Amoris Laetita: Opening An Even Bigger Door?

Well, Amoris Laetitia is out and krazies are spattered with the fecal matter they have thrown into the fan.   Everyone is reacting to it—progressives and conservatives.  After Mass yesterday it was the only subject of conversation during the coffee hour.  The pastor and the parochial vicar have some very different thoughts on it, though I would label neither of them “conservative.” One little old lady couldn’t stop crying as she told us how she had gone forty years without Holy Communion—“every Sunday having my heart pulled out of my chest and crushed,” because she had left an abusive husband and civilly married a man—who could provide for her five girls.  She loved her second husband and she found graces every day in their relationship; she had grown deep in prayer and grace throughout the years, but her hunger for the Eucharist had to go unsatisfied.  Finally able to have her marriage in the Church blessed (the abusive husband has died), she is at Mass every morning and says she never takes the sacraments for granted.   Another woman told us “I am in an invalid marriage and I can go to Holy Communion every day.  O, we were married by a priest—at Mass even—but we have always planned, because of a gene that runs in my family for dwarfism—not to have children.  That renders my marriage invalid.  But I know that before God Bob and I stand in his grace.  And nothing keeps me away from the Christ in the Eucharist.”

I want to look at Amoris Laetitia not as a pastoral document about the remarried but from a different perspective, a sign of greater things to come in the Church.  For almost five centuries Catholic theology, like its Liturgy, had been frozen and not allowed to develop.  This was due primarily as a reaction to the Protestant Reformations and the challenges to our traditional faith.  Through those Middle Ages where the Church was so strong, the universities were the center of theological debate.  A particular subject of debate was whether the Blessed Virgin had been conceived with or without Original Sin.  The Dominicans, ironically, opposed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Franciscans and Carmelites supported it.  But all matter of theological topics were up for argument and it was from the give-and-take, in the arguments pro and con, that the magisterium was able to formulate doctrines.  The Reformation put an end to all that.  Martin Luther posted his list of 95 theses he wanted to debate at the University Church of Wittenberg and suddenly the Church said: no more debate.  We will define our doctrines sitting here in our Roman ivory towers.  Students for priesthood were pulled from the universities and locked into closed seminaries where ideas could be controlled.  Catechisms for the laity and manuals for the seminarians appeared: here are the questions: here are the answers.  Memorize the answers.  It was a time of doctrinal retrenchment.  And it only got worse.  In the nineteenth century as Protestant scholars begin looking at the scriptures from historical, linguistic, and structural perspectives and new insights began to emerge: there are four sources for the Book of Genesis not a single author; Paul did not write Hebrews (among other books attributed to him); there are inconsistencies in the Resurrection narrative, etc.   And then scholars—both Catholic and Protestant—got into the Church Fathers and found some wide discrepancies both among the Fathers and between the Fathers and contemporary Catholicism.  Rome totally freaked and the papacies of Leo XIII and Pius X built a strong firewall against “modernism.”  The walls did not last.  In the years after WWI, Catholic scholars surreptitiously began working again in the forbidden fields.  Some were caught and silenced—Congar, Chenu, deLubac—but the tide was overwhelming.  In 1943 Pius XII sanctioned biblical studies with the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. The work of the historians and patristic scholars came out into the light again as well.   Little by little the Catholic intellectual world began to open up again.

The one area that has remained shut—indeed padlocked—is the sexual moral theology.  When it comes to morality of economics, politics, immigration, human rights—no problem.  The Church has made huge strides.   But don’t dare say a word about human sexuality.  Any number have tried—including Charles Curran—and the axe always falls.  Hopefully Amoris Laetitia is the unchaining of a much-needed theological investigation into contemporary issues for which the old sixteenth-century answers no longer seem to work.

No intellectual discipline stands in a vacuum and especially today there is an appreciation for the interdisciplinary nature of sound scholarship.  Theology always stood on the shoulders of Philosophy.  Today—if it is to have credibility—the Church also needs both to dialogue with and to draw on the sciences: the behavioral sciences, the social sciences, and the physical sciences.  This does not mean “surrendering” to the surrounding culture—far from it.  In the spinning whirl of contemporary culture the Church needs to keep its compass pointed to the Truth but it does not do this by burying its head in the sands of the answers of simpler days.    Today we face not only divorce and remarriage, but same-sex attraction, gender identity, artificial conception, genetic engineering, stem-cell research, embryology, various forms of contraception, abortion, surrogacy, and even potential cloning of human persons.  We have a lot of work to do to catch up on our scientific knowledge and bring it into dialogue with our theology if we are to have anything credible to say—or be listened to—in the world in which we live.  To quote a famous moral theologian: If the Church does not listen to the world, then the world will never listen to the Church.   

