Priests Cannot Forgive Sins

The Roman Catholic Church claims that its priests have the power to forgive sins as if they were God.  They say that when Jesus breathed on his apostles after the resurrection saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven and those who sins you do not forgive are not forgiven”.

It is a bit strange that a late gospel, John, alone speaks of such a doctrine.   Why is there no record of Jewish horror at such a doctrine! 

Also this encounter with Jesus happened in private which makes it look bad and look like an invention.  Some argue that it was deliberately private for it was for the persons present only and not something to be taken up by the wider church.  If so, then priests are overplaying their hand.

Some say that Jesus was temporarily giving the disciples this power.  They forgave and retained sins then and only then.  Some say he was speaking to the Holy Spirit in them and it was he who was really forgiving.

It is hard to say that he gave his Church this power when he mentioned nothing about the authority to pass it on. 

Would Jesus give men the power to turn away a repentant sinner and keep that sinner in his sins because they wouldn’t forgive him?  Is it not as absurd to hold that a man can love your son for you as it is to hold that he can forgive your sins as if he were God?  A God who can’t forgive a person who is repentant until a priest lets him is a God who has given up free will to let men control him.  This is not the gospel, it is occultism.   The Church answers that God is not giving himself up to the control of men for it is God who set this system up and agreed to it.  But a God who is eager to forgive and when  the person is ready to receive this forgiveness and who can’t do it even because of his own restrictions has given up free will.  the priests are controlling the divine psychology.  If you can’t love until a hypnotist snaps his fingers you have no freedom.  That means you can’t want to love until his permission comes even though you think you should.  The priests force God to do what he thinks is wrong keeping a sinner in sin just until they get forgiveness from a priest! 

This doctrine of theirs is extreme blasphemy.  It is just the Church trying to be better than God.  Pagans insult God without knowing but here we have a Church that says that God is all perfect, free and almighty and then says such things about him.  It is better to be a pagan than a Roman Catholic.

Jesus didn’t say he meant he was giving the power to forgive sins as if the Church was God to the Church.  The Christians had sinned so much when Jesus was crucified and afterwards that they needed to forgive each other and turn to God.  Jesus was telling them that God had forgiven the people they had forgiven and that those they didn’t forgive were not forgiven.  All he was saying was that the forgiven were also forgiven by God.   This was to help remove all doubts and resentments and fears that could hinder the formation of the Church.

It is possible that Jesus was giving the Holy Spirit to the Church so it could see by a miracle of God who it should forgive and who it shouldn’t.  this was a gift to help get things started off and Roman Catholics do not have this power.  The result was that because the Church could see then whoever it forgave was forgiven by God.  There is nothing at all about the Church causing God to forgive as in Roman Catholicism.  Catholics will say the Church does not cause

Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart and strength.  The next greatest one but not as important is to love your neighbour as yourself.

Nobody will love or look after their neighbour as well as themselves.

The command to forgive sins does not fit the Christian doctrine that we always have grave sins.  We never keep the two big commandments of loving God totally and our neighbour as ourselves.  These commandments are so big that to break them is a serious matter.  Yet priestly absolution is based around cherry-picking some sins as grave enough and needing a priest.  Those big ones are ignored.

Wealth is another give-away that the Church is bluffing.

Jesus Christ condemned wealth as sinful full stop. 

A rich young man came to Jesus and he told Jesus he kept all the commandments.  Jesus said that there was one thing he lacked.  What he lacked was his not giving away all his wealth to the poor. 

The Church says that Jesus was only recommending that the rich man become perfect by giving up his wealth.  He was not commanding him to do it. 

The young man went away sad and Jesus said that it was hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God and it was easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle.  He said then that only with God could salvation be possible for a rich man.

If Jesus only advising not commanding then he could have ran after him and accepted him but he did not.

The Church says he only means it is hard for a rich man not impossible.  That is clearly watering down what Jesus said.

The Church says that wealth is sinful if it makes you prefer the heaven you make with it on earth to the Heaven after this life.  The Church however though it says Jesus was God and cannot err perverts his teaching for it needs to please society sufficiently to hold on to its members.  And to gain from them.

The Church says that wealth is sinful if you prefer it to helping the poor and to God.  Obviously if you have millions in the bank you are not very worried about the poor!  Nothing is said much about that.