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<div>Please explain the "sins of the father" from Exodus.</div><div><blockquote>For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but showing love down to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments (Ex. 20:5-6).</blockquote>
The totality of Scripture condemns the idea that children are punished for the sins of the parents. The passage from Exodus on the surface appears to be contradicting that, and this misunderstanding was so prevalent that the prophet Ezekiel was forced to address it:
<blockquote>. . . What is the meaning of this proverb you recite in the land of Israel: “Parents eat sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge”?
As I live—oracle of the Lord GOD: I swear that none of you will ever repeat this proverb in Israel. For all life is mine: the life of the parent is like the life of the child, both are mine. Only the one who sins shall die! (Ez. 18:2-4).
But, in turn, if he begets a son who sees all the sins his father commits, yet fears and does not imitate him—a son who does not eat on the mountains, or raise his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, or defile a neighbor’s wife; who does not oppress anyone, or exact a pledge, or commit robbery; who gives his food to the hungry and clothes the naked; who refrains from evildoing, accepts no interest or usury, but keeps my ordinances and walks in my statutes—this one shall not die for the sins of his father. He shall surely live! Only the father, since he committed extortion and robbed his brother, and did what was not good among his people—he will die because of his sin! (Ez. 18:14-18).</blockquote>
Exodus 20:5-6 is speaking of the consequences of breaking the commandment against false idols and other gods.
The commandments are not portrayed as arbitrary rules. The commandments are given as the path to true life and the fullness of life.
<blockquote>I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them (Deut. 30:19-20).</blockquote>
The message of the passage from Exodus is that the sins of the parents set a bad example for the children to follow. The parents will certainly experience negative consequences for their sins. The children seeing this bad example may follow it. If they follow this bad example, they too will experience these same consequences. And this bad example may be so ingrained in a family that it will last generations, and they will suffer these bad consequences as well. This passage from Exodus can be seen as a warning to parents that they not only possibly condemn themselves through their sins but that their bad example might condemn future generations.
The message of Scripture is that sin has more than just a personal consequence. Our sins affect not just ourselves but everyone around us.
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Sins of the Father?