Finally, one more note about Amoris Laetitia.  In the years before, during, and for sometime after Vatican II there was an outstanding moral theologian teaching in Rome: Father Bernard Häring, CSsR.  Häring taught moral theology in Rome from 1949 until 1987.  He had a very different approach than other theologians, declaring that moral action was not about following a set of external rules, but fundamentally a dialogue between the soul and God with the soul desiring to root itself in God’s will.  I think Amoris Laetitia calls us all—not only the divorced and remarried—to do just that: with rigorously honest hearts to conform our actions to the will of God as best as we can discern, and leave the laws and prescripts to the scribes and the Pharisees who choose to live by law rather than by grace. Häring was pushed into a gentle exile by Cardinal Ratzinger in the John Paul years.  His methodology was seen as too dangerous to the sort of authority Rome wanted to exercise.  I think that in many ways, Amoris Laetitia is a vindication of the contribution of Bernard Häring and a signal we are back on track. 

A Question That Still Haunts: Who Am I To Judge

Even a pope can get

absolution

In my last posting I mentioned that opposition to Pope Francis is being orchestrated before the second session of the Synod on the Family that meet this coming October. The divide in the Church is growing wider every day as one part of the Church is embracing Francis’ theme of mercy in the hope that the Church will find someway to more fully incorporate those Catholics who are in irregular unions into the sacramental life of the Church while another faction is closing ranks to maintain the current official discipline that those who are married outside the Church (including those who have remarried after a civil divorce but without a Church annulment) or who are in committed same-sex relationships, or otherwise sexually active outside of a Church marriage be barred from receiving the sacraments except in periculo mortis.

It was suggested by some in the Church, particularly Cardinal Walter Kasper, that we might look to the discipline of the Eastern (Orthodox) Churches and bless a non-sacramental form of marriage for those who have been divorced but not annulled.  In practice, the Catholic Church does not question the canonical practices of the Orthodox Churches including these marriages where the parties’ Orthodox priest has performed the rites after a penitential period during which the formerly married persons have examined their hearts and repented of the reasons that caused the breakup of their sacramental bonds.  I say that in practice we do not question the Orthodox canons because the official line is that such parties must still have their marriages annulled by a (Catholic) Church tribunal before the second marriage can take place in a Catholic Church.  However, as we do recognize the validity of marriages between Catholics and Orthodox, even when it is performed in the Orthodox Church and without the proper dispensations, there is this little squeak-hole through which the divorced can squeeze.

I have been doing some reading on the Orthodox practice, however, I am doubtful if the Catholic Church could officially recognize—much less appropriate for our own—the Eastern canons on this practice.  It seems that the Orthodox practice emerges not from scriptural warrant or even from the patristic commentaries but rather from pressure on the Church by the Imperial government of the Byzantine (and later Russian) Empire.  The Greek Church was totally under the control of the Emperor (and the Russian Church under the control of the Tsar) who could make and break patriarchs at will and while the Church remained orthodox in its Christology, its moral theology suffered considerably as it accommodated the various marital (and extra-marital) escapades of the Emperors and their families.  From the time of the Patriarch Photios in the ninth century the Church began to acknowledge reasons for which a divorce could be obtained.  Photios, you may remember, was the Patriarch whom the Emperor Michael III installed after removing Patriarch Ignatios.  Ignatios had offended the Emperor Michael’s uncle, Caesar Bardas, by refusing him communion because Bardas was publically carrying on an affair with one of his daughters-in-law.  Pope Nicholas I refused to recognize the Emperor’s deposition of the Patriarch and consequently refused to recognize the legitimacy of Photios’ patriarchate.  This led to a schism of that divided the Latin and the Greek churches fro 863-870.  It is not a moment in which the Greek Church can take much pride.  Photios was deposed in 869-870 and unity restored to the Church.  He was legitimately elected patriarch in 877 and he served the Church well in his patriarchate.  No one can deny that he was a great bishop.  Ironically, his son was elected Pope Theodore II in 897, though is reign lasted only three weeks.

