Following Jesus, we hate sins because we love sinners

Published: November 7, 2013

By Father Jason Tyler

Father Jason Tyler

I recently had the honor of celebrating the funeral Mass of a lifelong parishioner. Luella Durst died Oct. 19, at the age of 89. All the way until her death, she continued to live with her sister in the house in which they had grown up. That’s a rare privilege anywhere these days, even rarer in downtown Little Rock; if that house had been located a few hundred yards to the west, it would have been demolished when Interstate 30 was built over 50 years ago. As a parish priest, I appreciate the memories and history that a lifelong parishioner can offer us.

Her stability impressed me not only because of her advanced age but also because of the rarity of someone staying in one parish from birth until death. City parishes often see people moving in and out of the area. Such movement carries its benefits, too. Newcomers bring with them new insights and fresh eyes to ask the rest of us why we do things a certain way.

Over the last seven-plus months, Pope Francis has helped the entire Church to examine why we do certain things. In September, he authorized the publication of an interview he gave for various Jesuit publications around the world. In the United States, this interview was published in America magazine and can be viewed by clicking here.

The interview prints out at 13 pages, giving a fascinating look into how the Holy Father sees himself, his ministry and the call of discipleship that each of us hears.

Much has been made of a particular sentence in that interview. Specifically, the pope said, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.” Some have read these words and concluded that the pope was saying these issues don’t matter or that he is changing the Church’s official position, a position articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

On the contrary, we read just two sentences later, “The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” He says that we have to speak about such difficult issues “in a context.”

That context is the proclamation of the Gospel. That context is the proclamation of salvation that makes our hearts burn, just like those of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. “The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

The moral consequences (which include Church teachings on issues like abortion or human sexuality) flow from the Gospel proclamation, not the other way around. St. Matthew was a tax collector who was willing to leave his post and stop cheating people. He did so not because anyone screamed, “Stop stealing from us!” but because Jesus came and said simply “Follow me.” (Matthew 9:9) In following Jesus, Matthew left his sins behind.

Matthew’s response to Our Lord’s call is a model for all of us — all sinners — who seek to follow the Lord but realize the difficulty of leaving our sins behind. In fact, early in the interview Pope Francis speaks of how readily he identifies with Matthew in Caravaggio’s painting “The Calling of Saint Matthew.”

In that same interview, the pope recounts a conversation in which he responded to someone’s question on homosexuality by asking rhetorically, “‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.

“Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.”

Here we see again the emphasis on mercy and on helping the individual believer to draw close to God. We do not see an acceptance of homosexual acts but rather a recognition that every person is defined by much more than his or her sexual preferences.

These words also remind us of the pope’s remarks on the plane returning from Brazil in late July, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Again, the emphasis is on the individual believer, the child of God searching for the Lord. It is not an acceptance of homosexual acts or same-sex marriage. It is, rather, recognition that we do have gay brothers and sisters who are searching for the Lord.

How does their search affect the rest of us? It affects us in much the same way that anyone’s search for the Lord affects us: by calling us as believers to assist our brothers and sisters in that search, assisting them to live by the often difficult things that God asks of us.

Here in Little Rock, we see Catholics helping in that search for the Lord through organizations like St. Joseph’s Helpers, which reaches out to women in difficult pregnancies and aids them in bringing their children to birth and caring for those children after birth. I have also been pleased to see more engaged couples embracing the Church’s difficult teaching on contraception thanks to the evangelical witness of dedicated married couples in the Couple to Couple League who have instructed those engaged couples in the practice of natural family planning.

Pope Francis, as a lifelong Catholic and “son of the Church,” brings great memories and his own lived experience of the faith. As a new pope, he also brings the qualities of a newcomer willing to ask “why” and helping us all to focus on what is most important. In the case of difficult moral teachings, he is not trying to abandon the Church’s beliefs but is instead asking us to remember why we believe them.

There is an old expression that says, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.” We might re-visit that expression now and say, “Hate the sin because you love the sinner.” We seek to protect the life of the unborn, the integrity of marriage and the value of human sexuality precisely because we first love Jesus, we seek to follow Jesus and we want to help others to do the same.

Father Jason Tyler is the diocesan ethicist and pastor of St. Edward Church in Little Rock.