Monday, November 16, 2015

Is the Year of Mercy about God's forgiveness of sin or international rapprochement?

Someone may reply: "Well, why not both?" And I would counter: "Would it be the same thing we were talking about then? Aren't these, rather, two different things?"

Adfero, "Vatican Secretary of State: Holy Year is open to Muslims!" (Rorate Caeli, November 16, 2015):
The Secretary of the Vatican State, Pietro Parolin, has confirmed that the Jubilee (from December 8th 2015 to November 20th 2016) is on schedule, as the spokesman for the Holy See, Padre Lombardi had already said, and that, in fact, will be open also to Muslims. “In a world torn by violence, it is the right time to launch the campaign of mercy” said the Cardinal in an interview with the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. “It is understandable that there are sentiments of revenge after the attacks, but we really need to resist them. The Pope wants the Jubilee to be used for people to meet each other, understand each other and rise above hate”, explains the Secretary of the Vatican State.
Okay, I get that. It's possible that those who have lost loved ones to Muslim terrorists might turn the other cheek in a Christ-like manner and forgive those who perpetrated this horror in an overture intended to win them to Christ and conversion to Holy Mother Church. It's possible, if uncommon.

It's also possible that the Vatican could be inviting sinners to flee the wrath of God to come by turning in repentance to the God of all mercy who is willing to forgive the contrite sinner no matter what the sin or the crime. That's possible too, if not very obvious in anything said by the Vatican Secretary of State.

But is either of these things really the meaning of the Year of Mercy? I'm sorry to sound like a skeptic. But the language just sounds much more like a public policy initiative, an invitation to dialogue, to seek mutual understanding, to "rise above hate."

This is, of course, something perfectly desirable; but is this the essential meaning of God's mercy in Holy Scripture? I've just been reading in the Old Testament the account of how Moses had the Levites slay about three thousand of the Children of Israel who refused to repent after their idolatrous celebration around the image of a golden calf.

God did not appear too eager to simply let unrepentant rebels off the hook under the blanket invitation of mercy -- a detail notably confirmed by the fact that Moses immediately went back up Mt. Sinai to the Lord to try to make atonement for the sins of his people.

It seems that the Mercy of Holy Scripture comes at a considerable cost, an important detail nobody seems to eager to talk about publicly.

Then again, I could be wrong. Just my two cents.

7 comments:

JM said...

D"It's possible that those who have lost loved ones to Muslim terrorists might turn the other cheek in a Christ-like manner and forgive those who perpetrated this horror in an overture intended to win them to Christ and conversion to Holy Mother Church. It's possible, if uncommon. It's also possible that the Vatican could be inviting sinners to flee the wrath of God to come by turning in repentance to the God"

CONVERSION TO HOLY MOTHER CHURCH?!!! Dr. B, have you been imbibing? Do you honestly think anyone in the Vatican of Pope Francis even remembers such phrases, much less givens the slightest pretense to believing such things? And the you mention the "Wrath of God," I wonder if made harder drugs are involved. Pope Francis is busy preaching salvation via alms to the poor. Whatever his Catholicism is, it involves no conversion to Catholicism and certainly no fear of God. He's our gregarious and loving Argentine Uncle. It's all about hugs and birthday silver dollars. It's all about the incarnation of the documents of Vatican II. A long gestation followed by a long and busy flowering of toxic spores. Pruning away won't help.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...


Woe upon you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites that will award to God his justice, especiallifith be icing heretics through Moses and have forgotten the weightier commandments of the law, justice, mercy, and soccer games for peace…

You blind legalists, that have a strainer for the gnat of Assisi gatherings for peace, and then swallow the proselytising of the ancients!

Thou shalt inherith not the latter day surprises

JM said...

"The Pope wants the Jubilee to be used for people to meet each other, understand each other and rise above hate”

It's a Clinton fundraiser!

JM said...

The Year of Mercy is every bit as confused as this entire papacy:

http://www.christianorder.com/editorials/editorials_2015/editorials_nov15.html

Doragoon said...

I've taken to calling the "Year of Mercy", the "Year of Blood". Because what else is mercy but Christ's blood poured out for us? It reminds me of what Chesterton wrote, "sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed."

HenryBumstead said...

Rename the Mass "Happy Hour," complete with alcohol and edibles, and be done with it.

Anonymous said...

"Year of Mercy" ... only a group of Catholics could come up with such a damnable label. "This year we are about Mercy!..." "Um, OK."