Pope Francis: In God there is both justice and mercy
The Pope in his homily of February 24, 2017 said that we should not become obsessed with the “fine points of legal interpretation.” What were these objectionable fine points? When I asked a local churchman whom I admire, I was lectured on how canon law was only about a hundred years old and not integral to the lasting faith of the Church. But I never mentioned canon law. I just wanted reaffirmation about basic right and wrong. The Catholic definition of faith was always in terms of charity and obedience. Thus the laws of God will always be crucial to our overall discipleship. Jesus might have said, “Woe to lawyers,” but his ire was the gravity given human laws above divine laws and placing unwieldy burdens upon people who were struggling to be faithful. It was not a renunciation of the Decalogue or Christ’s two-fold commandment or his singular treatment of the divorce question. It is true that Jesus sometimes seemed to raise the bar but always with the assurance that his grace would lighten the load, even as we took up our crosses to follow him.
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