Religious Whitewash

Gospel: Matthew 23: 27-32

One of the strengths of the Old Testament is its brutal honesty in recounting history.  It records both the good deeds and bad in equal detail.  It does not pretend to create a triumphalistic history of salvation, a tendency that is all too common in Christianity where there is the never ending attempt to create a history of good deeds that overlooks and minimizes the horrors of the history and the tradition.

Such a whitewashing has terrible consequences on the spiritual life.  It creates a people that cannot properly examine one's conscience, a people that minimizes their own faults and maximizes their accomplishments.  It creates a people that thinks themselves to be "faithful Catholics" for their adherence to a few truths to the exclusion of many others.  

If we take seriously the sacrament of penance, then self-created labels of "faithful Catholics" make no sense.  If we take seriously our objective status before God, such attitudes are pure folly.  We are only faithful when we are utterly dependent upon God's mercy and extend that mercy outward toward others.  Any other notions of fidelity are self-created attempts at whitewashing and self-justification.