{"id":18588,"date":"2013-04-04T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=18588"},"modified":"2020-02-25T14:15:35","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T21:15:35","slug":"but-what-about-church-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2013\/04\/04\/but-what-about-church-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"But what about Church Scandal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently corresponding with someone who kept bringing up the recent <a title=\"Sex Abuse Facts\" href=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2012\/03\/22\/sex-abuse-facts\/\">scandals<\/a> in the Catholic Church. Here&#8217;s how I replied:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>Your constant refrain concerning\u00a0<b>scandal<\/b>\u00a0in the Church\u00a0suggests to me that this is a significant issue for you. It&#8217;s\u00a0understandable. It is for many people.\u00a0In fact, during the early centuries of Christianity this was an extremely important and controversial question: should those who\u00a0<b>denied Christ<\/b>\u00a0under persecution, or who\u00a0<b>surrendered the Holy Scriptures<\/b>\u00a0to be burnt, be readmitted to the Church if they repented? Should those ordained members who renounced their faith be able to return to ministry? <\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>There was a schismatic group called the\u00a0Donatists\u00a0who said\u00a0&#8220;Absolutely not!&#8221; \u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>At the heart of the matter was the question:\u00a0<b>what is the Church?<\/b>\u00a0The Donatists viewed the Church as a\u00a0<b>Museum of Saints<\/b>. The Catholic Church rejected this limited and narrow understanding. Instead, She said that the Church was a\u00a0<b>Hospital for Sinners<\/b>. She would therefore readmit fallen away Christians if they repented.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>As a consequence, the Church often looks (and smells!) like a hospital. The Church is full of medicine, nurses and doctors, but She is also full of damaged people and the walking wounded. There are often outbreaks of disease. It often doesn&#8217;t look pleasant, but it is the best place to be for those who need healing. For this, I&#8217;m grateful, otherwise I fear I could never be admitted.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-18589 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Hospital.png\" alt=\"Hospital\" width=\"263\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Hospital.png 375w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Hospital-300x288.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 263px) 100vw, 263px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently corresponding with someone who kept bringing up the recent scandals in the Catholic Church. Here&#8217;s how I replied: Your constant refrain concerning\u00a0scandal\u00a0in the Church\u00a0suggests to me that this is a significant issue for you. It&#8217;s\u00a0understandable. It is for many people.\u00a0In fact, during the early centuries of Christianity this was an extremely important and controversial question: should those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[676,2085,2969,76,263,446,2128],"class_list":["post-18588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-church","tag-controversy","tag-featured","tag-hospital","tag-saints","tag-sin","tag-sinners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18588"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75343,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18588\/revisions\/75343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}