“The Church is not interested in spiritual mediocrity. It’s calling people to sainthood, to be a saint means to be heroically virtuous. The family is a school of virtue, a school of sanctity, it’s meant to make us saints. We’re not interested in a dumbed down or a dialled down ideal. … And as anyone in the pastoral life know, people struggle to attain this level.
People struggle to live at that saintly level, so what do we do? The Pope says there are two classical paths: One is the path of exclusion and using the law as a weapon…..Let me read from Chapter Eight:
“There are two ways of thinking that reoccur throughout the Church’s history: Casting off and reinstating. The Church’s way, from the time of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) on, has been the way of Jesus; the way of mercy and reinstatement. . . .”
So what do you do when someone is not living at the highest level of sanctity? Cast you off; the law says this! Well, OK, there is that path. But the Pope says, “The Church’s way has always been the way of mercy and reinstatement.”
Always.
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