Era of Peace

Ch 2. Man Cannot Offend God - Heresies in the Neocatechumenal Way

JESUS HAS REDEEMED THE WORLD ATONING FOR SIN WHICH OFFENDS GOD; NOW IF MAN, BY SINNING, CANNOT OFFEND GOD, IT IS CERTAIN THAT HE HAS NO NEED TO ATONE FOR ANYTHING; BUT WITHOUT ATONEMENT THERE IS NO REDEMPTION; THUS, NEITHER THIS WOULD HAVE TAKEN PLACE, AND THE CHURCH, INSTITUTED FOR THIS REASON TO CONTINUE THE REDEMPTORY WORK OF CHRIST, WOULD NOT HAVE A PURPOSE: HUMANITY COULD DO WITHOUT IT.

- Kiko is not able to think of sin as an offense of God; he only thinks - and it is obvious, as in the Church all the theologians have always taught many centuries before him - that man cannot "steal from God his glory..."; he "cannot hurt God (...), because in that case God would be vulnerable and would not be God..." (p.182). Who could have ever supposed that?... Therefore, it is far from the sense that the Church has always attributed to sin as an offense to God: precisely the sense that Kiko ignores, explaining - we will see it soon - how he cannot conceive of the duty to atone.

Let him know - and with him all those who follow him - that man with his sin, even though only offending himself, o f f e n d s God by committing the injustice of denying Him that what is due to Him: the cordial recognition of His sovereign dominion, and thus His dignity of Absolute Value, Supreme Law, etc... Man, by sinning, refuses Him, so much as that if it were possible, he would suppress his relationship with God, as he cannot stand this radical subordination to the "OTHER" (God); and it is in fact all the intrinsic perversion of human will, consists in this attempt, and in this sense we must talk of "offending God", even if God, in Himself, remains unaltered. Isn't it Jesus who talks of "our dues" towards Him? (Mt 6,12) Isn't it justice commanding to satisfy them?

David, after having committed adultery and murder, REPENTS and asks God for His Mercy, he asks Him: "I have sinned against you, only against you I have sinned..." (Ps 51, 6. Cf. 2 Sam 11,14-17) Even the prodigal son of the parable is convinced of having sinned first of all against Heaven, even though he has abandoned his father. (Lk 15, 18, 21)

- Even Vatican Council II, talking about the forgiveness obtained from the Mercy of God, talks about "the offenses made against Him" ( LG 11); and Saint Thomas, the most authoritative interpreter of the Church's doctrine, summarising and anticipating the thoughts of a real army of Church fathers and Theologians, sees sin as a real offense against God (S. th., I-II, q. 47, a. 1, 1um; q. 71, a. 6, 5um; q 73, a.8, 2 um; q. 21, a. 4, 1um; Suppl., q. 13, a. 1, 1um).

All of this can be summarised recalling the most supreme of duties: that of loving God, thus refusing to love Him means offending Him.

"It is therefore vain to hope that there will take root a sense of sin against man and against human values, if there is no sense of offense against God, namely the true sense of sin." (Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et paenitentia , 18)

Kiko, negating such a possibility, negates the necessity of reparation and the resulting benefits of redemption, like the recovery of all the blessings deriving from the love of God. The Church has been founded by Christ because, with the grace of the Sacraments administered by it, man can participate in the atoning and redemptive Passion... If, in that sense, it does not continue Christ's work, what does His mission reduce itself to? how can it affirm to "serve" the world and to justify its own existence as a society superior to all the others...