The Greek practice is not an annulment of a marriage as Church tribunals grant in the Catholic Church.  It is an ecclesiastical divorce that does not “undo” the first marriage.  That is why the rite for a second—and in rare cases, a third marriage is substantially different from the rite used for the first marriage.  The practice of “crowning” the nuptial couple at the first marriage is not repeated which symbolically implies that in the Kingdom of God the first spouses will be reunited eternally: how that reunion is supposed to reflect the bliss of the eternal heavenly banquet is unclear. 

The practice of the Church recognizing certain divorces might have worked out differently in the west had not the Popes been able to break imperial control over the Church during the Gregorian Reform in 11^th century.  While the Ottonian Emperors of the 10^th and early 11^th century had in fact been able to use their power to enforce reforms on the papacy, the tide turned by the middle of the century and the Popes began a long battle to free themselves of an Imperial supervision which had begun benevolently but was turning into a political subservience that was undermining the Church’s integrity.  Going back before the Ottonian revival, when Pope Stephen III had warned Charlemagne not to divorce his first wife, Himmeltrude, the Emperor had ignored him without any consequences and entered into several subsequent marriages.   Charlemagne’s great-grandson, Lothair II, a junior member of the Imperial family, was initially denied an annulment of his marriage by Pope Nicholas I (the same Nicholas who defended Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch against the Emperor Michael III and Photios), but Pope Adrian II eventually granted Lothair and his wife the requested annulment. It is hard to say “no” to an Emperor or his family unless you are free of their dominance.  Had the Emperors in the west been able to establish and maintain the same control of the Church that their Byzantine counterparts had, we may well have come to find ecclesiastical divorces in the west as well. 

It really is difficult to see how the Orthodox practice could be accepted in the Roman Church, but I personally don’t see that as the problem.  From an ecumenical standpoint, while I don’t see how we could justify adopting the Orthodox practice as it lacks scriptural or patristic foundation, I think we need to recognize the Orthodox right to determine their own practices without our criticism.  Unity does not require conformity; there are legitimate diversities even in moral issues.  I think the problem is our presupposition that some sort of moral uprightness is a pre-requisite to the reception of the sacraments. I think—and again, I am no theologian—that we need to take a long look at our basic moral theology and come to a deeper understanding of sin, grace, and the role of the sacraments. 

Cardinal Burke’s egregiously stupid statement that persons with same-sex attraction and who are kind, dedicated, and generous are equivalent to “the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people” is not only amazingly stupid—even for him—but is so theologically unnuanced as to be obviously a bigoted rant rather than a serious moral evaluation.  What organizes the Cardinal’s primitive moral schema is his sad lack of pastoral experience whereas good shepherds pick up from their contact with the people of God a sensitivity to the complexity of the mystery of sin and grace in our lives. Pope Francis alludes to his in his famous remark that shepherds should smell like their sheep.   It is far too easy to live in a blinding blizzard of moral ignorance if you never have to deal with real people in real life situations.  Of course, a sound spiritual life introduces one to the contradictions within one’s own soul but if all one knows is the superficial pieties of an exaggerated devotionalism—as, for example, the faux “spirituality” propagated in most seminaries today—it is all too easy to remain in one’s own fortified tower of denial, not unlike the pious Pharisee in the story about the Pharisee and the Publican. 

Catholic moral theology has been stuck in a rut for the last forty years.   While Biblical scholarship, liturgical/sacramental theology, canon law, and even—to a great extent—Dogmatic theology have been allowed a considerable range of freedom of scientific investigation, any innovation in moral theology—at least as regards issues of human sexuality and reproduction—has been a lightening rod to attract quick and negative response from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.  The distinguished German moral theologian, Bernard Häring, an innovative and acclaimed author even in the reign of Pius XII and one of the leading periti at the Second Vatican Council, fell from favor after the election of John Paul II because of the though questions he was posing about the entrenched moral theology of the day.  Other moralists who tried to integrate insights from the social and behavioral sciences have found their books banned and they themselves banished from Catholic faculties.  There is a desperate need to reexamine not only the particularities of the variety of sins to which we mortals foolishly give ourselves, but to look at sin itself.

