Peasant Girl Buying an Indulgence by Francois Marius Granat. \u201cThe selling of \u201cindulgences\u201d was one of the corrupt practices of the late Medieval Catholic Church, wherein payment of a small (or large, depending) sum of money gets you forgiven for a sin.\u201d Source Wikimedia Commons public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>Simon<\/strong> was a sorcerer<\/strong>, a rather famous and successful sorcerer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEvidently, Simon was also at heart an honest man. When he encountered St Philip, preaching the Gospel and doing great works in Jesus\u2019 name, Simon didn\u2019t, as the idol maker for the goddess Diana later did to St Paul, rile up a crowd and try to get Philip killed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat Simon did instead, was convert. But Simon\u2019s conversion was much like yours and mine. It was incomplete and lacking in full understanding. Simon was destined to grow in faith by falling down and then getting back up. He was also given to big fails in comprehension of the full meaning of this following Jesus thing. Lucky for us, Simon\u2019s fails resulted in important teachable moments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere was in that area of the country, a group of new converts who had been baptized into Christ. But they had not received the Holy Spirit. Peter and John prayed for these newcomers to the faith, asking that they receive the Spirit. Then, they laid their hands on them, and the converts were filled with Holy Spirit. Scripture doesn\u2019t tell us, but I would guess they were starry-eyed as this ecstatic divine love that is beyond description poured into them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey must have given convincing outward signs of this rapturous experience. I say that because Simon, who witnessed the event, was immediately taken with it. He immediately saw the possibilities for himself and his sorcery business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe asked how he could buy this Holy Spirit installing power that the Apostles had exhibited, so that he could add it to his professional repertoire. I\u2019m sure it seemed to him like a natural and right thing for him to request.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSt Peter reacted the way anyone who understood their proper place in the order of creation would react. He was appalled. He was also still Peter the blunt and tactless, just like he had always been.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMay your money perish with you for thinking God\u2019s gift can be bought!\u201d he said. \u201cPray for forgiveness for I can see that you are not right with God and you are full of bitterness and sin.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOnce again, Simon reacted in the right way. \u201cPray to the Lord for me,\u201d he asked Peter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSimon was ignorant of the awesome nature of God. But he wasn\u2019t a fool. He learned. And he believed. Most important, he was willing to change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSimon has the dubious honor of having a sin named after him. \u201cSimony\u201d is the sin of selling that which is holy for money, in particular the sin of selling ecclesiastical privileges for money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSimony had its hey-day in the run-up to the Reformation, when the Church had become so corrupt that it was selling \u201cindulgences\u201d or what became Get Out of Purgatory Free Cards for money. The Pope of that day also had a bad habit of extending blanket absolutions before the crime to those who would commit what are grievous sins such as political assassination of those he deemed to be the Church\u2019s political enemies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Church of that time was political, and it was corrupt. It had lost both its pastoral and its evangelical fervor and was focused on empire. Its kingdom, unlike the Kingdom, was most definitely of this world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSimony, which gets its name from Simon the Sorcerer\u2019s attempt to buy the power to bestow the Holy Spirit, had become an institutionalized sin with vast political and money-earning ramifications. Then as now with the clergy sex abuse scandal, it so tainted the moral and prophetic voice of the Church that vast numbers of people who believe in Jesus with all their hearts reacted to ecclesiastic authority with alienated cynicism and disgust.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Reformation could not have succeeded to the extent it did if the common people had not welcomed it. The \u201cnew\u201d teachings spread like wildfire, and all the burnings of heretics and Auto de Fes could not put that fire out. There were, to be sure, scattered popular uprisings against the abuses that occurred in the name of the \u201cnew\u201d religion. Henry VIII faced an uprising in Northern England over his closure of the monasteries. But for the most part, the English, just like the people in Germany and elsewhere, accepted the change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI think that the corruption in the Church, coupled with clerical abuse of the lower classes and clerical indifference to their own teachings as they applied to themselves was why the common people did not erupt in resistance to the Reformation. I think the high-handed, distant and exclusive form of Christianity that the priestly class had allowed the mass and the Church to become is why the common people developed underground movements that enabled the \u201cnew\u201d religion to grow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey were hungry for the Holy Spirit. They were hungry for Christ. They were starved for the Gospel and the Way that leads to eternal life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Church had become like Temple worship in Jesus\u2019 day when the priests shut the Kingdom of heaven in people\u2019s faces, (<\/i>and) neither enter themselves or allow others to go in.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nGod allowed the Reformation. I think the reason He allowed it is the same reason that He allowed the exposure of the worldwide corruption of the Catholic Church\u2019s practice of allowing, enabling and protecting sexual abusers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI think there comes a moment when God just says Enough.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI think that the institutionalized and highly profitable sin of simony which the Church was practicing at the time of the Reformation became such a hardened practice of sin that God said Enough.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI think that the indifference to rape and sexual assault in the Church has become so endemic, such a hardened practice of clerical sin, that God has once again said Enough.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m going to talk about the sin of Simony again, in a more current context than the Reformation. It is alive and well today, and it is, as it was then, tied to a Church that has corrupted itself by politics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut for today I\u2019m going to focus on the other side of it, which is the big difference between Simon the Sorcerer and the Catholic bishops.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPeter told Simon that he was sinning. Simon didn\u2019t call down thunderbolts on Peter. Simon repented.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cPray for me,\u201d he asked Peter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nUnlike the bishops, Simon didn\u2019t have the long training in theology and 2,000 years of Christian teaching to understand his sin. He had blundered into it through ignorance. He didn\u2019t know God, but he was learning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHowever, Simon was willing to admit he was wrong and change. Instead of arguing, he simply said, \u201cPray for me.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe bishops don\u2019t have any of Simon\u2019s excuses. They know quite well that they are wrong to support rape and rapists. They know they have sinned. They know that supporting rapists and misogynists for high positions is a sin and that referencing the politics of other sins does not excuse or allow it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere are choices that you refuse to make. You just say \u201cno\u201d and let the chips fall. The bishops either don\u2019t have the faith for that, or they don\u2019t care.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m going to talk about simony quite a bit more. But for today, let\u2019s consider one point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nGod can say Enough.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe can give you over to your sins. The Holy Spirit will withdraw from you and not trouble you about your sins any longer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDon\u2019t put the Lord your God to the test.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Simon was a sorcerer, a rather famous and successful sorcerer.\u00a0 Evidently, Simon was also at heart an honest man. When he encountered St Philip, preaching the Gospel and doing great works in Jesus\u2019 name, Simon didn\u2019t, as the idol maker for the goddess Diana later did to St Paul, rile up a crowd and try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":39263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6232,10,750,40,134,7660,3682,2082,7324,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-catholic","category-child-abuse","category-christianity-2","category-clergy","category-rape-2","category-scandal","category-scripture-2","category-the-political-heresy-2","category-feminism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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She also passed a law allowing prosecutors to file criminal charges against anyone who intentionally causes the death of an unborn child by harming the mother. Rep. Hamilton has also authored legislation ensuring taxpayers are not forced to subsidize elective abortions Rep. Hamilton was one of six original co-founders of first rape crisis center in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma City Democrat has worked to bring a wide range of groups together to fight on the behalf of abused women, including the creation of the Annual Day of Prayer for an End to Violence Against Women at the Oklahoma Capitol. Rep. Hamilton has been married for 30 years to her husband, Rodney, and the couple has two grown sons. 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