Shoved to Them
I’ve been reading and watching all of the opinions flying back and forth on the weddings at the Vatican last week, and trying to put my thoughts on it into something that sounded charitable. Today, I opened Facebook and saw that my brilliant friend, Kara Allen, had already said exactly what I wanted to say, and much more charitably than I was inclined to put it.
I think the point might be that we are all forgetting the lessons I remember my mother talking about receiving while in Catholic schools taught by nuns. She said they hammered into the kids that when they returned from communion they were to kneel with their hands over their eyes lest they be caught off guard by sin. Either by judging their neighbors for going, or not going, to communion, or focusing on what they were wearing, how they did their hair, etc. instead of focusing on Christ.
Basically, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
Truth is, fifteen years ago this would all have been a blurb in all our diocesan newspapers and nothing more. It’s NONE of our business who was in the confession line, how long they were there, or what they confessed before this particular sacrament.
None.
The scandal comes in good Catholics thinking they have a right or responsibility to know who, what, when, where, why, or how. We do not need to know their sin, nor do we need to be assured of their absolution. We need only trust that God, who is not only just but also kind and merciful in His wisdom, trusted The Church on earth to Pope Francis who we can also trust knows more what he’s doing with his years of education, experience, and pastoral training than any of us can ever claim.
Our job, no matter what, is to pray for these fresh, new families and their known struggle to swim upstream against society in having Godly marriages. We have no business making this journey more difficult than it already is.
People have been married, in The Church. Rejoice. That’s our response. Rejoice.
Amen, sister. A-freaking-men.
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