Sin

Last updated on: March 9, 2013 at 10:27 am by Dave Griffey

Sin 2013-03-09T10:27:00-04:00 Dave Griffey

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SIN

a : an offense against religious or moral law

b : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible sin

to waste food>

c : an often serious shortcoming : Fault

a : transgression of the law of God

b : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

Origin of SIN

Middle English sinne, from Old English synn; akin to Old High German sunta sin and probably to Latin sont-, sons guilty,est is

First Known Use: before 12th century

A word you don’t hear much in Catholic circles Nope. It’s just not a term used that often. Evil. Intrinsic evil. I’ve heard those terms used. But the word sin is not something that is overly used. I can’t remember the last time I heard the word in an actual homily. And when a particular issue is mentioned at all, it’s often in a very roundabout way. So I mentioned the other day that I’ve never heard homosexual relations called sinful. I’ve not heard them called wrong. I have heard priests point out that marriage is between a man and a woman. That does seem to suggest that marriage between any other combination is therefore wrong. Though sin, perhaps not. But maybe none of it is sin?

I learned as a pastor that you have to say it, say it again, say it one more time, then tell them you said it for the message to sink in. And even then you could have about a 20% failure rate of getting the point across. I can’t tell you how often the church I was serving would begin promoting something, like a special concert, weeks in advance. We would have posters and signs. We would have bulletin inserts. We would announce from behind the pulpit (that was OK in evangelical circles) the upcoming event for many Sundays. The last couple weeks before the event I would then add the final push to encourage everyone to come. And it never failed that someone would come up to me after the concert and say “Gee, I didn’t know we were having that. When did you say we were having a concert?” Sigh.

So given the tendency some people have of missing the train’s headlights, hiding things under bushels is no way to make a point. Priests could get up Sunday after Sunday and say ‘homosexuality is a disordered appetite and homosexual relations are sinful’ (assuming, that is, the Church still teaches this). They could do it for weeks, and you’d still have a hunk of the people not sure about where the Church stands on the issue. But since that’s not what I’ve seen priests or anyone do, and since when it’s brought up at all it’s in that sort of backdoor ‘we’re not saying anything at all about homosexuality, but we will say marriage is between a man and woman’ approach, we shouldn’t be surprised that one of the top demographic groups in America to come out in support of gay marriage is – you guessed it – American Catholics! Woohoo!

That’s because people usually don’t take exactly what you leave them with and stay there. For all the attempts to say ‘but for penetration, homosexual same sex attraction is a perfectly normal disorder’, that dog just isn’t going to hunt. People won’t leave it there. Questions will be asked. Puzzlement will occur. The obvious contradictions will be noticed. The pressures of the post-Western juggernaut will take their toll, and you’ll have folks just take it to the next step. Since clearly same sex attraction is one of the most wonderful disorders a person can have, and since the Church isn’t really coming out and saying it’s a sin or whatever other word it prefers, I’m just going to say it’s time to get with the act and go the final step. After all, we’re 9/10 there anyway, let’s just take it to the final obvious conclusion. Assuming this is not what the Church wants, I’d advise it start making things clear, or you’re going to have more and more Catholics deciding that whatever the Church is desperately trying not to say is sin must, in fact, be the way it should be.

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