Tim Staples explains that anyone in full communion with Rome who attends an SSPX mass out of love for the traditional liturgy legitimately fulfills his Sunday obligation, and then gives a brief overview of the history of the society and its conflicts with the Church.
Transcript:
Host: Olga Marie, on Facebook Live, asks the following question: &#8220;Can we go to SSPX mass and be valid for our Sunday obligation?&#8221;
Tim: Right, well, because of their irregular status—although I don&#8217;t know if our inquirer is aware that there&#8217;s been more good news concerning movement toward full communion today; as many of our listeners know, our Holy Father during the Year of Mercy extended faculties, exercising his immediate juridical authority, he communicated faculties to hear confessions to all SSPX priests. That was really remarkable, and since the Year of Mercy ended, he did not take those away, so they they are yet extended. This is our Holy Father, he is the priest of mercy.
Well, we just—in fact I was just reading it before I came over here, I didn&#8217;t finish reading the whole letter from from the Vatican on this—but it states that our Holy Father is encouraging bishops around the world to grant faculties. It&#8217;s not a mandate, he&#8217;s not exercising his immediate juridical authority as he did with confession, but he&#8217;s encouraging the Ordinaries to extend faculties, where possible, to the SSPX to witness marriages. Now it does say in the letter, as I was just reading—I want to go back and really take it apart after this broadcast—but it did say that, because of the irregular status, the ordinary witness is a priest who is validly incardinated into the diocese; but where that is not possible, where a priest is not available, that sort of thing, he&#8217;s encouraging them to extend faculties to SSPX priests. So it&#8217;s not—it&#8217;s not like the confession, but it is extending—encouraging bishops to extend faculties. So it&#8217;s more movement, I think, in a good direction.
Now, as far as going to masses&#8230;again, because of their irregular status, you know, people should go to parishes where the priest is incardinated into the diocese. However, the Church has been, you know, bending over backward for the SSPX and those who love the traditional mass so that a permission has been given, for those who love the the Latin mass, to attend those those parishes. So, you know, it&#8217;s again a sign that we&#8217;re moving toward—and I think it will be an exciting day, I pray that that day will come soon, where we will have—will no longer have to talk about this irregular status any longer; but those who are attending SSPX masses because they love the Latin liturgy, they are not, you know, dissing Vatican Council II or anything like that&#8230; are not sinning. You know, the Church is not saying that you&#8217;re in sin if you go to those masses.
There are other things that have to be taken into account, though. It doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re free to reject all of Vatican II. That&#8217;s one of the big sticking points concerning full communion with the SSPX, you know, they have to acknowledge that Vatican II is a valid ecumenical council. But I happen to know people who attend those masses from time to time because they love the traditional liturgy, they&#8217;re not available a lot of times very generously in a particular diocese, and they&#8217;re certainly not in sin.
Host: And SSPX, Society of St. Pius the 10th.
Tim: The 10th, correct.
Host: And why—I—maybe I should know this, but why Pius X? What about him is&#8230;
Tim: Yeah well, I think it was a priestly fraternity that was started in France before there was a schismatic act. It was simply a group of seminarians, later priests—I believe it was seminarians and priests back in about&#8230;if memory serves, about 1972, a number of these young seminarians and such approached Archbishop Lefebvre, who was retired at the time, and they asked him, because of the post-Vatican II craziness that was going on, with the promulgation of the Missala Vermanum, the Mass of Paul VI, as it&#8217;s called, and the abuses that were going on, these folks came to Bishop Lefebvre and said, you know, &#8220;We need you to come out of retirement and help us,&#8221; and he did.
And at the outset, because he was not an ordinary, he was a retired bishop, he did not have a diocese, he had to get permission from the local ordinary to begin the SSPX, which he was granted. At that time he was in full communion with the Church; they were just concerned. But—so St. Pius X of course was a reformer bishop who, you know, wrote wonderful documents, you know, the syllabus of errors against modernism and so many things, so it was—a pope like that was a perfect fit for them.
But what happened was, they started to go extreme, pretty early on, to the point where they ordained some priests illicitly, Pope Paul VI got involved; that was not excommunicable, but it was a grave sin. But then what ends up happening is there&#8217;s back and forth between Paul VI and the SSPX, they were suspended &#8220;a divinis,&#8221; that is, their faculties were removed, and they continued in disobedience, and this back and forth went on until Pope Paul VI died in 1978.
John Paul picked it up—and really wanted to have a reunion—he picked up the dialogue, Cardinal Ratzinger, of course, involved when he became Prefect of the CDF. But unfortunately, it took a bad turn in 1988, when the SSPX ordained four—or, Bishop Lefebvre, he ordained four bishops illicitly, and that is matter of excommunication, automatically, latae sententiae, and so that started—but the amazing thing is, I mean, you really sympathize with the SSPX and the craziness that was going on and such; but you also see in this whole thing how the Popes have reached out and continued to reach out. John Paul—he was forced, I mean, he didn&#8217;t do anything. He simply declared what Canon law already stated: that was a latae sententiae excommunication; but the dialogues immediately were started. John Paul established the Ecclesia Dei, which was a—its specific task was to be the mediator to try and get the SSPX back.
And now here we are, you know, there&#8217;s been lots of trials and failures and semi-successes and such, and now it&#8217;s Pope Francis&#8211;some might think the most unlikely candidate—is the one who really seems to be moving the ball forward like none other.
So anyway, that&#8217;s just a brief thumbnail sketch.

Is an SSPX Mass Valid for Our Sunday Obligation?

