Misericordia et misera

Hallo! Hallo! Did you read that? Did you hear it on the News?

A new wrinkle out of the magic bag of the Catholic Church.

The holy year of “Compassion” has come to an end and the Pope himself closed the “Holy Gate” of

St. Peter's Cathedral.

Before he did that, however, he issued an “Apostolic Letter”, titled: Misericordia et miseria” with which he extended the right to forgive the sin of abortion from Bishops to regular Priests.

Think about that for a moment!

A woman, for whatever reason, decides not to carry a child in her womb to full fruition, birth.

This, under the rules of the Catholic church, in itself is a grave sin, forgivable only by her confession to a Bishop.

Should she be unable to make this connection, she will, so preaches the Church, be condemned to Hell. ( where- or whatever this is. )

Hell must be pretty crowded with suffering women, since only very few, who committed this sin of abortion, would have, or could have sought forgiveness from a Bishop or from certain specially appointed “confessional priests”.

What about the “ever forgiving, compassionate” God, through whose compassion every sin, however serious, can be forgiven.?

Well, dear God, you are just out of luck.

Even though in the “Misericordia et misera” Pope Franciscus states:

“God, who is capable of looking into the heart of each person, sees the deepest desire hidden there.”

and later: “God's love must take primacy over all else”

Where does this leave us now?

The Church teaches: A person who has committed a mortal sin, and abortion surely is one of those, then dies without having confessed this sin, will be condemned to spending an eternity in Hell.

Then the Pope tells us that “God's Love must take Primacy over all else.”

So what is he ( God ) to do ? His Church talks about the punishment as an eternity in Hell, but his number 1 representative allows for His love to “take Primacy over all else”.

None of this, of course, should puzzle us. The Catholic church is involved in so many contradictions, so many irrational statements that it absolutely boggles the mind, and we cannot expect that they, in this very controversial issue, should be able to come up with a cohesive, sensible statement.

When you read this Apostolic Letter you may also come to the conclusion that Franciscus is trying hard to make a little sense of it all. He is, however, confronted with 2000 years of utter gobbledygook and finds it difficult, if not impossible to make his rational way through the jungle of nonsense.

Bertstravels

could lend him a machete.