tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26883902.post7112247090013698858..comments2024-03-25T11:09:41.538-04:00Comments on a minor friar blog: The Indifference WithinBrother Charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07780326836452864455noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26883902.post-1354176383473608082012-01-30T06:02:04.508-05:002012-01-30T06:02:04.508-05:00“Despite wanting to give my life to Jesus Christ a...“Despite wanting to give my life to Jesus Christ and his Church, and despite many, many hours sitting in the parlor and the confessional observing the misery we insist upon for ourselves with our disorderly sexual lives...”<br /><br />The gift is to discern where we are truly wanting to give our lives to Christ, or merely wanting to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. A symptom of the latter is boring our confessors with the sins that injure our pride of self: ‘Oh woe is me, I can’t be the person I want to be...’ can really just be a case worshipping at the shrine of an idealised self. It can also be a pious means of self-obsession... and even feeling burdened with ‘sin’ can be a means of inverted pride.<br /><br />I can understand that you are grieved by the ‘acceptance’ of what you suggest is deviant sexual behaviour (and given I have known a Franciscan friar and a priest as patients and alas both had AIDS acquired after vows – sexual misdemeanours occur not just in the ‘world’). Sexual sin of course goes against nature and the use God intended for our bodies. Tho’ I marvel that much is made of this ‘misuse’ of the body; it is easy enough to find a Christian blog (particularly and ironically in the USA) that has a disproportionate number of posts concerning sexuality – and particularly what some see as ‘against nature’. However I have yet to find a blog or ‘conservative’ Christian website that notes how gluttony is also a ‘sin’ against nature – that consistently eating more than the body needs, is likewise seen as a sin in Scripture and named as a specific sin in the RC Church tradition. <br /><br />I must confess I was quite shocked having a nose around your blog and website to note how many of your community have – to be kind – a corpulent fullness. In the words of the psalmist ‘Their eyes shine from folds of fatness...’ (Ps 73:7 (Septuagint reading, but the version used in many monastic and mendicant offices)). That said, it is difficult to find a post lamenting this state of affairs – but a scene from a tawdry sitcom and we get treated to a little lament on the errors of indifference... So much for 1 Corinthians 5:12! But then as is often the case with the religiously inclined, pointing the finger is so much easier than holding up a mirror...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com