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Ask Me Anything

In Mark 1, we hear about the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. So let’s just start with that, because as Catholics, some people hear this and panic a little: wait, St. Peter, the first pope, was married?
First, we needn’t panic, because there is nothing intrinsic about priestly ministry that requires celibacy. In Catholic law, this is largely a matter of traditional discipline in the Latin Church, even if it has strong resonances with our theology of the priesthood. In any case, there’s little to no evidence, apart from this one line of scripture, that Peter had a wife in his later ministry in the Church. Many argue that Peter was, by this point already, a widower—the presence of a mother-in-law certainly suggests that there had been a wife, but if she was around, it seems odd that she would never be mentioned in the tradition or the Gospels.
I always think it’s kind of a funny story. Jesus heals this woman, and she immediately turns into the hostess, serving the disciples and Jesus. One the one hand, we might think, let the poor woman have a rest; she’s just recovered from a serious illness. On the other hand, she wants to serve, with that stereotypical grandmotherly insistence, so maybe Jesus healed her precisely because he knew she would do what she wanted to do, regardless of her state of health. Further, the immediate transition shows that she is really healed, completely. It’s not just that the virus or the fever or whatever has left her so that she can now recover over the course of hours or days; she is restored. And no doubt this is what St. Mark wants us to see from this story. Jesus isn’t offering some kind of patchwork medicine; he’s the real deal. When he heals, he heals.
But let’s also notice another theme running through the readings. St. Paul talks about how he has made himself “a slave to all,” that he might “win more.” Everything, including his own rights as an apostle, takes a back seat to his sense of mission. We can connect Paul’s sense of service with Peter’s mother-in-law’s sense of service: in both cases, what matters is not our own needs, but the good of Christ. This service is a joy. It is its own reward.
By contrast, in our first reading, Job gives a rather different perspective on service. Is life, he wonders, anything more than forced slavery or hired drudgery? Months of emptiness, nights of grief, passing through life with no real joy? Of course, he says this after he has lost everything, as he sits in sorrow, wondering why God could have taken away his health and his family and his prosperity. Surely, his friends insist, there is a reason for these things; surely Job has done something wrong. But Job knows that he has done nothing wrong. His chapters of Hebrew verse amount to a beautiful iteration of that modern phrase “it is what it is.” There can be no justice, no healing, when the world is like this—when bad things happen to good people, when death and chance and sickness make our lives into drudgery without meaning.
Not that first-century Palestine is all living in the world of Job, but there’s a real question left lingering there, in the moral universe of the Old Testament: is there any meaning in suffering? Why bother with this life, why bother with service, when it can all fall apart because of a stupid virus that puts you in bed with a fever? Why bother when it can all be taken away for no apparent reason?
If you go back and read the rest of Job, the answer that God gives is not an answer. It is a challenge: what do you know about anything? God says, in effect, you want meaning, but your questions are meaningless. What makes you think you know what justice is? What makes you think you know what suffering is? Were you there when I created the heavens and earth?
I like to think that, by pairing these readings together today, Holy Church wants us to consider Jesus’ healing, and Paul’s preaching, as a kind of response to the pain and questioning of Job. You see, Job is right: suffering can be meaningless; life can be empty servitude. But God’s answer to this is not ultimately to make it meaningful, in some superficial sense, as in “I gave you the flu so that you could learn to be a better person.” Rather, his answer is to show up, in person, and be with us in those moments, and offer to transform them into his good purposes. For Paul, the reality of Christ’s personal presence and power was enough to get through any struggle. For Peter’s mother-in-law, the reality of Christ’s presence meant that her weakness had been transformed into strength. She now had the chance to participate in something of infinite value: the announcement of God’s kingdom come among us.
Rather than worry about what’s wrong, or what’s broken, or what seems to lack meaning—rather than sitting around asking why and what and how—can we instead invite Jesus into it, and ask him to show us how he will transform it into something good? And even harder, can we have the faith, like so many of those healed people in the gospels, to believe that he will?

What’s the Point of It All?

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