Catholic Counter-Cultural Confessions.

If you doubted that the Catholic Church is becoming more conservative, doubt no longer. The new liturgy, which took 30 years to put together, is taking personal responsibility more seriously than it’s done for some time...

The older Missal, which had an act of confession requiring Catholics to beat their breasts and say, "Through my own fault", has now been replaced with a more demanding, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my own grievous fault." This all means 'Mea culpa' is being taken far more seriously. 

It may seem like it’s going backward, but it’s not such a bad idea. One of the gravest public sins of the 20th and 21st centuries is the brain numbing reluctance to accept responsibility for our actions. And it’s not just the tyrants of the Arab Spring who would rather kill their own people than give way to the democratic wishes of their people. Nor is it the political deflections of people like Robert Mugabe who chose to blame Europeans while he dismantled his own nation. It’s our public figures and servants who cling to power, and it’s our political celebrities who fail to acknowledge the moral case against them - even when the legal case against them crumbles in the court. 

It’s all of us. It’s me shuffling around in my head to pin the blame on a colleague for something I forgot to do and which has thrown everything out of sync. 

Ever since Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, 'Sorry' has been the hardest word. 

"It's my fault" times three is not a step backwards. In this regard Catholicism is helping us to keep up with the times.

Joel