"Love Covers A Multitude Of Sins"

Pope Peter The Apostle's Prime Directive: It Is Love That Forgives Sins

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-apostle-peters-prime-directive-love.html

Dear K,

Thanks for your email. 

During my seven years at Orange High School, I showed "The Mission" (with Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons) to all my Spanish classes. 

In that movie, I was particularly struck by the the Church's linchpin insistence on Reason and Rationality as the defining characteristic of homo sapiens. 

Recently I saw a tee-shirt advertising "The Ten Best Reasons To Be Episcopalian." 

One of them was: "No need to check your brain at the door."

Trained in the Thomistic tradition of philosophy and theology, I believe Reason is our primary tool for "knowing the world" except in those domains where Reason cannot penetrate and it is then appropriate to use Faith as our primary guide.

Without probing the particulars of Global Warming, Evolution and "the role of government in social services," I draw your attention to the following passage: "Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, (Aquinas) writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible." "Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World" by John Freely - http://www.amazon.com/Aladdins-Lamp-Science-Through-Islamic/dp/0307277836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327882581&sr=8-1

Just as Reason opens up vast domains of knowledge (all of them intrinsically incapable of contradicting the Divine Nature in which they are grounded) I marvel that we are all sinners -- consciously and unconsciously -- and that there is finally no human alternative but throwing ourselves on "the mercy of the court."

Happily, "Love covers a multitude of sins." 

Most sins -- especially the carnal ones -- are nothing in comparison to the real acts of love that "covers" them. ("Recover" them?)

Very often -- perhaps "most often," and maybe "always" -- it is our own acts of love that provide the reality of forgiveness.

And our own lack of love-in-action that "condemns" us.

Love sweeps away sin with such irrepressible force that most humans, frightened by the startling immediacy of love/forgiveness prefer a longer, more laborious process of expiation. (At least for the other guy!)

Yeshua reserved special vitriol for the upstanding church-goers of his day. Speaking to a group of priests, "Jesus said... "I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you."

Personally, I see sexual sins as among the most readily forgivable. 

An argument can be made that God could have prevented much of humankind's sexual muddle by making "the exchange of bodily fluids" less "pleasurable": it seems "unfair" to create an itch that so clamors for scratching and then to mete out heavy-handed punishment for responding to one of nature's four most urgent calls.

Compared to "the priests," the tax collectors are a tougher nut to crack. 

Not only did Jesus befriend them -- also recommending that taxes be paid to them -- he held these views in a cultural milieu where Jewish tax collectors were considered loathsome traitors who made their living by collaborating with the Roman "army of occupation"; in effect, collecting taxes that were eventually used to destroy The Temple --  The One and Only Place Where ALL Jewish Hope And Aspiration Crystallized. A Notre Dame theologian (and former pastor) told me that The Destruction of The Temple was a calamity immeasurably more devastating to the Jewish psyche than the destruction of The Twin Towers was devastating to the American psyche.

I encourage you to check out the following article about Jesus' tax-collecting friends. http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/tax-collector-faq.htm

Yeshua's friendship with these traitors is as if a foreign power conquered the United States and then The Messiah went out of his way to express unusual fondness for the very traitors who kept the occupying army in power.

Our human urge for Old Testamental vengeance is blown away by The Unfathomable Mercy - leaving no "hook" on which to "hang the hat" of our common sense views of "Justice." 

By my lights, the unifying thread of The Parables -- Jesus' preferred teaching method -- was that human views of justice are not God's. 

In the last few years, I have come to focus The Gospels as Christianity's essential scripture, in part because I can no longer resolve Deuteronomy 21:18-21 as "the word  of God." 

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+21%3A18-21&version=ERV

I still have high regard for the Old Testament but see  those marvelous books as quite problematic. In my view, there is nothing so cruel as Deuteronomy 21:18-21 anywhere in the Quran. According to this "divine" mandate, I know no one who would have escaped death by stoning. And in childhood!?!

"Hey, Christians! How Many Of Jesus' Moral Standards Do You Approve? Take The Test!"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-many-of-jesus-moral-exhortations.html

***

I am so sorry about the death in your family. 

I pray for healing and forgiveness, and have forwarded your prayer request to the linchpin person at church.

Hearty congratulations to you - and to R - on the upcoming arrival.

Pax on both houses

Alan

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 8:58 AM, K wrote:

Hi Alan,

thanks for recommending and we will watch.

I believe it may be as "The Mission" had been among non Catholic viewers.

Emilio Estevez is very well known among Evangelical communities as a man of genuine faith,

not merely "religious belief" for his bold witness in Hollywood.

I've seen other movies he's either acted in or directed that are excellent "family films" with a message that reflects his genuine goodness in the midst of so much "trash" that comes out of 

that part of the nation in the name of "entertainment"..why it's called."LA LA Land"

thanks for sharing this and can assure you myself that reviews are rather meaningless to me

when it comes to watching Netflix films.

Some of the best get the worst reviews and wouldn't have a thumbs up from anyone who's taste is perverted by all the present day sex and violence Americans seem to pay most to watch.

There have been some recently good alternatives though.

The Mission remains one of my all time favorites though must say it wasn't exactly a "chick flick" and had its share of sex and violence to attract a more bloodthirsty crowd.

Hopefully the main message of the movie got through to viewers.

R is having her second child in September, in case you didn't know.