When you commit a fault which humbles you and for which you are really sorry, it is a gain instead of a loss.
COMMENT: Here we see the great balance and humanity of Fr Doyle, which was also the great balance and humanity of many of Fr Doyle’s generation.
It is easy to fall into the prejudice that Catholics of previous generations were narrowly obsessed with sin and that they lacked mercy and balance. It was simply not so!
As Fr Doyle suggests, we truly can gain from our faults when we repent and humble ourselves and adhere more closely to Christ. The bitter experience of our weakness teaches us how little we are. It is those who are little, who know their limitations, who are most secure from temptation. On the contrary it is those who feel most secure in their own merits and virtues who are most likely to fall. Pride goes before the fall, as the saying goes.
The experience of our sins also fosters a great spirit of repentance – or compunction – in our soul. As the Imitation of Christ declares,
No man is worthy of Heavenly comfort who has not diligently exercised himself in holy compunction.
Being obsessed with sin is not a problem with Catholics. It’s their sense of superiority which comes down from the bishops. Throughout history Catholics have done good things but many more bad things. During the Crusades, all nine of them, the Catholics killed anyone who did not bow to the Pope. So they killed Jews in very large numbers and Slavs and Vikings and they even murdered other Catholics like the Eastern Orthodox Catholics and destroyed the beautiful city of Constantinople. These attacks lasted over 300 years. Then the Inquisition started. Now we have bishops who have no hearts and souls. My bishop in Arlington, VA issued an edict that “No women can be on the alter during mass.” So we had to move our music group and the girls who were alter servers had to stand in the aisles. They sent him a letter asking him to change his mind and he simply said “NO.” Pathetic. And the USCCB invited Mike Pence to speak at the commencement at Notre Dame University. They know who he is and what he represents. They’re the most pathetic and when the poor get poorer, and the sick get sicker because of Pence and his fake Christians, we can blame the US Catholic Bishops.