This is a hard teaching, who can accept it

This is a hard teaching, who can accept it … and they left him and followed him no more.
I the church could be summed up in a verse or chapter of scripture, and it cannot because the church is scripture is Jesus is the church is scripture is Jesus. They are all the same thing very similar to the trinity. They are unique yet they cannot be separated, nor can one be understood without the context and understanding of the others.
As I write this the reminders of the trinity are striking, with the exception of course that Jesus is god the alpha and the omega and capable of standing alone. But through his great love for humanity, he humbled himself to become a creature fully god and fully human. And so on earth the 3 are inseparable, god the Church, and Scripture.
This is a mystery all it’s own, and yet the church has many hard teachings. And so Luther and Hnery the VIII did not break ground by leaving over teachings that were to hard to accept. Henry the VIII who started the church of England, Anglican church, the Episcopal church left because he found the church’s teaching and thus Jesus’s teaching and thus the bible’s teaching -- to hard he could not accept it.
Luther who was perhaps right about his objections to what some clergy were doing with regard to selling indulgences, nevertheless found the teaching of obedience to hard to accept. For Jesus himself told us that my mother, my brother, my sisters are the ones who following me and obey my commands. In the midst of controversy even scandal Luther four this teaching difficult and could not accept it.
I think many today in the Church, find teachings that are hard anc cannot accept them. I know I myself had much difficulty. But if we look at the Vice President of the United States of America, and the speaker of the House of Representatives, each of whom call themselves Catholics, and what is more public servants, American patriots. Yet, if we look at their stances on abortion and more importantly their voting records, what we see is that they are neither patriots nor are they Catholics, nor are they liberal Democrats.
The Liberal Democrats I know are people like Robert F. Kennedy, who I believe may have been devout enough to be considered for canonization, and Tip O’Neil, Irish, catholic Democrat who never supported abortion, and David Roberti in my own state of California, oddly the first victim of term limits, Presednt Pro-tem of the California State Senate for many years and never supported abortions.
True liberals stand up and fight for the civil rights of those who have them denied, patriots know that this country won it’s freedom on the foundation of the principle that all are created equal endowed by their creator with certain rights that unalienable – inseparable from the individual human being – that among these are Life. Science everyday tells us that a unique human being is formed at conception.
These humans are having their rights denied instead of protected by the government. In fact the government has slipped back to our pre-revolutionary way of thinking, when it grants privileges to one class of human being over the rights of another. This is old reactionary thinking, back to the days of Henry the VIII, pre Magana Carta stuff, let alone pre Declaration and Bill of rights thinking.
I know that I have turned and said this is a hard teaching who can accept it and have turned away in to disobedience – sin. Fortunately we have the sacrament of confession and can turn back toward Our Lord and re-enter the kingdom of heaven on earth in the manner prescribed by Our Lord and written by us in the Gospels.


And so we see people having been leaving Jesus, saying this is a hard teaching, who can accept it from the time of the Gospel through to the present.

Peace be with you

Copyright 2009 Fred Celio