piece needed to achieve mor­tal sin can’t be achieved.

But these peo­ple know the church, they have under­stand­ing and worse of all they KNOW the con­se­quences of said under­stand­ing. To delib­er­ately leave while believ­ing the church is true is sim­ply self damnation.

So instead they stay, hop­ing upon hope that best case, they will get the church to see things their way, or bar­ring that hope they will get a chance for abso­lu­tion just before the moment of death, play­ing the 3 in their hand hop­ing upon hope that the church is hold­ing a deuce.

Me I wouldn’t bet my soul on it.

They say deceit is the trib­ute dis­hon­esty gives to the truth, iron­i­cally in their fee­ble attempt at self-​justification our friends at Church Author­ity are doing they same their insis­tence on remain­ing Catholic declares to all the world that this is the place for salvation.

God cer­tainly does work in mys­te­ri­ous ways.