Uncle Di's multiculti mea culpa

"But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers - their treachery against Me and their hostility towards me which made me hostile towards them. . . I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham" Leviticus 26:41-43

On the twenty fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth and having dust on their head. Those of Israelite decent had separated themselves from all foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers. . . for a forth [of the day] they confessed. Nehemiah 9:1-3

"See, it stands written before me: I will not keep silent, but will pay back in full; I will pay it back into their laps - both your sins and the sins of your fathers," says the Lord. Isaiah 65:6-7

O Lord, in accordance with your righteous acts, let now your anger and your wrath turn away from you city of Jerusalem, your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the inequities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all those around us. Daniel 9:16

It appears that Diogenes has been boning up on his scripture. Good for him. Perhaps if we would all take the time to earnestly follow scripture in asking for forgiveness for the sins of our forefathers, God would bless us as He did the Israelites when they came down off their high horses to confess the sins of their ancestors. Food for thought.

blog post from this, if anyone's interested:

theupsidedownworld.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/the-sins-of-the-fathers/

copy and paste - you're smart people!

I take rebeccat's point that there is scriptural sanction for prayers of forgiveness for the sins of the fathers. However, if we are going to take scripture seriously -- as indeed we should -- then we should acknowledge not only the sins committed by those of fathers with whom we wish to disassociate ourselves, but also with those with whom we continue -- explicitly or implicitly -- to identify. The problem with the conflation of political correctness and Christian humility put forward by "progressive" Christians is that it is so partial, that it focuses on the sins of "conservative" fathers, but not on those of "progressive" ones, in such a way that it cultivates the pride -- and not the humility -- or "progressive" Christians. In college, I fancied myself "progressive," as most college students do. But as my Christianity became more adult, and as my understanding of political history became more informed, I became more and more troubled by the failure of those on the left -- where I then found myself -- even to acknowledge, let alone to atone for, the many sins of the leftist fathers in generations past. The failure of "progressives" to acknowledge the utter depravity of leftist atrocities in the past hundred years -- arguably the most evil set of acts in human history in qualitative terms -- is a major stumble-blocking for me and for many like me in accepting the terms in which political correctness presents itself -- even though, as rebeccat points out, there are Christian grounds for doing so, at least to some extent.

So the idea of collective punishment on a nation is to be taken seriously, but the idea of asking forgiveness for the sins of our fathers is the stuff of humorous fun poking at multiculturalism, neighborhood integration and environmentalism?

Okay, whatevs...

So the idea of collective punishment on a nation is to be taken seriously, but the idea of asking forgiveness for the sins of our fathers is the stuff of humorous fun poking at multiculturalism, neighborhood integration and environmentalism?

Well, some of us aren't big fans of _either_ divine collective punishment _or_ condemning a man for the sins of his ancestors.

trooooooooooooooool alert! Nobody feed the troll, please!

So the idea of collective punishment on a nation is to be taken seriously, but the idea of asking forgiveness for the sins of our fathers is the stuff of humorous fun poking at multiculturalism, neighborhood integration and environmentalism?

That's actually a good point. To be clear, I thought Uncle Di's mea culpa was funny, but I didn't think it such a bad idea that John Paul apologized to various groups the church had offended in ages past (even as I'm sure some future pope will do what JP never did, and apologize to the victims of clergy sex abusers). According to Christian theology, we are all part of the same body of believers, around the world and across time. We have a spiritual bond to our ancestors, and I believe in that sense some sort of responsibility for the sins of our fathers. I'm not clear what, precisely, that is, but I don't think it automatically a bad thing to own up to it (though I don't believe it's necessarily morally required for every generation to apologize for all the sins of the past).

I think it's important that we be self-aware enough not to get on our high horse execrating the sins of our ancestors; we should always keep in front of us that our descendants will similarly execrate us, probably for things we hardly recognize as sins today.

I dunno, Jeremy, but I doubt it. John Paul, remember, was a trailblazer for this sort of thing, and his acts were by no means uncontroversial within the Catholic church.

It really becomes an question of institutionalization. If we believe in a continuity of organizations, beyond the lives of their constituents, there is absolutely no dilemma as to whether or not the church (or government) should apologize for previous bad acts. If the US government is the same government now as it was during the trail of tears, it (as a body) should absolutely apologize. If the Church is the same church today as it was during the Spanish Inquisition, it should absolutely apologize. The representative in question may not have been there at the time, but that's not the point: an institution committed an evil act. AS an institution, it should atone in some way.
I think what many people today fail to understand is that if you benefit from an institution's wealth or power, you are more or less directly benefitting from prior bad acts undertaken to procure said wealth and power. We may not like it, but there it is.