Are we obliged to correct past errors?

[Matthew91]

This might be an extremely scrupulous question but for some reason it has become a big concern for me lately. I often participate in in faith based discussions and debates on this site and others and sometimes I fear that in the past I may have, without any moral fault said something inaccurate or accidentally was in error about how I explained a teaching of the Church. Am I obliged to go back and edit these old posts from months or years ago to make them conform more accurately to church teaching if I find any? I’m just afraid I might be in the wrong by not doing so, by allowing material heresy to exist or something, or by not requesting certain posts be edited when I am not able to do so myself, but at the same time it seems unfair to put that burden on a site administrator. Thoughts?

 

[dshix]

This might be an extremely scrupulous question but for some reason it has become a big concern for me lately. I often participate in in faith based discussions and debates on this site and others and sometimes I fear that in the past I may have, without any moral fault said something inaccurate or accidentally was in error about how I explained a teaching of the Church. Am I obliged to go back and edit these old posts from months or years ago to make them conform more accurately to church teaching if I find any? I’m just afraid I might be in the wrong by not doing so, by allowing material heresy to exist or something, or by not requesting certain posts be edited when I am not able to do so myself, but at the same time it seems unfair to put that burden on a site administrator. Thoughts?

You are not obligated, at all. Nor can you. You are only allowed to edit a post for the next 20 mins after it is made, and administrators rarely will edit a post for you; only in rare circumstances.

I wouldn’t worry myself about it. Just make it very clear what your current stance on things is in your profile, and people will not be confused.

 

[SonCatcher]

You only have twenty minutes to edit posts. Afterward, they remain in perpetuity.

If anyone asks about your old, erroneous posts (fairly unlikely, but possible), simply explain that your understanding has changed.

 

[DexUK]

Unless you hold a position of authority whereby people are making life and death decisions based on what you’re saying, I would suggest that you should treat such things as just a snapshot of where your thoughts were at that moment.

Nobody can be right all the time. We’re all learning and we all make statements believing them to be true only to discover at a later date that we were mistaken or misinformed at the time.

If a discussion on an internet forum is still continuing now on a subject on which you now know better, by all means contribute your new and better knowledge and acknowledge your growth in the matter: if nothing else, it will engender respect for your honesty from those who may have known you to be wrong.

Discussions on forums aren’t areas where we have to be right all the time. They are only conversations. People all too often forget that and treat them like competitions, when they’re not (and we can all be guilty of that).

So relax, accept that every day of your life is part of the journey of greater enlightenment and education, and as such that itself is a gift from God.

Enjoy your journey and don’t worry about where you’ve come from. Just keep looking forward to where you’re going.

 

[wanabesaint]

To be educated is to realize what you thought in the past, you see in a new light today, and in the future you will see it in a whole new light with a different meaning…
alot of what gets put up is agendas of people, as much as fact…
What we see as acceptable today, people would have never tollerated a hundred years ago…
religion is much the same, what we tollerate today around US and of ourselves, at times in the past would have been seen as heathens and villians…

To be able to see life, situations totally counter to what we ourself do, is a great experience, even though it might counter all our minds standards.

 

[Matthew91]

ok, these replies are encouraging. So you think I’m not obliged to try and go back and edit posts, even on other forums where I can? I understand that what was said was said and in the context of those conversations I can’t really go back and effectively change what went into the other person’s mind, but I was just afraid, that allowing an error to be present would be wrong and I wondered if I was obliged to go back and edit it, fearing that I would be sinning by not doing so.

 

[SonCatcher]

ok, these replies are encouraging. So you think I’m not obliged to try and go back and edit posts, even on other forums where I can? I understand that what was said was said and in the context of those conversations I can’t really go back and effectively change what went into the other person’s mind, but I was just afraid, that allowing an error to be present would be wrong and I wondered if I was obliged to go back and edit it, fearing that I would be sinning by not doing so.

One one little-used forum I’m on, my requested username actually belonged to someone else who posted a handful of times and left. The owner offered to let me take over the account and scrub the old posts. I took the account but told him to just leave them in.