I’M SORRY, SO SORRY
What happens when your church does away with the concept of sin? Easy; you continually “repent” of stuff you didn’t do:
In response to the 2009 General Convention Resolution A-143, the Episcopal Church Executive Council’s Anti-Racism Committee has called for facilitated conversations and video viewing by dioceses and congregations to combat the sin of racism.
Resolution A-143 called for dioceses “to continue over the next six years a process to gather information in its community on (1) the complicity of The Episcopal Church in the institution of slavery and in the subsequent history of segregation and discrimination, (2) examples of resistance to slavery and discrimination and (3) the economic benefits derived by the Episcopal Church from the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery…”
To that end, the Anti-Racism Committee approved a resolution recommending the viewing of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, a PBS documentary in which producer/director Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors, the DeWolf family, were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.
The Anti-Racism Committee also recommended the utilization of facilitated dialogues offered by Dain and Constance Perry, members of the DeWolf family who participated in the preparation of Traces of the Trade and who facilitate conversations on racism and racial reconciliation.
I have this French Protestant ancestor who is supposed to have thrown in with the English Separatists at Leyden and came to North America on the Fortune, the boat that followed the Mayflower. I don’t know this for a fact but I guess he was harried out of France by anti-Hueguenot sentiment there.
Now I could probably get a nice little historical grievance thing going against the Roman Catholic Church if I felt like it. Organize a local Orange lodge, observe St. Bartholomew’s Day every year, that kind of thing. But I’m not going to.
For one thing, Your Editor don’t roll like that. For another, there’s the whole “not being French” aspect to consider here. And there isn’t a serious Catholic alive today, from the Pope on down, who isn’t embarrassed by all the violence committed against Protestants; for that matter, there isn’t a serious Protestant alive today who fervently wishes that his spiritual ancestors had just debated Catholics instead of burning them.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
But I have to tell you papists something. If the Vatican were to decide that killing Protestants was the single gravest sin the Roman Catholic Church had ever committed and if it were to assign every Catholic parish in the world the job of perpetually studying this sin and perpetually repenting of it, year after year, I wouldn’t be impressed.
I’d actually be kind of insulted.
If you wrong me in some way and then immediately say that you’re sorry, then as far as I’m concerned, that ends matters between us. Buf if you sin against me and then spend the next fifteen years annually “repenting”, then I won’t think that you’re serious at all.
I’d think you were a poser.
In response to the 2009 General Convention Resolution A-143, the Episcopal Church Executive Council’s Anti-Racism Committee has called for facilitated conversations and video viewing by dioceses and congregations to combat the sin of racism.
Resolution A-143 called for dioceses “to continue over the next six years a process to gather information in its community on (1) the complicity of The Episcopal Church in the institution of slavery and in the subsequent history of segregation and discrimination, (2) examples of resistance to slavery and discrimination and (3) the economic benefits derived by the Episcopal Church from the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery…”
To that end, the Anti-Racism Committee approved a resolution recommending the viewing of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, a PBS documentary in which producer/director Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors, the DeWolf family, were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.
The Anti-Racism Committee also recommended the utilization of facilitated dialogues offered by Dain and Constance Perry, members of the DeWolf family who participated in the preparation of Traces of the Trade and who facilitate conversations on racism and racial reconciliation.
I have this French Protestant ancestor who is supposed to have thrown in with the English Separatists at Leyden and came to North America on the Fortune, the boat that followed the Mayflower. I don’t know this for a fact but I guess he was harried out of France by anti-Hueguenot sentiment there.
Now I could probably get a nice little historical grievance thing going against the Roman Catholic Church if I felt like it. Organize a local Orange lodge, observe St. Bartholomew’s Day every year, that kind of thing. But I’m not going to.
For one thing, Your Editor don’t roll like that. For another, there’s the whole “not being French” aspect to consider here. And there isn’t a serious Catholic alive today, from the Pope on down, who isn’t embarrassed by all the violence committed against Protestants; for that matter, there isn’t a serious Protestant alive today who fervently wishes that his spiritual ancestors had just debated Catholics instead of burning them.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
But I have to tell you papists something. If the Vatican were to decide that killing Protestants was the single gravest sin the Roman Catholic Church had ever committed and if it were to assign every Catholic parish in the world the job of perpetually studying this sin and perpetually repenting of it, year after year, I wouldn’t be impressed.
I’d actually be kind of insulted.
If you wrong me in some way and then immediately say that you’re sorry, then as far as I’m concerned, that ends matters between us. Buf if you sin against me and then spend the next fifteen years annually “repenting”, then I won’t think that you’re serious at all.
I’d think you were a poser.
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