A CHURCH SEEKING FORGIVENESS.

The theme of the service is… A Church seeking forgiveness… This will be a non-sacramental service during which God will be asked for his mercy on the Church for the ways in which it has hurt, wounded and offended its members and the wider society. 
The above was the message on the bulletin of two parishes in Ayrshire, Scotland.  There was a great discussion on one website about whether the Church could sin and needed forgiveness.   Can the "Body of Christ sin?"  It can only sin if it teaches falsehood and lies for it is an institution devoted to the Truth which Christ wants the Church to reveal.  But it cannot do this for it is guided by the Holy Spirit.   Certainly members of the church can sin and have committed grevious sins against others but were it  was weak in one place it was always strong in another.   It has always had the saints throughout the ages calling her to repentance.   There has always been the struggle between good and evil in the Church for as St Paul tells us "our enemies are Principalities and Powers"

I do remember however listening to women way back speaking out about how they had been hurt by the Church.  They felt they had a calling to be women priests and the trick was to win sympathy by using words like 'hurt, wounded, and offended'.    There was a kind of emotional blackmail about it - they did not argue their case - just accused.   Such words are also used by those who cannot get the approval of the Church for their Divorce and Remarriage and their ban from receiving Communion.   For those women who support Abortion and want the Church to do so.   For two people who just decide to follow the norms of the Secular Society and just live together.  They want a Church that will not only ignore the teachings of Jesus, but a Church that will forget Jesus all together. 

Yet if we go back to the priests involved in the statement in the bulletins.  What was their motive?   I would hope that they would be praying for the young people the Church has failed.   There was an appalling report recently in the Times about the damage inappriagte sex was doing to young people still in their school years.   There is a report that now 50 per cent of 15 year olds have gone through the trauma of a divorce.   On divorce itself there are bishops and priests who claim that marriage is just an ideal  - what an insult to Christ.  It is now the norm in school for the majority of children not to be living with their natural father or their natural mother.   A loving stable family is becoming almost an ideal.   Yet the Church in Scotland and indeed England just looked the other way and 'looked after the poor'    I know a young girl who said she did not believe in God because if there was a God here family life would not be in such a mess.    Or the 16 year old who coming running into Church one day when I was adoring Jesus to tell me she had just found out who her natural Father was but when she phoned  him he swore at her and told her to clear off.  There are millions of stories like this.   Then the young people look at the Church and murmur - "You must be kidding"    So in the end when we talk about a Church seeking forgiveness let us stop sweeping the young under the carpet and pretend we are good people  and it is all the fault of the Church it is not - it is our smugness and complacency and wanting a Church to fit around us.            

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