A Question of Nuance

Jesus Christ is the heart of all Christian Theology, but nuance and the art of nuance is an essential component of the doing of all Theology. The Hebrew scriptures, the Gospels, and St. Paul are rife with nuance. The earliest best-seller of Systematic Theology was not called, Sic et Non, for no reason. Nuance is the bread and butter of theologians, and also the bain of their existence. John Allen, in his weekly NCR column, The Word From Rome, writes this week about the difficulty the Church faces whenever one of her members attempts to make public statements of any kind. In our black and white (not only in the media) world, the value of nuance is lost to the sensational, or spectacular. The following quote helps to illustrate this reality. Read the whole article. Apparently, even the Pope gets censored in translation.

"We cannot tell a classroom of 16-year-olds they should use condoms. But if we are dealing with someone or a situation in which persons are clearly going to act in harmful ways, a prostitute who is going to continue her activities, then one might say, Stop. But if you are not going to, at least do this. Sex outside marriage already breaks the sixth commandment", Luño said; "unprotected sex outside marriage risks breaking the fifth commandment too, thou shalt not kill".

We do well to remember that the Church has received an ideal to uphold, teach, encourage. An ideal that may form an essential part of the revelation of the Divine plan. Then, we must remember that there is the reality in which real-time individuals live, strive, fail, succeed. . . But deeper than that is the greater reality of God's mercy. We do not have to achieve perfection to be welcome at the feast of heaven.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and Grace those fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear, the hour I first believed.