The G gave me a set of Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries, and the first one I read last night was awesome!
 
Fr. Brown is a dumpy-looking but shrewd little priest who always solves the crimes. This one involved two men who had a duel, and everyone thought that Man A killed Man B for known reasons. The anti-Catholic “friends” in the story all sided with Man A, the killer, because they felt his reasons in some way justified the murder, even though they did not.
 
So these friends attack the Church and the priesthood and accuse them of making Man A live in guilt his whole life and driving him to seclusion. They also call for mercy and pardon for Man A. But Father Brown discovers and reveals to them that in fact, it was Man B who killed Man A and then impersonated Man A the rest of his life, so that he (Man B) could never be found out as the real killer.
 
The anti-Catholic friends start singing a different tune then:

“He ought to be lynched,” cried Cockspur…
“I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole myself,” said Mallow.
“There is a limit to human charity,” said Lady Outram, trembling all over.
 
“There is,” said Father Brown dryly; “and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity….For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.”
 
“But, hang it all,” cried Mallow, “you don’t expect us to be able to pardon a vile thing like this?”
“No, said the priest; “but we have to be able to pardon it.”
He stood up abruptly and looked around at them.
“We have to touch such men, not with a barge pole, but with a benediction,” he said. “We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them….Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came.”

 
I have been in conversations where people I know bash the Catholic Church and her priests, laying the blanket accusation against all of them for the evil acts of a few. And yet these people are the ones who most desperately need the forgiveness that only Christ can give, and which he gives us through his priests.
 
I have been in the confessional, confessing the mean, revolting, and real evil things I have done. I have sat there in sorrow and repentance, and also in humiliation and shame, asking for forgiveness of mean and revolting sins I have committed over and over and over again.
 
And God’s faithful priests have listened to me with the heart of Christ, and in his Name forgiven me–over and over again. That is how far Christ’s mercy goes.
 
And how far does our human mercy go? Not far, usually. Whenever one of my friends, Christian or otherwise, is telling me of someone who wronged them, I suggest that they forgive the person. That suggestion has been met with everything from flat out rejection to dismissive apathy to grudging agreement. Why? Because it turns out when someone really wrongs you by doing something mean and revolting and real–even in a “small” matter, it is really hard to forgive them.
 
And yet Jesus forgives us every time we confess our sins to him. He wants us to know we have been forgiven, too, and so he designed our world to have real men stand for him and give absolution of sins in his name. And when I go to Confession, I am always amazed at how easily Jesus does it! “I absolve you of your sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” So quickly, so readily, so powerfully–the sins are gone.
 
Our human mercy needs to become like His Divine mercy.
 
If a Christian ever challenges you that you should only confess your sins to God and not a man, don’t despair. Instead, tell them to go look up John 20:21-23 and ask them for their interpretation of Jesus’ clear words:
 
“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’ ”
 
The Protestant explanations I have heard for this passage are never satisfying–their doctrine forces them to deny that it says what it says, much as it does in John 6. How did the Father send Jesus? With authority–authority to forgive sins. As the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus sent his Apostles, and so the Apostles sent their successors.
 
Blessed be God for his priests who sit with us for hours and listen to our mean sins with merciful hearts, and through His Merciful Heart forgive us!