I don’t think purity is mere innocence; I don’t think babies and idiots possess it. I take it to be something that comes either with experience or with Grace so that it can never be naive. On the matter of purity we can never judge ourselves, much less anybody else. Anyone who thinks he’s pure is surely not.” In her last point O’Connor was applying the more general teaching of St. Paul, “Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). And in another passage St. Paul wrote along similar lines, “If any one thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal 6: 3).
Read homily by Cardinal Stafford here…
Purity is not a subject we’ve discussed before. It’s been in my mind recently, due to a number of conversations I’ve had with various people. Some have done away with their television sets because they wish to protect their children from impure images and sinister influences; others tell me that they have no problem watching sexually explicit scenes in films (“doesn’t affect me” or “as long as it is in context” – ! ) and on a number of occasions I’ve found myself in theatre with non-Catholic friends, feeling very uncomfortable with the show, by reason of crude language or impure ”jokes” or raunchy behaviour or immodest dress – although not usually all in the same show! It always strikes me just how endemic impurity is in our society when theatre-goers can attend a performance that appears to be “safe” only to find themselves subjected to immodesty and crudity.
So, are parents right to confiscate the television? To cut out theatre-visits? Maybe we should all do that? Should we be more selective with our viewing and reading? Sadly, Catholics are losing their Catholic sense of what is right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, in the matter of modesty in speech, action and dress.
Click on “comments” to tell us what you think of Cardinal Stafford’s homily and to share your ideas on the subject, your suggestions for how to protect, not just children, but ourselves as well.
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American Catholics who read Catholic Truth are savvy enough not to take at face value the latest report from Lifesitenews on the Scots Bishops reprimand to government about pro-”gay” legislation which undermines marriage and the family. Educated Catholics will recall our countless reports on priests around Scotland who undermine marriage and support the “gay” lifestyle. Yet, while they lecture the government, over whom they have absolutely no authority, these same bishops support their own dissident priests when they have all the authority they need to discipline them and remove them from positions of influence over souls. On the contrary, all the evidence to date reveals that such priests are publicly promoted and chosen over their faithful brother priests for signs of public favour. Pick up just about any edition of Catholic Truth for evidence of this.
Some of you will be disappointed that we do not applaud the Bishops for this public statement, telling us to praise where possible. Look. It goes without saying that we are always pleased to hear or read any Catholic bishop or priest saying and doing the right thing. But we don’t jump with joy and sing the praises of our doctor when he tells us we’re sick, as we stumble out of the surgery, crippled with arthritis, sneezing our heads off and shivering with fever. For goodness sake, a Catholic bishop denouncing homosexuality and upholding marriage should not be a matter for comment.
What IS a matter for comment is the fact that these same bishops refuse to denounce priests like Father Ed Hone, for example, who publicly support the homosexual lifestyle – even when he publicly, in the letters pages of our national quality newspapers denounced not one, but two bishops for statements similar to the one currently on offer. Let’s wait to see if he denounces all eight bishops… To date the score reads two down, six to go…
When you click on the link to read this latest “orthodox” pronouncement from the Scottish Bishops, take a look to your right at the rather crude photo selected by the editor to illustrate the piece and ask yourself why the editor of Scotland’s only Catholic newspaper did not choose a photo unambiguously modest in order to illustrate the Catholic virtues of modesty, purity and chastity integral to Catholic marriage and family life.
Click the link to read the story in the Scottish (anything but) Catholic Observer…