The Reward for Perversion by the Ordained

Gospel	Mark 9:41-50 ©

If your hand should cause you to sin, cut it off

Jesus said to his disciples:

  ‘If anyone gives you a cup of water to drink just because you belong to Christ, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward.

  ‘But anyone who is an obstacle to bring down one of these little ones who have faith, would be better thrown into the sea with a great millstone around his neck. And if your hand should cause you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter into life crippled, than to have two hands and go to hell, into the fire that cannot be put out. And if your foot should cause you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter into life lame, than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye should cause you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where their worm does not die nor their fire go out. For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is a good thing, but if salt has become insipid, how can you season it again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.’

If you have come expecting a rant against the Catholic Church you are bound to be disappointed in this post.  I am a Roman Catholic and I will always be a Roman Catholic and that is in spite of the foibles displayed by the all too human men that are in charge of our Church.  Look at the founder of our Church, he Himself had no shortage of traitors.  There was Judas who offended so deeply that in his own mind he thought his sin was unforgivable and he went out and hanged himself.  Then there was Peter, the Rock on which Jesus was going to build His Church.  The first chance that Peter got to stand up for the Lord, he did stand up and he walked away after looking the Master in the face.  He left and wept bitterly at his betrayal of Jesus.  

In our Church today, there exists an issue.  The sinfulness of an abhorrent nature committed over the decades has come back to haunt us.  Shocking tales of sexual mistreatment of children, adolescents, young seminarians, and lay people perpetrated have risen from the grave as if they were zombies looking for victims to devour.  The metaphor does not really work because it casts the renegades as victims and they were hardly that.  One by one over the course of time, the molesters are being unmasked and being removed from the ministry.  This is a good thing.  But we cannot forget those who made possible for this tragedy to continue and grow ever larger.  The people of high rank that covered up these atrocities against the People of God need to own up to what they have done and the need to leave the ministry. 

Jesus makes it clear as to what will happen to those among us that have sinned in this manner and fail to repent of it and accept the consequences, they will not be among that number, when the saints go marching in.