Question:
I transcribe the criticism of a reader who accuses me of having no mercy in the answers of “Catholic Q&A”:
What a pity that that you have reached so many people with your words who were looking for closeness, compassion, love and not condemning words (Jesus never did). Do you never leave a door open to mercy, to understanding, to knowing people? How easy it is to say your truths (not God’s) behind a computer, behind a cold screen without feelings and history. That’s how easy it is. Your attitude strikes me as with that of the Jews: whitened sepulchers! Keep on preaching your avenging, tyrant God, who is not father, who is not mother, who is not brother…I am your brother but rest assured that you do not speak in the name of God.
Response:
I do not know which of the responses you refer to when you accuse me of not leaving any door open to the mercy of God. Do not confuse the punctual moral judgment that a moralist must give on certain human behaviors with lack of mercy (which, on the other hand, we try to give on the basis of Revelation and the Magisterium of the Church).
Mercy and conversion are not opposed to each other. Jesus was and is infinitely merciful, and it is precisely He who ends His pardons – His many pardons – with ‘go and sin no more’ (cf. Jn 5:14, 8:11). God, who is infinitely merciful, forgives everyone who comes to him repentant and ready to sin no more. But He cannot forgive anyone who does not repent of his sin; for God, being God, rejects sin.
The doctrine of the Church does nothing more than guard the ten commandments and the evangelical doctrine that constantly repeats the value of the divine commandments. And the commandments protect man’s fundamental goods. For this reason, when the Church proposes and reminds man of the divine requirements, she gives him the opportunity to become more human. Read the Gospel well: sin is never condoned, even when extreme mercy is shown to the sinner. Jesus died for sinners… so that they would stop being sinners, not to guarantee them salvation by living in sin!
I understand, then, the real situations in which listening to divine truth is very hard. But at the same time, I am not the master of the truth, but a simple minister of a truth whose custody belongs to the Chair of Truth which is the Church of Christ.
Sometimes it hurts one, like Jeremiah, to have to remember certain truths: “I have become a laughingstock all day long… For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction!” (Jer 20:7-8); but, like the prophet, he must lower his head and say them… and fulfill them before anyone else: “But the Lord said to me,… for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you” (Jer 1:7).
I hope you can understand me.
Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE
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