Thank you for this. A blessed Christmas and a beautiful 2019.
On going mainstream: my wife suggested this last week. One reason I hesitate is that if I go really public with my views on certain subjects, I risk ecclesiastical censure. I am increasingly convinced that both our priest-people relationships and our approach to body and sexuality belong to patterns that civil society has, to a large extent, rightly abandoned long ago.
You say ‘If I do something wrong? I think that I can recognise that quite often…’ For me this comes to the core of the matter. Much of Christian praxis boils down to (re)gaining a sense of the truth, and of when we are ‘in the true’. ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (Jn 8: 32). This is probably what the imagery of the Last Judgement is all about: Christ facing us with the absolute truth about ourselves, and our ability to face that truth, relying on the mercy of Him in whom ‘mercy and truth have met together’ (Ps 85:10). It is when we are in the true, that things start to ‘flow’.
About ‘departing from church doctrine’ - I really believe that if one ‘goes wrong’ honestly, God will sooner or later gently prod us back onto track. And to take the risk of doing so is better than to spend one’s entire life playing safe.
On going mainstream: my wife suggested this last week. One reason I hesitate is that if I go really public with my views on certain subjects, I risk ecclesiastical censure. I am increasingly convinced that both our priest-people relationships and our approach to body and sexuality belong to patterns that civil society has, to a large extent, rightly abandoned long ago.
You say ‘If I do something wrong? I think that I can recognise that quite often…’ For me this comes to the core of the matter. Much of Christian praxis boils down to (re)gaining a sense of the truth, and of when we are ‘in the true’. ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (Jn 8: 32). This is probably what the imagery of the Last Judgement is all about: Christ facing us with the absolute truth about ourselves, and our ability to face that truth, relying on the mercy of Him in whom ‘mercy and truth have met together’ (Ps 85:10). It is when we are in the true, that things start to ‘flow’.
About ‘departing from church doctrine’ - I really believe that if one ‘goes wrong’ honestly, God will sooner or later gently prod us back onto track. And to take the risk of doing so is better than to spend one’s entire life playing safe.
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