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<h1 class="m_4582997261020433355m_-8184076300961808983m_6856880325743774660gmail-article-title">
Jordan Peterson tells Bishop Barron that a church overemphasizing ‘mercy’ doesn’t ‘care’ about people
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<div><br></div><div><a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/jordan-peterson-tells-bishop-barron-that-a-church-overemphasizing-mercy-doesnt-care-about-people" target="_blank">https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/jordan-peterson-tells-bishop-barron-that-a-church-overemphasizing-mercy-doesnt-care-about-people</a></div><div class="m_4582997261020433355m_-8184076300961808983m_6856880325743774660gmail-article-text-wrapper">
<p>July 18, 2019 (<a href="http://lifesitenews.com/" target="_blank">LifeSiteNews</a>)
– <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>World-famous psychologist Jordan Peterson</b></span> told U.S. Bishop Robert
Barron that <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>a church that emphasizes mercy and forgiveness while <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">not </span>
requiring people to turn away from their <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">evil ways</span> is a church that <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">does
not really</span> “care” about people. </b></span></p>
<p>“If you really love someone, you can’t tolerate when they are less
than they could be,” Peterson said in a July 13 conversation with Barron
that was broadcast on Peterson’s YouTube channel (watch the
full 1.5-hour conversation <a href="https://youtu.be/cXllaoNQmZY" target="_blank">here</a>). </p>
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</div><p>The comments were made when Bishop Barron, founder
of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was telling Peterson about the “grace of
God” being “not just mercy, and not just justice: It’s the two arms of
it.”</p>
<p>“I think that's what we've been missing a lot in the Church, is the
two arms,” the bishop said, adding: “We’ve become just too much of a
‘mercy’ Church, in a way.”</p>
<p>Responded <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>Peterson: “Yeah, I know, that’s what I think. I don’t think
you guys ask enough of your people. You’re <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">not </span>giving them<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"> hell.”</span></b></span></p>
<p>While Barron responded that he thinks there is “something right about
that,” he went on to quote Pope Francis’ teachings of “accompaniment”
and the Church being a “field hospital” for people who are deeply
wounded. </p>
<p>“We have to accompany people all the way down [to the bottom before they can ascend],” Barron said. </p>
<p>Pope Francis has emphasized in his teachings on “mercy” and
“accompaniment” that people can live Christian lives that are pleasing
to God while not following the laws of God or the perennial teachings of
the Church regarding marriage and sexuality. </p>
<p>In his 2016 Apostolic Exhortation <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Amoris Laetitia</i></a>,
the Pope indicated that God actively wills people, in certain
situations — such as in the case of an “irregular” couple where an
already married man lives with a woman to whom he is not married — to
commit acts contrary to the “demands of the Gospel.”</p>
<p>Conscience can recognize, stated Pope Francis, “with sincerity and
honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to
God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God
himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while
yet not fully the objective ideal” (303).</p>
<p>The Pope’s teachings on this matter have been used by
“progressive” priests, bishops, and cardinals to advance the
normalization within the Catholic Church of so-called second marriages
without an annulment (adultery), homosexuality, cohabitation, and other
sinful practices contrary to Catholic moral teaching. Following the
example of Christ to whom was brought the woman caught committing
adultery, the Church has always taught that receiving God’s mercy and
forgiveness means also following His command given to the woman after
she was forgiven, namely, “go and sin no more” (John 8:1-11). </p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>Peterson told</b></span> Barron in the interview that <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">real love</span> can be a
“terrible thing” because “if you love your children, you don’t let them
<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">get away with anything.</span> You call them on their <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">transgressions</span>.”</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>The professor related how he once caught his son<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> lying </span>to him and how he held him to account for <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">the wrong</span>. </b></span></p>
<p>“There was something that's not right here,” Peterson related. “And I
wasn't going to let him get away with it because I couldn't let him
learn that it was acceptable to do that, or that I would put up with it.
So, I went after him, you know, for a long while. And, it did turn out
that he was telling me something that wasn't true,” he added.</p>
<p>Peterson said that he held his son to account for the transgression,
even though it really “hurt,” because<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b> “if you really love someone, you
can’t tolerate when they’re <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">less than </span>they could be.”</b></span></p>
<p>“<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>And so when someone comes into the Church, and it's<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> all</span> forgiveness,
there’s <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">no </span>care there</b></span>. It's like [the Church should be saying]: ‘What
the hell are you doing? Look at you. You're addicted. You're hooked on
pornography. You cheat on your wife. You're doing a terrible job at
work. You don’t take care of yourself. What the hell’s wrong with you?
Where’s the real you?’”</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>Peterson said that anyone who is subject to that kind of assessment,
“<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">as long as it’s done with care, and not </span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">with [the attitude], </span>‘<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">I’m
better than you</span>’” <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">can be helped to be made better</span>. </b></span></p>
<p>“‘Man, you’re nothing like you should be,’” Peterson said is more of
the approach that needs to be taken by spiritual leaders today. </p>
<p>The professor said later in the conversation with Barron that what's
required to really help people today is a “reemphasis on the potential
nobility of the human being and the moral responsibility to make that
nobility a reality.” </p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>“We're built for <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">nobility</span>,” Peterson said. </b></span></p>
<p>Barron pointed out that people today are “so concerned about people's
feelings and about feelings getting hurt” that they’re “afraid if we
use that language of a ‘noble’ aspiration” that calls people to
something better and higher. </p>
<p>Peterson agreed, adding that <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>“we're afraid of hurting people's
feelings in the present and<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> willing to absolutely sacrifice </span>their
well-being in the future.”</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>“That's the sign of <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">a very immature and unwise</span> culture, because <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">the reverse should be the case</span>,” he said.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">When trying to help someone who </span>is making<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> poor choices</span>, the “initial
conversation when you lay things bare and you put everything out on the
table and you discuss what the problems are and maybe the potential
solutions… man, that's a rough conversation,” </b></span>said Peterson. “It’s
almost more than people can bear.” </p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>“But, if it's <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">a discussion of reality</span>, well, they're already bearing
it.</b></span> And, at least them placing it on the table indicates that there's
someone who's willing to listen, and it isn't so terrible that […] it
can’t be named,” he added. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, Peterson <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/jordan-peterson-on-catholicism-thats-as-sane-as-people-can-get" target="_blank">told</a>
Dennis Prager, a conservative Jew, that Catholicism is “as sane as
people can get.” When asked about his dislike for the question of
whether he believes in God, Peterson said he has “never been comfortable
saying anything other than ‘I try to act as if God exists because God
only knows what you'd be if you truly believed.’”</p></div>
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