The Church and Mercy

The Church is a visible manifestation of God's mission of mercy for his people.  As we heard in the Gospel today (Low Sunday), Christ established the Sacrament of Confession and entrusted its administration to His apostles so that his mission of mercy might be extended throughout the world.  The Church has ever followed that commission from our Blessed Lord, calling Her children to the Sacrament of Confession and offering them God's mercy.

On the other hand, it is not mercy to confirm people in their sinfulness and errors.  In fact, that is the opposite of mercy because it leads people away from the Sacrament of Confession by promising them some other route for the forgiveness of sins or even an easing of the conscience that erodes the concept of sin completely.

From this we can see that the Church's loving extension of mercy is not a concept that began sometime in the late 1960's, and it is not something that is being exercised to a greater extent by post-conciliar popes.  Arguably, the post-conciliar popes have acted against the Church's mission of mercy by leading souls into indifferentism and a Protestant understanding of salvation.

Charity (and, by extension, mercy) requires us to counsel the ignorant and to fraternally correct the erring.  I cannot imagine any greater example of charity and mercy than that offered by my friends during my recent troubles with the faith.  Thanks to their charity, I was led back into the True Faith, and through the Church's mercy, I went to Confession.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating God's mercy as He has so graciously bestowed this gift on the Church through Her Sacraments.  But, let us be wary of those who knowingly use words without their usual meaning or who make a point of breaking with the Church's past by setting up a dichotomous relationship between the Church of today and the Church of yesterday.  The Church is Christ's Mystical Body... Christ is God... God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.