I understand why a person in an ongoing relationship other than marriage—and marriage as defined by the Catholic Church—that involves sexual intimacy should not approach the sacraments.  A non-canonical marriage or union can be defined as a persistent state of sin and membership in such a relationship does not show repentance.  I will, at least for a moment, accept that premise.  But I do have two questions.

The first question is quite concrete, even specific.  Jeannette X who sings in our parish choir, is an openly racist individual.  She speaks very negatively of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.  She comes to our church—a ten-mile drive from her own parish—because she does “not want to Mass with those people: they smell bad.”  Yet she marches up to communion, first in line with the choir, every Sunday with head held high, like she is Mother Theresa.  Her bigotry, to which she gives expression, is a persistent state of sin and yet no one suggests that she should not go to communion. 

My second question is a bit more abstract, but I will put it in concrete terms.  X and Y are two middle-aged men who have been together for fifteen years and civilly married for five.  X graduated from a Catholic seminary (he was ordained deacon, but left before priesthood.)  Y had also attended a Catholic seminary for several years in his native Spain before moving to the United States twenty years ago.  He currently teaches music twice a week in a rather traditional religious community of women who are aware of his status.   Both attend Mass not only on Sundays, but frequently through the week.  Both find their relationship to be spiritually deep and a source of grace in their lives in a way that is analogous to how a devout married couple might find their marriage to be life-giving.  Why should they not be able to receive the sacraments?  They do not experience their relationship as sinful but only as a source of God’s grace.  How can third parties make an evaluation that ignores the experiential evidence? 

So then, why do some “persistent states of sin” bar people from communion but not others?   Why can a man who beats his wife come to confession and be absolved without having his anger treated, but someone who is remarried after a divorce not be able to receive absolution and communion?  Why can a drunk be absolved without entering an AA program but not a person who lives with another person of the same sex to whom he or she is committed? 

I don’t want people—even wife-beaters or drunks—to be barred from the sacraments.  I guess what I am asking is not for the Church to start restricting more and more people from the sacraments, but to realize that the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, have a remedial purpose in which the sinner finds the strength to look at his or her life and correct the course to put us more in line with the Will of God.  Again, I am a historian and not a theologian, and I recognize that throughout its history the Church has barred those in serious sin from the Eucharist, but when I hear the Gospel account of Jesus sitting at Table with sinners (Matthew 9:9-13), I am not sure that we get this right. I don’t have answers, but there are questions I think we need to be brave enough to discuss.

Making Moral Choices In A Mature Faith

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87) was a professor of developmental

Saint Maximilian Kolbe --

an example of the highest

level of moral decision

making. 

psychology at Harvard University who devised a scheme outlining six levels of moral development through which a human person can mature into ethical responsibility.  I was first exposed to his thought when as an undergraduate I was studying secondary education.  Even though I spent only one year as a High-School teacher (Latin, Religion, World History and Dean of Boys—a lot of experience crammed into three trimesters) getting a minor in secondary education was one of the best things I ever did as it has provided me with invaluable resources for all sorts of work I have done subsequently. 

Over the six decades or so since he first published his ideas on moral development, Kohlberg has come under a considerable amount of criticism.  Some of the criticism of his work is valid; some not.  I have found his basic outline of the stages of moral development to be extremely helpful, however, in understanding people and how they function in their particular ambience.  

