It is surprising to hear some Catholic's understanding of
the Mercy of God, and the absence of the necessity of
atonement or acts of reparation.
Confessing our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation
means that we admit what we did wrong, and that we
understand why it was wrong, because it hurt God and
usually another person(s) too.
We know that being literally forgiven by God in this
Sacrament is an immense grace that only exists in the
Catholic Church, we know it is because God wants to
draw us nearer to Him while we are still living in this
dimension, but most people also have an inbuilt sense of
justice and balance; weighing things up.
If someone breaks somebody else's window by his own
fault, he can confess this to the priest in Confession, but
he will more than likely be advised by the priest to go
to the person's house, and take responsibility for the
reparation and cost of the window.
It is only what any normal decent person would
do, who might not even be Catholic.
We are after all for the moment living in a material world.
But some seems to have an unrealistic idea of God, they
say that no matter what you do, God forgives unconditionally,
because of His Mercy.
But if they don't think that there are consequences for our
sins, how do they explain the existence of Purgatory, which
is part of our Faith?
Purgatory exists because most people are not pure enough to
enter directly into Heaven, we need to purge our sins first,
it is a logical consequence.
These people believe that everybody goes directly to
heaven,
no matter the quality of their soul and their person.
They do not believe in the existence of Hell either, even
though Jesus Christ Himself spoke about it often, in the
New Testament He mentions it 60 times,
it seems therefore a bit rich for anyone to decide that
we can ignore that part.
This attitude is a pure protestant one; it is a "once saved,
always saved" belief, but Catholicism teaches that we can
lose the grace of God at any moment, because of our fallen
nature, therefore we must never take God's Mercy for granted.
Being Catholic requires not only Faith, but also work.
Principally work on our self, self improvement, our own
sanctification.
I heard someone use the words; "we're off the hook", which
is not the right way to look at confession of our sins.
Going to Confession is never a light-hearted affair, and
why do we say in the Act of Contrition that we detest our sins
because of God's just punishment?
Modernism and relativism has brought much falseness into
many Catholics understanding of the Faith, they have made
it into a subjective, comfortable version that suits them.
But real Catholics are soldiers, they engage in the spiritual
battle every day, the battle against the evil one, and this is
far from comfortable, I would wonder about anyone who feels
comfortable.
God's reality is objective and unchanging.
