Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Ezekiel 9:1-7.10:18-22; Matthew 18:15-20)
One moral question on which there has been a distinctive change in Catholic teaching is the freedom of conscience. Where for centuries the Church taught that it is permissible to punish members of the community who adopt foreign beliefs, she now honors the integrity of individual conscience. Freedom of conscience demands that no one be forced to declare as true what she or he does not believe. The age of the Inquisition, however inaccurately it may have been understood, is definitively past.
Still it might be pointed out that religious persecution has biblical roots. We see in the reading from Ezekiel how the Lord calls for the purification of idolaters in the time of Ezekiel. To be sure, the reading has more than a simple chastisement in mind. Rather, the Lord demands the death of those who have worshipped other gods in the Temple. Today we stand aghast at the suggestion of such practices in some societies.
Can such intolerance be justified in retrospect? Certainly something may be said that in times of less developed economies social cohesion standing on common beliefs and religious practices was critical. We can add that there is a progressive development in biblical teaching which reaches its culmination in Christ. The people came to understand God’s ways slowly and imperfectly until God sent His Son to reveal them in their fullness. Even now we continue to grapple with Jesus’ teaching and, even more challenging, how to put it into practice.
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