To state this theory somewhat briefly, Kohlberg outlined three major levels of moral development—the “pre-conventional,” the “conventional,” and the “post-conventional.”  Each of these three is then broken down to two sub-levels.
Moral development, according to Kohlberg—who, incidentally, built his work on the educational psychological ideas of Jean Piaget—begins in the pre-conventional state with a fear of punishment.  A small child gets his first introduction to the idea of “wrong,” because he is punished for an act.  Perhaps the punishment is inherent in the act itself: he touches the stove and he gets burned.  Perhaps the punishment is inflicted by an authority figure: the says a “bad word” and he gets a slap on his hand or is scolded.  He learns that he should not touch the stove and he should not use that word again. 
The second level of the pre-conventional stage is that the child finds that acting in a certain way brings benefit to him.  This is a positive reinforcement.  As I am writing this, I am watching some friends with their puppy.  They just handed him a doggie treat because he behaved well.  (They also have a water-spray for when he behaves badly.)  In the same way, the child behaves quietly in Church and gets taken to breakfast.  The child says something sweet to the mother and gets a hug.  The child soon learns there is a “payoff” to good behavior.
This reward/punishment level of moral behavior is appropriate to children; there are adults in the Church who, at least in regards to our heavenly Father, still operate on this level.  If you do certain things God will punish you.  Your mother will become sick and die.  You will go to hell.   Or, on the other hand, certain behaviors will be rewarded.  I bring flowers to Our Lady’s Altar and Our Lady will present my prayer to her Son.  I say this prayer and I receive an indulgence.  There can be a component of this punishment/reward in our moral scheme as we mature, but it won’t override—if we mature—the higher levels of moral development. 
This pre-conventional level also corresponds to the lower levels of piety in the development of one’s spiritual life.  There are those for whom prayer and, in particular, penance, are “atonements” for their sins or the sins of others and meant to avoid punishment.  Their image of God is often of a Deity who has his arm raised in wrath against humankind and who is only being held back by the ever-powerful Virgin Mary.  Or, given that childish hope of reward perspective, they may have that sickeningly sweet Deity described by CS Lewis
We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, “liked to see the young people enjoying themselves,” and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, “a good time was had by all.”
This shallow theology is, I am afraid, too often the god of the post-Christian generation whose lack of spiritual and intellectual maturity have left them without any genuine moral compass.  Neither the person whose deity rules by fear nor one whose deity’s chief characteristic is blandness has much credibility except among those equally stunted in their moral and spiritual development.  
As we move into the conventional level of moral development we learn how to make our moral choices according to what is socially appropriate.  It is not socially appropriate to walk into church naked.  (I wish someone would point this out to many parishioners regarding how they come to Mass in the summer months, but maybe I am just too old fashioned.)  It is not appropriate to get drunk in public.  It is not appropriate to hit your sister.  It is appropriate to go to church weekly.  It is appropriate to do one’s homework.  It is appropriate to call your mother and let her know you will be out late and not to worry.   There are problems with this level as what is “appropriate” and what is “not appropriate” are often determined by cultural norms and not by moral principles.  In Papua New Guinea it is totally appropriate for women in traditional costume not to cover their breasts.  There are people who get upset when women thus costumed participate in the Mass during a Papal Visit. There are people who cannot distinguish the difference and whose ideas of “appropriate” and thus “moral” behavior are bound by their own cultural limitations. Bare breasts during Mass—except for feeding infants—would not be appropriate for a papal Mass in Saint Louis while at Port Moresby there is no rational objection.   It is not appropriate to go to Sunday Mass when it would require leaving a seriously ill person home unattended, but there are people who cannot make that moral distinction and thus become morally conflicted in situations that are really not that complex.  For a variety of reasons, this is not a satisfactory level at which to stay in one’s moral development. It is too dependent on “what others think” rather than an internal moral compass to guide us.   
The next stage of moral consciousness that Kohlberg presents, still in the “conventional level,” is the idea that moral choices reflect what is necessary for good social order.  The good is contained in the laws, and I must obey the law if this world in which we live is to work.  So if I don’t obey the stop-sign, what is to prevent others from not obeying the stop-sign and we will have traffic accidents all over the place.  Marriage is limited to having one partner at any one given time or there will be chaos.  (There are variations on this theme, such as marriage is between one man and one woman, but the social consensus on that question is rapidly breaking down.  There used to be social consensus that marriage is between one man and one women until one partner or the other dies, but that consensus disappeared in our culture about fifty years ago.)   I cannot steal your lawnmower because if it is ok that I do, then it would be ok for you to steal my snow-blower.  Laws are there to make sure that society runs smoothly. 
