Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: July 03, 2016
In view of this past week’s Memorial Mass for my recently-deceased mother, Mrs. Lettie Deas Counce, I wanted to take one final opportunity to thank everyone in the Cathedral Parish community for the outpouring of support and promised prayers they’ve shown. On behalf of my family I offer special thanks to Mrs. Sheila Juneau, our Parish Director of Administration, and Bishop Robert Muench, for going “above and beyond the call of duty” in everything they did to help. Special gratitude also goes out from me to Mr. Robbie Giroir, our Director of Music and organist, Mr. Andy Plaisance, our Cantor, and to Ms. Borislava Iltcheva and her colleagues who provided beautiful string quartet music.
While much of the world’s attention last week was directed towards Europe, where voters in Great Britain chose to end their special membership within the European Union of nations, Pope Francis made a remarkable visit to the western Asian nation of Armenia. Following upon the work of Sts. Bartholomew and Jude in the 1st century, Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in the early 4th century.
While visiting, the Pope principally worked to build up the already good ecumenical relations the Catholic Church has with the Orthodox and other ancient Oriental Christian Churches there. Working toward Christian unity is a priority for the Holy Father, as it should be for all of us. One of Pope Francis’ insights is that there is plenty of blame to go around for the often mean-spirited and myopic religious views that, in the course of history, so often aggravated real religious questions into ruptures. He is not shy about apologizing for the Catholic Church’s failures in the past, often receiving similar acknowledgments of regret from those who have in the past also erred.
On his flight back to Rome, Pope Francis even expanded on this idea while answering a question that had brought up the recent terrorist shooting at a nightclub in Orlando. In so doing he specifically mentioned one group of people who often think that the Church hates them: those who experience same-sex attraction.
In sum, the pope said gay persons must not be discriminated against, conceding that there are “some traditions and cultures that have a different mentality.” He noted that rightly the Church ought to apologize in cases of discrimination, and referred to the official doctrine of the Church, which calls all people to sexual purity but also emphasizes the need to accompany and respect homosexual persons.
Most importantly, Pope Francis went on to add that similar apologies whenever there are “people we could have defended and we didn’t” are in order. The Church “should ask forgiveness also from the poor, from exploited women, from child workers. It has to ask forgiveness for having blessed so many weapons. Christians should ask forgiveness for not having accompanied – that is, been there for – so many persons and families.” To the Holy Father’s list of errors which the Church was slow to recognize and condemn I think should be added “human slavery.” Recent news stories, even in Louisiana, have revealed that far too many religious orders and parishes, as well as individual Catholic priests and other leaders, owned and exploited slaves. That’s a sad reminder of how much we all need God’s forgiveness.
Part of the Holy Father’s remarks were this doubled-edge sword of truth: “All of us are saints, because we all have the Holy Spirit inside us, but we’re all also sinners.” In addition to simply saying “I’m sorry,” he noted, people have to recover a sense of their need for forgiveness in order for such apologies to be sincere. That’s good advice to people everywhere!
As always, in Christ,
Father Paul
