The Associated Press writes about the effort by the Vatican to re-focus attention on the sacrament of Confession by having some sort of public event at the Apostolic Penitentiary, a kind of ecclesiastical court in which petitions for absolution for reserved sins are heard. It’s a generally okay article, as well as the secular media usually handles such things, and highlights how the sacrament has fallen into disuse. But at the end, the reporter describes the Roman building that houses the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Roman Rota, and the Apostolic Signatura and ends with the usual weird dig at the Church:
Taking up nearly an entire city block, it is just steps away from one of Rome’s most profane piazzas — Campo dei Fiori, filled with bars catering to tourists and college-age Americans studying abroad.
Is that supposed to be humorously ironic? What we’re supposed to walk away with is the impression that despite the best efforts of the old fossils in the Catholic Church, young people are still partying and sinning right under their noses. This is journalism today.
I don’t doubt that could very well be the writer’s intention. But it is funny, my first thought was that the Church doesn’t just position itself with the faithful but is even in places where people reject it always reaching out even to them. I thought of the circumstances of the locations more in a missionary way I guess.
My thoughts were the same as Kathleen’s. They are where they are needed.
What they do not know or care to think about is how many of those people partying across the way were affected by that place. Imagine a partier stumbling onto it and actually looking upon it after God places a spark of Grace onto his soul. There are most likely some touching stories of conversion that the modern press would be loathe to admit to, let alone print.
I am glad that it is near those profane places. God is calling….look up from your books of secular “learning” and reflect oh man.
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