Now, this idea of obedience to the law as the fundamental principle of moral behavior is not necessarily limited to the civil law.  A religious Jew keeps all 613 commandments of the Law of Moses.  He (or she) does not mix dairy and red meat; does not eat shell-fish; does not plant two different crops in the same field or wear clothing made of two different fabrics.  Why?  Because it is the Law!  The priest washes the feet only of men on Holy Thursday, wears his clerical attire when in public, and says the Liturgy of the Hours every day.  Why? Because, it is the Law.  The Buddhist monk does not drink alcohol, eat after noon, or knowingly kill a spider.  Why?  Because it is the Law.  The Law is not bad, but neither does it necessarily have a connection to moral principles—even if it once did.  And there are those whose morality is based entirely on the Law.  I need to go to Mass on Sunday.  I can’t eat a cookie within an hour before receiving Holy Communion (and that really is not a tough law to keep).  I can’t use birth control.  I can’t masturbate.  I can’t commit adultery.  Why—because they against the Law (of God).  And it all becomes morally the same:  “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been two weeks since my last confession.  I committed adultery with a member of my own sex and I broke the communion fast.”   No, we cannot be satisfied with a morality that is based on adherence to the law.  This does not require moral reflection, simply a blind obedience.  Yet it is difficult for a person who doesn’t have a strong spiritual foundation—not just a theological or pietistic understanding—to advance beyond this stage.  That is why there are so many today frightened of a serious and critical re-examination of the great moral questions of today.  A serious re-examination of issues such as the remarriage of divorced people, same-sex relationships, in-vitro fertilization, gender identity, contraception, etc. threatens to take us beyond our current conceptions of the Law (of God) and for some the moral ice is simply too thin to venture out and use their reason to explore.  There are many also who,  to justify their political views or social constructs, reject developments in moral theology—and in the magisterium—that challenge the legitimacy of the Death Penalty, inequality of wealth, nuclear war, universal health care, and human rights.  The Law is something static in their understanding, or it is to the degree it supports their views of society and how it should work.  They cannot see the connection between Law and moral principles but they adhere to law for its own sake.   
As we move into the post-conventional state we first encounter the idea, similar enough to the previous level but somewhat more forward, that law is a social contract.  We all have varying values, understandings of our rights, opinions, theologies.  While tolerant of the variety of opinions, where can we find some moral consensus on which to base our ideas of right and wrong?   (This is such a wildly thoughtless liberal position, I love it: it can be caricatured so easily.)  So we get the golden rule, or at least the minimization of it: “do not do to another what you would not have them do to you.”   I won’t cheat with somebody else’s wife because I would not appreciate someone cheating with mine.  I will cut my lawn because I want my neighbors to do their share in keeping up property values.  There is a recognition here that we are dealing with something beyond “law,” but it still fails to find moral principles.  For the Christian, we must look for moral principles not simply social contract to guide us in our actions.
The final stage for Kohlberg is the realization that there are universal ethical principles to guide our choices and we can arrive at those principles through moral reasoning.  This is somewhat akin to the idea that there is a natural law that transcends Divine Revelation and which can be arrived at through rational analysis.  I make my moral choices based not on a fear of punishment or a hope of reward or social convenience or an appreciation of the law, but because I can perceive what is right or what is wrong.  Kohlberg thought that few people reached this stage of moral development—most were, at best, trapped back in the law-for-law’s-sake stage—and he thought that even fewer acted consistently on such principles.  Despite my natural attraction to Saint Augustine and his skeptical understanding of human nature, my natural cynicism even, I am somewhat more positive than Kohlberg, though I do not think that an appreciation for moral principles is the most common basis in the modern world for moral choice.  I too think most people, including most Christians, don’t get beyond the law stage. But I do think that a genuinely evangelical Catholicism is the guide to moral development that will lead us to the sort of moral integrity represented by Kohlberg’s sixth level of moral development. 

Jesus lays down the basis for a moral life in the gospels.  There is a fundamental need to forgive others.  There is a need not to be preoccupied with material wealth.   There is a need to respond to the suffering  of others.  There is a need to undertake a life of service to others.  There is a need not to judge others.  There is a need to feed those who are hungry.  There is a need to shelter those who are strangers in our midst.  There is a need to be peacemakers.  There is a need to perform our good works without a desire for attention.  There is a need to preserve the commitments made in marriage.  There is a need to recognize the goodness of others while we examine ourselves for sins and failings.  There is a need in our prayer to humbly confess our sinfulness.  There is a need to ask for a heart focused on God’s Will alone, a “pure heart.”  There is a need to seek to be set right with God, to have integrity.  This isn’t rocket science.  It is all there in the gospels.  We will certainly fail from time to time, even frequently, but with God’s grace we will stand up, ask forgiveness, and find success in God’s Will far more often than we fail.  And as long as we are humble about our failures—honest about them with God, with ourselves, and with others—they won’t make a difference.  What a different world it would be if we Christians stopped operating at the level of fear or law and started basing our lives in the teachings of Jesus?