"When sin was multiplied ..."

“Come to where you went! .. You can’t get an easy journal, judge such subjects,” Gogol wrote in his response to Belinsky for the very famous letter that we took place at school. Today in America, not only people with a journal, but also without it are judged by "such subjects". The main discussion is concentrated around Celibacy.

There is no dispute, it is not easy for a young man to observe a vow of celibacy. But who said that life is easy? Recall that the only saved righteous of Sodom was not an ascetic, huddled in a cave and feeding on acrides, but having a lot of wife and children. Recall that one of the brightest heroes of Russian literature, the monk Alyosha, “son of a voluptuous and holy fool,” and therefore, he finds “the power of the baseness of Karamazovskaya” in himself, and that the elder blesses him for “great obedience in the world” and tells him “to“ cheer up ”. About the flesh, carnal temptations and joys, as well as about the suffering of the flesh, the Bible says almost more than about the spirit. Righteousness and immaculate only then are indestructible, when they went through the temptation and defeated it when they are the fruit of a conscious choice. “The temple is Golgotha, but the temple is Bethlehem,” writes Vasily Rozanov in his review of “Kreutzer Sonata”, under the Bethlehem of the understanding of the family.

Of course, speaking of a marriage, we are talking about the sacrament bequeathed to the Moses of the tablets and consecrated by the Eucharist; Indeed, for a Catholic-Miryan, a second marriage, unless he was widowed, is excluded. The Christian, who at least once passed through the sacrament of participle, becomes part of the common flesh, which is said in the first Pavlov Epistle to the Corinthians: "Do not you know that your bodies are members of Christ?" (6:15). So why is it painful for other people's sins and ashamed of their own!

Among the participants in the current discussion in America there are enough any wisdom, reasoning, for example, about the difference between pedophilia and homosexuality. The fact that among those who had stopped the law of God and worldly a lot of those whom the priest seduced in childhood. About that, finally, that there are among them and those who in his youth encountered insurmountable problems when communicating with girls. All this is a judgment. It is enough to imagine in the place of the child -victims of his own son or daughter - and everything will fall into place.

What should the church do with the shepherds who betrayed their flock? And Paul has an answer to this: “Opery you depraved from Wednesday” (I Cor., 5:13). Other commentators of the papal message to the American cardinals claim that the pontiff expressed himself ambiguously. Nothing of the kind. "The abuse, which entailed the current crisis ... The society rightly considers the crime; this is a terrifying sin and in the eyes of the Lord." This is what John Paul II said. And further: "It is bunny to know that in the priesthood and religious life there is no place for those who disfigure youth." It is said extremely clear. A hint of justification is seen, however, in that place of the message, which speaks of the power of Christian repentance, which can completely transform the soul of the sinner. Pope speaks about the insufficient knowledge of the creature of the problem, and about bad experts, the advice of which were used by hierarchs. Nevertheless, the root of evil, he points out, does not lurk in the church only, but in society it is a "deep crisis of sexual morality and human relationships themselves." The church, promised a pontiff, "will help society understand this crisis and cope with it."

A survey conducted in the United States a few days before the 2000 presidential elections showed that the very acute problem of America, voters consider not taxes, not a state of economy, and, of course, not foreign policy, but a decline in morality - 68 percent of the Americans stated this. The voting results showed that the country could not make a choice between conservatism, which personified George Bush, and Liberal Al Gorr. Some see all the evil and filth in the world, the root cause of America’s social problems in oblivion of traditional moral values. Their opponents argue that these values ​​cannot be imposed and that individual freedom is the only true value of America.

The baptized world decides this dilemma for centuries. The dispute about the freedom of conscience was still Blessed Augustine and Pelagia, and then Luther and Erasmus, who answered his opponent: "If there is no freedom, then there is no sin." There is no ban on the marriage of priests in Scripture - Paul writes only about the desirability of celibacy. Celibath should become a voluntary schema - in this many today see the solution to the problem.

It is known that John Paul II is an opponent of such a reform as the ordination of women. However, he said nothing about it in his message. Test time, Papa is sure, "will bring cleansing the entire Catholic community." And he again referred to Paul: “When sin was multiplied, it began to transient grace” (Rom., 5:20). Let it be so.