It amazes me

in a sad and miserable way, that the topic of the month on the news-blogs of our cyberparish, is uproar over certain of our brothers and sisters in Christ --- granted, they're the mistaken ones or the bad-example ones, or the ones we don't agree with --- refusing to fall away. Now, back in the day, when I was growing up, we were eager to keep people from falling away,no matter how tenuously they were hanging on, since we knew that the grace of God was in the Church, and we could never be certain about outside. If anyone, no matter how totally screwed-up, stayed inside, where the grace of God is, there would be hope for ever-further conversion, baby-step by tiny baby-step. Yet nowadays, it seems to me, too many seem eager to chase their siblings into the outer darkness. Maybe this is another sign of the "soul-less society" that the Holy Father spoke about to our Wisconsin bishops the other day, that we need to resist. Lord have mercy on all of us dutiful elder brothers and sisters......
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