5 minute read
Ask a Franciscan
Pat McCloskey, OFM
Father Pat welcomes your questions!
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WE HAVE A DIGITAL archive of Q & As, going back to March 2013. Just click: • the Ask link and then • the Archive link. Material is grouped thematically under headings such as forgiveness, Jesus, moral issues, prayer, saints, redemption, sacraments, Scripture—and many more! By Pat McCloskey, OFM
Understanding Sins of Omission I realize that I can sin by some action (for example, murder or theft), but I have never understood how someone can sin by inaction, by not doing something. How is that possible?
Yes, sins of commission (such as the examples you cited) are pretty easy to recognize. A sin of omission can easily slip under a person’s radar because “That’s just the way life is” or “Nobody else took action in that situation.”
On November 22 this year, the Gospel for Christ the King Sunday will be Matthew 25:31–46 (Jesus separating the sheep from the goats at the Last Judgment). Those condemned (the goats) are not identified by deliberate actions against people who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, or in prison. Instead, those who are condemned have only one thing in common: one or more sins of omission, a failure to recognize women, men, and children in great need as people also loved by God and intended to share eternal life with God.
If that story were longer, we might hear the condemned people asking: “Who knew they mattered?,” “Everybody suffers at some time,” or “Life is always rough.”
The prophet Amos denounces the Israelites who reclined on ivory couches, ate well, “but are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph” (6:6b). The prophet Isaiah speaks for God in saying, “Trample my courts no more! To bring offerings is useless. . . . Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow” (1:13a, 17b).
In the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1 about bringing glad tidings to the poor, proclaiming liberty to captives, and bringing recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners.
The rich man in Luke 16:19–31 was not deliberately cruel to Lazarus, but he ignored a very needy man at his gate. James 2:14–16 tells us that responding to a hungry person needing clothes by saying, “Goodbye and good luck! Keep warm and well fed,” while making no attempt to address those needs indicates a lifeless faith.
The overall sin in all these examples—and Scripture offers many more—is deliberately making invisible someone in great need. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
What Is the Kingdom of God? Please explain in simple language the concept of the kingdom of God.
What Jesus means by the expression the kingdom of God is accepting God’s values as trustworthy and enough, not needing any “improvements,” as we often describe them.
Unfortunately, many of Jesus’ critics during his lifetime were like the Statler and Waldorf characters in The Muppets, the two grumpy old men who sit in the balcony and freely offer critiques about everyone else’s work. Those critics live on today. C.S. Lewis once observed that some people would rather be Jesus’ critics than his disciples.
Accepting the kingdom of God means being wide open to God’s grace, being content with any place at the heavenly banquet, and rejoicing
in whoever is across from me or next to me.
When the kingdom of God has taken deep root in a person’s life, there is no sense of “If only I had X, then my life would be complete.” God is enough for those who accept God’s values and the kingdom that these promote.
Who Wrote the Gospel of John? I was surprised to read in an earlier “Ask” column that John the Apostle did not write the Gospel of John. Who did?
We are not entirely sure. First, I should point out that only around the year AD 125 were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John first identified by Papias as the authors of the Gospels. Some Gospels presumed to be written by other prominent Christians were not accepted into the Bible—the Gospel of Thomas, for example.
A distinct Johannine community of faith is linked to the Gospel of John. In the New Jerusalem Bible Commentary, scholar Pheme Perkins writes, “[T]he importance of the community’s history of faith in shaping the Johannine tradition makes preoccupation with a single Johannine author inappropriate today.”
We are naturally curious about many questions that the Bible does not answer definitively. Are we sufficiently ready to accept the answers it offers about how we are to live, as well as how we see ourselves, God, and other people?
How Is a Pope Elected?
Once a pope dies or resigns, all the cardinals come to Rome, if they can travel. Then they meet for several days in general congregations, discussing their views on the current needs of the Church and collectively making decisions about the upcoming papal funeral (if there will be one) and the conclave. The dean of the College of Cardinals leads these meetings that are held twice a day over a week or so. Cardinals over the age of 80 may participate.
Only cardinals under the age of 80 can enter the conclave and vote. A twothirds majority is needed, but a pope can decline his election. Each pope can modify the rules about the election of his successors. To date, Pope Francis has not done that. At the conclaves in 2005 and 2013, cardinals lived in the Domus Sanctae Marthae inside the Vatican—without access to outside media.
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