On Good Friday, the Holy Father seemed to shock the Catholic world by appearing in a fiddleback... Most were pleased, some rainbow loving Von Harnack Fans weren't to happy at all. But it was rather sad that nobody really picked up on what the Holy Father actually said.
A while ago, I had a conversation with a friend about contraception. She was formed in a time were most priests were telling people that contraception was fine. 'It's your own conscience'. When I mentioned to her about contraception being wrong, she said that I was implying she was a sinner and she thought she was a good person, who wouldn't be judged for being sensible for family planning.
When Pope Benedict spoke on Good Friday, he was talking about how Christ challenges human certainties. He spoke of how Our Lords death on the Cross should question us and challenge us. That those who seek only Love and Libery that exclude God cannot allow the Cross to question us, because we don't understand the meaning of self emptying love such as that demonstrated on the Cross.
Jesus is, as the pope described Jesus as the truth that makes us free to Love. 'Let us not be afraid' was the banner of the Gospel and of John Paul II, and our Holy Father Pope Benedict used that banner so well when he said:
'Let us not be afraid. Upon dying the Lord destroyed death and saved sinners, that is us all'
The reality is, nice person or not, we all have the tendancy to sin. Thus we are all in need of God's grace and His guidance not our own. The Bishops of the Phillipines said sorry to their people because they had let them be formed in their own consciences, without realising that their consciences had to be formed by God, not by themselves.
Let's take the challenge and the question of the Cross seriously, that event was all for us; because nice man or not, we are all sinners and we all are in need of the Lord and his merciful Love.
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