Your right. No, one but the person can know, and yes I for one, commit some sins over and over:( Don't you?
As hard as it is to admit and understand in human terms, I believe that a priest who commits these crimes over and over, could also be truly repentent, only God would know. The earthly consequences of that sin would be that once people found out about it the person would/should be treated like the slug that he is, but his eternal judgement is up to God. I have faith that God's judgements are what they should be.
Becky
Yes. For a while I thought I was the only one who did. This is especially brought out, I must note, with the idea of confessing your sins to another person. You find yourself saying the same things, even though you do try to avoid it.
As hard as it is to admit and understand in human terms, I believe that a priest who commits these crimes over and over, could also be truly repentent, only God would know.
I think a huge part of the difficulty here is that ipev is imagining a monster who every day sets out to commit some monstrous crime. I, instead, picture a man who may go through bouts of sin followed by bouts of regret. I like to think that, no matter how evil some men may have acted, and for how long, they would have had sincere moments of regret and repentence.
SD