From: tognola
Date: 2015-03-30 19:27:56
Hilary, I still suffer questions of this kind , which brings me to point out what helped me to discern issues too centralized and hierarchical to grasp even without considering the issues not of this world, which is the concern of the Church: us and our souls. Our Lord indicated the difficulty of understanding the things of the heavens if even understanding the world is hard, which prompts me to desire intellectual poverty and humility without necessarily giving reason and truth a secondary importance. For example, I objected to how someone like the Grand Master of the Prieure of Sion could have simply repent in his late years and turn to the Church he had so badly wounded, and be forgiven. What if he wasn’t sincere? What kind of amends could he possibly do so late in the day? What about Voltaire’s anguish and agony at his deathbed, was it genuine repentance? Perhaps Jean Cocteau’s testimony plus Gods grace is sufficient and hence even 70 something times he should be forgiven? But what if he was not sincere, and attempted to destroy even more? More difficult even, what if he was sincere but ultimately, as is the tendency of the human heart, he would fall even more, and many times more? So I tried to remember that Judas betrayed Jesus, but he certainly didn’t fool Him, so I can extrapolate to the lower issues when perhaps they should concern me more: as for example, I suppose my mother wasn’t fooled when I abused her love and tried to manipulate her and even steal from her purse to impress my girlfriend. Yet these issues are of great importance both worldly and spiritual, so is there a way to keep a grasp on things? What I try to do, as in the Judas example, is to compare my human difficulties to the Gospels: If Jesus gave the keys to Peter and a moment after he called him Satan, does it mean that this it is the Church today? I dont think so, or it is rather when our Lord fell 3 times due not to His weakness but to the wounds we inflicted to his body? If the Church is the ship in the storm, I was impatient, frightened and angry and became more like Barabbas for years. What is worst, it may surely happen again or worst without Grace. As a second example, I resented the Church for not condemning 9/11, but I didn’t even check, if not the Pope (because it would have been perhaps more costly than the open condemnations by high ranking clergy during WWII, another nest of forgery and imposture by our enemies) but this time, after 9/11 there was a clear condemnation by many Church officials and Irak was declared an unjust war while the U.N. simply packed up and left, and took them many more years to say something very quietly and very occasionally against it. So, having the Gospels as a guide has helped me a lot even if it seems at times a rather limited or exaggerated way of dealing with difficult questions, it is neither. Although it can be very heavy and difficult, it is almost never confusing. Will that answer Tony Blair’s intent, I don’t think so, seems more like a political move to me, but only God knows the heart. It took hundreds of years to canonize Joan of Arc,today, in an age where everything is so fast and so many significant things happen every day even if people forget about them after a week or so,It is easy for me to loose perspective, so I try to rest in the slowness of God, which is His mercy, not absence. kind regards,Fernado
