Discernment

As I've said recently, I'm trying to discern what direction I should take with this blog, or with the set of abilities I might take to some other effort. For now, I'm still praying. But I did get a couple of hints yesterday -- as they say, if you're catching flak, it means you're over the target.

The first was when one of our priests took me aside after mass. i'm aware that one or two people try to find out what parish we attend and attempt to complain about me to our clergy. I also knew that in mentioning that Fr Longenecker had spoken to our parish, this could give these folks a clue, and indeed, this is what happened. Fr _____ got an e-mail about this blog. The complainant, though, apparently hadn't read Fr Z's tips on how to make an effective complaint, and from Fr _____'s remarks, I got the impression that there were lots of caps and exclamation points, which seem to have caused him not to take it very seriously. He seems to have wondered if the person was a native speaker of English, in fact.

Anyhow, this gave me an opportunity to test one of my theories, that if one were to mention Anglicanorum coetibus to a diocesan priest, the reaction would be a quizzical expression. I was spot on. I did give him an 80,000-foot view of what I was trying to do with this blog, and without thinking, I blurted out the words "instant ordinations" and "disaster". This is the first time I ever put those words together in a short discussion of Anglicanorum coetibus, and it surprised me, but it occurred to me that perhaps this is related to my goals here. Maybe this is what I should be doing, I don't yet know fully. But thanks to my complainant for the help!

The other hint I got yesterday was from a regular visitor, who said

In today’s post, you quoted Deborah Gyapong as saying:

“There are some Catholics who take avoiding a “near occasion of sin” to such extremes that they create a whole new set of rules to put a hedge around such occasions, and then act as if violating one of the “preventive” rules is also somehow sinful. I am going to pronounce right now that this kind of thing is not part of our English Catholic/Anglican Patrimony going forward.”

in a post on another blog some time ago, and then proceeded to use this as a pretext to tarnish the ordinariates for not being authentically Catholic.

But, guess what?

It’s the very “preventive rules” forming fences around the real forbidden acts that are not authentically Catholic. In rejecting such fences, she — and the ordinariates — are more authentically Catholic than those who engage in such behavior.

Now I'm puzzled. I would say that a standard Catholic reading of "if your eye offends you, pluck it out" is in fact to avoid occasions of sin. For instance, if your computer makes it too easy to seek out pornography and you have no other option, get rid of your computer. I've heard this in homily after homily. I e-mailed him back and asked him to cite a Catholic authority that said it was OK not to do this. He complained that it was too hard to search the whole Catechism on line, but apparently he was unable to find the paragraph that said it was silly and unnecessary to avoid near occasions of sin.

He did cite the act of contrition, "I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin", but suggested that was just between the penitent and his confessor. And after all, if you don't go to confession, you don't have to worry about this stuff, right?

So who am I to question the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, which gives the dispensation for Anglicans within Catholicism not to have to avoid near occasions of sin?

These are little bits of my discernment process. I'm still not sure what to do with this thing, but I just thought people might want to know.