Here are a couple of...
Illustration
Here are a couple of statements about legalism from Lazarus, the last of Morris West's papacy trilogy.
"He was tempted to go back and tell the Pontiff what had happened. Then he asked himself the classic question: cui bono? What good could possibly come of it? All the harm had been done centuries ago, when the law had been set above simply charity and suffering souls were counted as necessary casualties in the unending crusade against the follies of human flesh" (page 53).
"One of the great mistakes we have made in the church, a mistake we have repeated down the centuries -- because we are human and often very stupid -- is to make laws about everything. We have covered the pastureland with fences, so there is no place for the sheep to run free. We do it, we say, to keep them safe. I know, because I have done it all too often. But the sheep are not safe: they languish in a confinement that was never their natural habitat ..." (page 158).
-- Barnhart
"He was tempted to go back and tell the Pontiff what had happened. Then he asked himself the classic question: cui bono? What good could possibly come of it? All the harm had been done centuries ago, when the law had been set above simply charity and suffering souls were counted as necessary casualties in the unending crusade against the follies of human flesh" (page 53).
"One of the great mistakes we have made in the church, a mistake we have repeated down the centuries -- because we are human and often very stupid -- is to make laws about everything. We have covered the pastureland with fences, so there is no place for the sheep to run free. We do it, we say, to keep them safe. I know, because I have done it all too often. But the sheep are not safe: they languish in a confinement that was never their natural habitat ..." (page 158).
-- Barnhart
