'Go Tell It on the Mountain,' its pages heavy with sinners brought low and prayers groaning on the wind, scared me when I read it as a teenager.
I am an old sinner; and if God had designed mercy for me, he would have called me home to himself before now.
I first read 'The Scarlet Letter' when I was fifteen. In it, I found a familiar vision of religious intolerance to the one around me. I grew up in the 1980s, when televangelists, with their fluffed up hair and their tears, self-righteously denounced all kinds of sinners, reserving a special, full-throated enthusiasm for gay people.
When criminals go free, the hope is that history will come in and provide some level of justice. It won't correct the sins, but it will at least record them. The sinners would be known, and the victims' stories would be known.
There is no benefit to the conservative sinner in being a conservative. There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal.
We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.
The sinner will not confess, nor will the priest receive his confession, if the veil of secrecy is removed.
We're all just a bunch of sinners, but we do the best we can.
In Pope Francis, I see a leader who lives every day in the image of Jesus. Under his guidance, the church is focused once again on providing comfort, compassion and salvation for sinners, the poor, and those who seek peace in an increasingly complex world. That's my Catholicism.
Life is not to be expended in vain regrets. No day, no hour, comes but brings in its train work to be performed for some useful end - the suffering to be comforted, the wandering led home, the sinner reclaimed. Oh! How can any fold the hands to rest and say to the spirit, 'Take thine ease, for all is well!'
