stanley123 said:
1. The man was supporting those who were in the business of CP. The business of CP involves the horrific exploitation of children.
When you support this business, you are contributing to the exploitation of children.
2. My opinion is that the sentence was a light one. I don’t go by the rules of American society in deciding what is right and what is wrong. I go by the Bible and what Our Lord said:
MT 18:6 But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Even with that passage of Matthew, you are forgetting what Our Lord said about forgiveness…he gave the power to the apostles to loosen or bind. Apparently, the diocese chose to loosen in this case. It still is not your place to second guess the mercy of our Lord.
If you cannot reconcile yourself to God’s mercy then you need to work on that for yourself.
It took me many, many years to release my hatred toward The Night Stalker of the late 80s…whenever I’d hear the bible passages in Mass about the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the man crucified next to Jesus and others like that - how they, if only they believe in the end, would sit at the table beside someone like me who spends my entire life struggling and aiming to earn my right to sit at that same table…I’d cringe and tense up with resentment and anger.
We don’t even know whether Hitler, who was Catholic, cried out for mercy in his last moments before taking his own life. Now there’s something to get worked up about, no? And yet, my expending energy getting angry at the seeming unjustice of the idea does not change what Christ told us about His mercy. So, after a lot of reflection and prayer I have come to accept God’s mercy - not just for me - but for any lost soul. Reflecting on the Prodigal son - if Hitler did, indeed, call for Christ’s mercy in the end or prayed a sincere Rosary - I’m supposed to believe, according to Jesus, that God would have had a wonderful celebration for his return. What a mindbender.
So, having reconciled myself to the possibility that in the End I could be sitting at the same table with some of our history’s worst, most brutal people, I can’t bring myself to get worked up about the seeming unjustice of a priest, convicted of possessing pornography, having served his time, being welcomed back to his community/parish.
