Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Exodus 33:7-11.34:5b-9.28; Matthew 13:36-43)
A Catholic man plans to marry outsider the Church without permission from his bishop. His mother is worried that he is committing a sin. But, she says, God wouldn’t condemn him to hell for that. Is the mother thinking correctly?
Of course, we are not to say who is ultimately condemned and who is saved. But it does look like the man in question is guilty of failure to act in an important matter. In any case, we must take care not to instruct others that ignoring Church teaching or transgressing divine law is readily excusable. In the gospel today Jesus makes clear that those who cause others to sin are as guilty as those who perform reproachable acts.
