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To: Heart-Rest
Questions:

What should be done about these sinners?

Should they be kicked out of churches?

Is the recognition of their sins enough or does some extra action need to be taken?

What judgement would you impose?

34 posted on 09/11/2014 2:14:37 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: trebb
"Questions:

What should be done about these sinners?

Should they be kicked out of churches?

Is the recognition of their sins enough or does some extra action need to be taken?

What judgement would you impose?"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Well, first of all, we are ALL sinners, and so my thoughts about all those kinds of sins apply to everybody else as well.

As a Catholic, I believe in the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation (remembering how Jesus said, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and whose sins you retain are retained").    We make an honest and thorough examination of our conscience to the best of our light, then "go to confession" to a priest, telling him all of those sins we can remember which we have not already confessed, and the priest, acting "in persona Christi" (in the person of Christ) hears those sins, and the priest usually gives some kind of brief spiritual direction relating somehow to the nature of the sins you confessed, then assigns some kind of penance, asks you to say an "act of contrition" prayer, and finally pronounces the forgiveness and absolution of Jesus Christ for those sins.

Our Protestant brothers and sisters usually ask forgiveness for their sins in their prayers to God (which Catholics also do as well).    (I like to do that myself at the end of each day.)

Jesus told the sinner, "Go, and sin no more."    We should not kick all the sinners out of Church, or nobody would be there at all.    However, if a sinner knowingly and deliberately persists in their sinful behaviors, they actually remove themselves from the graces available to them through the Sacraments.

God is the one who who will judge all of us.    We should judge what constitutes sins (according to what God has taught us), but that is a completely different kind of judgment.

My point of this post was that a prominent teacher of the Church like Cardinal Dolan should NOT say (as he did, completely misapplying quotes from Pope Francis and Jesus) "who am I to judge", and "judge not", concerning the active homosexual football player, Michael Sam, when Dolan said "Bravo! Good for him!" after Sam publicly revealed his active sinful homosexuality.

I was trying to illustrate that we don't judge the sinner, but we HAVE TO judge and teach the truth about sins, and any teacher of the faith has to teach about sins in an honest, truthful way (especially a leader and prominent teacher of the faith like Cardinal Dolan).

The sin Dolan was talking erroneously about was "homosexuality", but I was just using those other persversions to more clearly illustrate why we can't properly say "who am I to judge?" concerning sins and the promotion of sins.

You can hear how ridiculous it would be to say "who am I to judge" when talking about sinful behaviors rather than sinners.    We can ask those questions another way:

This can show more clearly why we can't avoid judging what behaviors are sinful behaviors, and we can't give our own approval to anyone promoting sinful behaviors (like the NBC marchers who are going to openly promote the sin of homosexuality in next year's St. Patrick's Day Parade for the first time).

Cardinal Dolan failed when he said "Bravo! Good for him!" when that football player publicly revealed his active sinful homosexual lifestyle, and Cardinal Dolan failed when he said he was fine with people promoting sinful homosexual behaviors in the St. Patrick's Parade.

Cardinal Dolan should not be kicked out of the Church, but I believe he should be removed from his prominent teaching position, so he cannot continue to mislead millions of viewers, listeners, and readers with his blatantly erroneous statements, which go against the teachings of the Catholic Church.

(And while those questions were all hypothetical and were meant to just illustrate more clearly what is wrong with affirming the sin of homosexuality, and what is wrong with approving the promotion of that sin of homosexuality in any forum, once they get people openly promoting the sin of homosexuality in that parade, they will not have a logical reason to ban people promoting ANY of those sinful perversions (or any other sins) in future parades.)

35 posted on 09/11/2014 8:08:36 AM PDT by Heart-Rest ("Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in Thee." - St. Augustine)
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