Aghast!

To quote a classmate of mine whenever he was shocked at something: "I'm staggered, I'm speechless, staggered, aghast, ooh Lord, staggered".  I am gradually catching up on my internet reading - these last few days have been very busy between parish work, Fraternity work and dialoguing with printers.   I was reading Fr Z (peace be upon him) and discovered the Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Sheehan of Santa Fe, dealing with the problem of cohabitation among Catholics.   The reason I react is because I cannot believe a bishop could respond today in the way that he has to one of the foremost moral problems in the contemporary Church. 

In his Letter the Archbishop has confounded the "compassion/let's not offend brigade" by pointing out the moral and spiritual consequences of irregular unions in a straightforward way while being compassionate.  I am surprised at the confident way in which he deals with the subject: no cringing, endless apologies; no fearful ambiguity, just the truth, take it or leave it, but if you leave it there are consequences, but God still loves you, and the Church loves you and asks you to come to your senses (cf. the Prodigal Son).

This is refreshing, but of course not without response - the usual suspects have wheeled out the rusty objections citing lack of compassion etc etc.   Fr Z (peace be upon him) has one example of such an attack on his blog.   There is one thing those who object to this teaching do not get, and will probably never get because they have compromised truth with opinion and emotion: the Church and her ministers can still love and reach out to those who are living immoral lives without having to compromise or cover over the truth. 

Every single one of us today know people in these situations, and most of us have members of our families in these irregular unions.  Our response: keep the door open, love them, do not shun them, but do tell them and remind them that their way of life is wrong and try to bring them to regularise their situation.  That is what I try to do with members of my own family in that situation.  They know where I stand and some of them try to avoid you at times because you prick their conscience and make them feel uncomfortable - and that is actually good because that means the gravity of situation is apparent to them and while they try to ignore it or dismiss you, they can't do it forever, eventually (we hope) it will get too much for them and they will seek to calm their conscience and do the right thing.  And the priest should be there to help them. 

Compassion and truth, as all of us know, are not mutually exclusive, they each come into their own when they are in harmony with each other.

On another topic (staggered, aghast etc) I see the ACP are still trying to create a rebellion against the corrected translation of the Missal.  My word they are persistent!  I think they are so because they know the game is up: the Church is reforming in the Catholic tradition rather than the protestant/liberal/realitivistic tradition and the new translation is the symbol of that.  They have wheeled out Angela Hanley to do the necessary and she is using the language of abuse (I wonder what she could be alluding to there).  Reading her article it appears to me that she is trying to bully the bishops by equating the promulgation of the new Missal with their failure to protect children in the past.  It seems to me she might be saying that in both situations they are abusing their power and allowing the abuse of the innocent.  I suppose we had to expect that approach to raise its ugly head at some stage.