Knotty Musings

Ideas, philosophies, and evil plots to take over the world through love hatched here.


I Am Enough

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others." ~ Marianne Williamson


Remove the Nots

Remove the Nots

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Penance Service Regarding Child Sexual Abuse

This is a beautiful service and I would like the sentiments to be followed with decisive actions against the perpetrators as well as those keeping the light from shining on the darkness of this sin.


A Penance Service worth pondering and praying...

Posted: 31 Mar 2010 09:08 PM PDT


H/T to the blog, Pray Tell (which I'll feature as a Link of the Day soon after Easter) for this remarkable text from Vienna. This is in the form of a dialogue and it's worth noting which part Cardinal Schönborn chose to speak...



On Wednesday, March 31, a liturgy of lamentation and penance was held in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in the context of the many cases of physical and sexual abuse which have come to light in Austria and elsewhere in recent weeks.

Over 3,000 people took part. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and Catholic theologian Veronica Prüller-Jagenteuful read the following confession.


Cardinal Schönborn: Triune God, you led our mothers and fathers out of slavery into freedom and taught them the 10 commandments of a good life. You became flesh in Jesus Christ and showed us that love is the fundamental rule in all things. You are with us as Holy Spirit to lead us.

Veronica Prüller-Jagenteuful: And yet we become sinful before you and before one another. Enormous sin has been revealed in these weeks. It is the sin of the individual. It is the sin permeating structures, models of acting, and models of thinking. It is the sin of not offering help and not daring to speak up.

Both: The responsibility for this concerns us as members of the church in widely varying degrees. And yet, we are your people together and we stand in common responsibility. And so we confess to you and to one another our sin:

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not followed God alone, but rather have followed the gods of our need for lording over and superiority.

Cardinal: Some of us have, precisely in that sense, abused others, even children.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have obscured and betrayed the name of God which means love.

Cardinal: Some of us have preached the love of God and yet have done evil to our charges.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not kept holy and not sufficiently valued the sacraments and other times and places of special encounter with God.

Cardinal: Some of us have used these as opportunity for assault.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not maintained between adults and children relationships of unconditional respect for the other.

Cardinal: Some of us have used and destroyed the trust of children.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not takes seriously the destruction of life and happiness in life, that we have not understood the destruction and we have trivialized it.

Cardinal: Some of us have become guilty of the inner murder of other people.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not cherished bodiliness and have failed in the task of rightly living out our sexuality.

Cardinal: Some of us have done sexual violence.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have wanted to possess youth, beauty, and vitality for ourselves.

Cardinal: Some of us have stolen childhood from boys and girls and robbed them of the capability of living out successful relationships.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we did not wish to acknowledge the reality, that we covered up and bore false witness.

Cardinal: Some of us have been able thereby to further delude ourselves and others and continue the criminality.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have wished to have control over others and possess them.

Cardinal: Some of us have thereby usurped the bodies of the weakest ones.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we craved security, calm, power, and reputation.

Cardinal: For some of us the Church’s appearance of sinlessness was more important than anything else.

Both: We, the People of God, his Church, bear this sin with one another.

We confess this sin to those many people whom we as Church and some of us as particular individuals have sinned against.

We confess this sin to one another, for the Church has become sinful in its members.

We confess our sin to God.

We are ready to take on our responsibility for the past and the present, individually and communally. We are ready to renew our models of thinking and acting according to the Spirit of Jesus and to collaborate in the healing of wounds. We place ourselves as Church before the judgment of Christ.

Cardinal: O Christ, you said that you have taken our sin upon you. And yet we implore you today: Leave some of it for us. Help us not to brush it away too quickly, and make us ready to take it on: each one for individual sin and all of us together for common sin. And then give us hope in judgment: hope for new freedom from truth, and for that forgiveness for which we have no claim.

Amen.

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