The sinner, not the sin

As usual, the advocates and backers of anti-life, anti-family and anti-marriage measures particularly some media people are putting different slants and forming their own conclusions and interpretations on the comments and answers of Pope Francis during an interview conducted last August, 2013 by Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadadero, Editor of Italian Journal, La Civilta Cattolica. The interview was contained in a 12,000-word article published only last Thursday highlighting the Pope’s allegedly “remarkably blunt” message specially on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

Media (excluding the Philippine Star) put too much hype on the Pope’s supposed appeal to Catholics to “shed off its obsession with the teachings on these subjects and become more merciful, or risk the collapse of its entire moral edifice like a house of cards”. From these statements of the Pope, media are claiming that he is revolutionizing and liberalizing the doctrines of the Church on abortion, contraception, and gay marriage, in striking contrast with his predecessors Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. This is really overstretching the meaning of the Pope’s comments on these issues.

Actually, this is the actual words of the Pope. He said: “The Church sometimes is locked up in small things, in small minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the Church must be ministers of mercy above all. The Confessor for example is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful because neither of them is taking responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandments. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying this is not a sin or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we mut heal their wounds”.

The Pope here is not realy liberalizing the Church dogma on these issues. He is merely reminding the Catholic clergy and the laity to emulate Jesus Christ by not judging and immediately condemning sinners and instead show them mercy, love and understanding. Pope Francis is actually telling us to distinguish the sin from the sinner; to distinguish the acts done in contravention of God’s will, embodied in the Church teachings like abortion, contraception and gay marriages and the person committing those acts. The Pope is simply telling us not to condemn a person right away. But in making that appeal, it does not mean that he is condoning the sin that is inherently evil, and liberalizing the Church doctrines on this matter. In other words in showing our mercy and love for sinners, we are not condoning the sin.

In putting “love over dogma” as media interprets the Pope’s stance in this regard, the Pope is just telling us Catholics that “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the Church for that matter is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time”.

This stance of the Pope has many examples in the Scriptures about the public life of Jesus when He was going around proclaiming the Good News and the Kingdom of God. There is the parable of the Good Shepherd taking care of one hundred sheep who left the flock in order to seek and find one of them who went astray in the wilderness (Luke, 15: 1-32). Then there is the woman with a very bad name who went to the house of Simon the Pharisee after learning that Jesus was there and was pardoned by Jesus after manifesting her great love for Him (Luke 7: 36-50). Then there was Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, answering the Pharisees who saw him at the house of Matthew that “It is not the healthy that need the doctor but the sick… What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous but the sinners (Matthew 9: 9-13). Then there are also a scene where Jesus was chastising the Pharisees for strictly sticking to the rules instead of showing more love and mercy.

Let us not therefore ascribe wrong interpretations to that Pope’s interview. He is not challenging the doctrines of Church or backing down on Church on these issues on abortion, contraception and gay marriages. He is not liberalizing or changing the moral truth about the inalienable right to life from conception until natural death. In fact in a recent message to a gathering of doctors and gynecologists which was published right after that interview but not given as much importance the Pope condemned the evils of abortion when he said that: “Every unborn child though unjustly condemned to be aborted has the face of the Lord who even before his birth, and then as soon as He was born, experience the rejection of the world”.

Obviously these latest controversy about the Pope’s alleged revolutionary interview has some connection about the Church opposition to the RH law. But the issues about this law now pending before the Supreme Court concerns legal or constitutional and not necessarily moral issues.

E-mail: attyjosesison@gmail.com