Gossip

Fr. Peter sermon today was about gossip,unfortunately a never ending need to be repeated.Its funny this subject should come up today because last night I listened to Mother Angelica Live,aired in 1998 and she also was talking about gossip.
Both she and Fr. Peter brought up that fact that 9 times out of 10 what you hear as gossip and pass on is incorrect.Human nature wants us to add to the facts in areas that we also have been injured allowing for false information to be spread.
To pass gossip is to cause injury to another human being and to bear false witness against our brothers according to the 10 commandments,which by the way are commandments not suggestions so they are not up for dispute.
Human beings balance between goodness and badness and because of this it's sometimes hard for us to realize that we are doing something wrong,we tend to dilute the truth so we lose sight of when we are stepping over the line.Of course sometimes we do gossip intentionally in order to hurt the victim,whom we see as less then ourselves and deserving of criticize.
Mother Angelica talked about how we live in a world were we dilute things by saying we are trying not to be judgemental of others.We excuse things that are wrong and lead ourselves to beleave in grey areas allowing our selves to lose sight of what is evil.
Its important to hear these things in church our clergy must repeat to us were our failings are so that we may understand what is acceptable by church standards.Like a parent correcting a child it must be said repeatedly especially living in a world were all things are considered alright no matter how evil or wrong they are.
The evil one is a sly one he does not push you to do the big no nos he pushes you to do the little ones hoping,at some point,you'll begin to think the big wrongs are alright too.
The world reinforces the bad things so the church needs to reinforce the good things and teach us to make corrections.If not we will begin to lose our sense of right and wrong.