Admitting You're a Sinner

[The Grand Nudger]

My impression is that there is an institutional tolerance bordering on commitment to encouraging a wide range of belief levels, ranging between the literal with an emphasis on rule following on up to someone like Mother Teresa who recognized she no longer believed in God at all.

Not on the issue of original sin.  Its fundamental, as they state in catechism, nothing of scripture can be made sense of..in their intepretation of it, without that literal and very specific insistence.  The central mystery of their faith depends on it. Catholics -can- believe in a range of things..especially on peripheral issues..this isn't one of them.  It's central not only to their theology..but it;s the whole purpose of their rites..of mass - of recieving communion, hell, even the confessional is not necessarrily meant for ones current sins, but an expression of your openess to god and your relationship with the divine by being willing to divulge them honestly, in humility and a true spirit of repentence. This is thought to effect the deeper issue of sin. It's thought to help us bare the sin of adam, our real first parent, whose trangression we inherit as a mark upon our souls and whose sin was so great that it condemded all mankind in that very instant.

Now ofc our protestant friends are going to tell us that's wrong or unbiblical and double plus ungood..even catholics are..apparently, willing to object - but that -is- catholicism. It's more rigid than some faiths. A necessity of creating that unity, that ring of the church of christ they perceive themselves (and seek, I;m sure) to be.