This church has the whole discipline thing wrong. The passage to which they are referring specifically talks about someone confronting someone who has sinned against him, not someone who has sinned against his own body and God. Not only that, but their concept of authority in the church is wrong. The Church is the whole authority of the church, not the parishioners. Publicly humiliating someone, or threatening them with that is not exactly restoring someone in a spirit of gentleness.

It is things like this that make me glad that we belong to a church which recognizes the authority and hierarchy in the church as set out in Scripture and the Tradition, and that our confessions are private and cannot be betrayed even to police or the courts. The only time there were public confessions were when the person confessing proclaimed his sins to the faithful assembly. The proper response if this woman would not be reconciled to God would be to excommunicate her, but they probably don't think much of communion either, if they don't pay attention to church authority.

If she is unrepentant, and it sounds like she is, they are to put her out of the assembly, which it sounds like she already is. However, if she were so concerned about her privacy and the rights of her children, she wouldn't go to the press. All messed up here.

Labels: Faith and Morality