Saturday, September 18, 2021

Gloria Purvis and Dawn Eden bravely discuss the sins of others

Dawn Eden has learned that - horrors! - one of her Catholic heroes held and shared! ... I can't bring myself to say it .... anti-Semitic views! (more on this later).

Sigh.  I'm beginning to think condemning the sins of our forebears has become the eighth sacrament of the Church.  A generation that defines its righteousness by round the clock dredging up the sinful thoughts and attitudes of past sinners is in a boat load of trouble.  It's an appealing narcotic to be sure, to know that it's the sins of others long gone that you're accountable for.  Not that it's without biblical precedent.  But it isn't hard to see that what is going on now is hell and gone from a biblical approach to national repentance. 

After all, a generation whose stellar accomplishment is watching the civilization it inherited crumble under its watch should clean its own house first.  A generation that has to discuss arming teachers because of  our children mass killing each other in our schools should not be throwing rocks at old time glass houses.  A generation that can boast aborted pregnancies in the hundreds of millions, a debauched and hedonistic culture while tens of millions have died of AIDS and drugs, unprecedented levels of depression, drug addiction and even suicide among children as young as ten years old, out to be slow on the judgment.  And a generation of believers watching unprecedented numbers of believers abandon the Faith for good, or remain and not give a damn about those tired old fairy tales that nobody believes anyway, is not one that should crow too loudly about the sins of yesterday's prophets.  

Yet our continual response to the dumpster fire we've made our generation into is to dig through the records of the past to find out how utterly sinful those who came before us really were.  Sins, by the way, that were often sins of thought or attitude that were all too common then - and just as common today when applied to new demographic groups. May God not judge us as we so brazenly judge those who have come before. 


As a bonus, the always Jesuit America magazine throws its two rubles in with Ms. Purvis and asks just how we  can approach the clear and obvious sins of all those saints we kick around.  As if people didn't realize that the sinfulness of saints is part of what makes the saints so darn inspiring.  If sinners like those can be saints, there's hope for me!  Or do they mean the unforgivable sins of the saints, such as racist thinking, as defined by the Leftist State today?  

For my part, I grow weary of the obsession with sins like racism and sexism, accusations easily thrown out but also easily denied or covered up.  How do we know the whites who scream racism the loudest aren't the racists?  Especially when racism today is more or less defined as failure to adhere to certain politically charged dogmas, based on one's skin color of course, rather than actions and how one lives one's life?  Something you'd think a proud Jewish convert to Catholicism would be more careful about. But then, you'd think an African American Catholic would be careful, too. 

Also, a bonus observation.  Ever notice that liberalism never admits failure?  When we embrace the latest, and the latest ends in disaster, it appeals to group guilt.  So instead of standing beside the Texas attempt to curtail the slaughter of modern abortion, the always Jesuit America magazine instead appeals to the horrors of our patriarchal (read: the men made us do it) guilt and problems and fault and all that group identity guilt that's all the rage in 21st Century Leftwing discourse.  After all, it couldn't have been yesterday's liberals with their promise of consequence free debauchery that is the main problem.  

Again, it's increasingly clear that the focus on past sins is the only antidote for a modern generation with so little to show for its time on Earth.  

8 comments:

  1. As the saying goes, there are people who are saints and believe themselves sinners and sinners who believe themselves saints. I guess it depends on who is in charge at the time.

    Psalms 103:12

    12As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

    I thank God that He is the one who will judge me and not mortal man. God has a short memory when it comes to the sins of those who have repented of them. Unlike the world of today which has the internet to help them "remember" past sins of others and take proper steps to condemn those sinners whether they've repented or not.

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    1. Yes, you're right. I fear today the Internet has made judging and condemning anyone and everyone the goto approach to self worth. As if we don't even have to try to do anything meaningful. Just keep pointing out how rotten those sinners of old were.

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  2. Maybe Gloria Purvis could review what the Catechism says about detraction? (I've removed the footnotes)
    "2477 Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty ... of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them"

    Second: Saints are often painfully aware of their own sinfulness and God's holiness. A lot of ordinary people reckon that if there's a continuum of holiness with God at one end and Literally Hitler at the other, they're at about the 60-75% mark, and saints at the 90% mark, and Those Horrible Sinners Over There no higher than 30-35%. Saints understand that their own sinfulness puts them (to borrow a phrase) as far from God's holiness as is east from west. Those who would condemn a saint for his sins, but lack this understanding of their own sinfulness, are all too likely getting their ideas of righteousness from themselves, not from God.

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    1. I fear a lack of awareness of our own sins is what's happening today because of our obsession with the sins of everyone else today or yesterday. We're literally seeing a generation up and coming that is aghast at the idea that they're anything less than godlike in their perfection. That's because they're free to constantly judge and condemn anyone and anything ever, while anything less than worship and praise for themselves is reckoned as hate and violence Not a good combo.

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  3. I like the Italian attitude. One can travel to Rome and view the ancient statues and busts of Trajan, Hadrian, Tiberius and other very unsatisfactory persons and not have to listen to a lecture on how evil they are to our righteous eyes. Quite a refreshing change from those in this country who delight in virtue signaling by tearing down monuments and name changing of schools and other institutions.

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    1. In fairness, this is rather new. All my life I learned about the shortcomings of the heroes of old. I learned Jefferson and Washington owned slaves. Lincoln had racist attitudes. Teddy Roosevelt was an imperialists. But these were balanced against the good and the goodness of their accomplishments. The whole 'destroy America's past' began after the Charleston shooting and the removal of Confederate flags - as anyone with a brain knew it would.

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  4. The parable of the publican and the tax collector comes to mind. We all like to think of ourselves as humble as the tax collector, but clearly the attitude of the publican lives on. Thank the Lord He judges not by our virtue signals but by our actual virtue, or repentance of the lack of it.

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    1. Yep. I sometimes think that's especially important for white liberals who spend all their time the racism of whites. I can't help but get the feeling what they really mean is 'all those whites over there who aren't as righteous as they are.' Worse, they're encouraging blacks to set aside any notion of forgiveness, humility, responsibility or anything and kick up the hate and blame and contempt for whites in ways hell and gone from Christian virtue.

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