THE
P RTAL
May 2016
Page 3
Portal Comment
Is sin, sin or not?
Will Burton has been thinking about sin, penitence and confession
O
h dear, they never seem to get it quite correct
do they? I mean discussions about the Catholic
Faith on the radio, or TV, or in the press!
Listening to, or reading, discussions about moral
subjects in the media often leaves me feeling that
something was missing. “I think the Catholic
Church’s view and her teaching are out of touch with
modern living” is one person’s point of view, while
another thinks the Catholic Church must uphold
traditional teaching.
Take, as an example, the question of same-sex
marriage. Those in such a union, and who call
themselves ‘Catholic’, long to be able to get ‘married’
in church. Others say that marriage is the union of
one woman with one man to the exclusion of others
for life.The way these issues are discussed in modern
Britain seeks for a compromise, yet both sides of the
discussion think they are right and the other wrong.
Is compromise a desirable outcome?
When dealing with so much of catholic teaching,
we are dealing with God’s law. “Male and female
he made them”; “therefore a man leaves his mother
and father and cleaves to his wife”; “the two become
one flesh”. Same sex marriage is unknown in the
scriptures, and unknown by the Catholic Church.
Ah, but the Catholic Church must change, we are
told. The Catholic Church must change to fit in with
modern life. People are put off the Catholic Church
by her rigid attitude to such things. Now forgive me if
I am wrong, but it is the other way round surely? It is
not the Catholic Church (or God) that must change,
but us.
At the heart of the Catholic life is daily conversion.
We all drift away from the ideal; we all sin. We follow
“the devices and desires of our own hearts, and there
is no health in us”. The desire to follow one’s own
ways rather than God’s ways is in all of us.
The whole attitude to this subject has
been skewed because the world has subtly altered
the teaching of the Catholic Church to suit itself. It is
contents page
thought that single people may engage in whatever
sexual activities they like, but that married people
are restricted to each other. But the Catholic Church
teaches that all sexual activity outside marriage is
wrong and sinful.
This teaching applies to all Catholics whatever their
orientation, and includes sexual activity on one’s own.
Of course, these rules are often broken, but because
we are weak, the confessional is there to heal us, and
provide forgiveness for our penitent selves.
It seems that part of the problem is that many
today are, in effect, saying, ‘sin is no sin, it is how I
was made.’ Would such an argument be made for the
con-artist, the habitually violent, or (dare I say it) the
paedophile? Do they receive licence because ‘it is how
I was made?’ No, they do not. They are responsible
for their own actions. The Catholic Church suggests
that that is true of us all.
For myself, the last word must be Kyrie eleison.