(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, Bishop Joseph Strickland shares how sexual sins of all kinds (not just homosexual acts) can easily destroy the lives of individuals and families, and later urges us to never give up on God’s mercy, no matter how many times or how grievously we’ve sinned.
His Excellency’s remarks come from his own pastoral experience seeing the grave damage pornography, adultery, and all manner of sexual sins do to people and their loved ones.
“Pornography is the true pandemic that gets very little talked about,” he says. “The pornographic pandemic is so destructive, and with electronic devices and with the Internet, it’s worse than ever. It harms individuals, it harms marriages, it harms families. And all of that illustrates that the Catholic Church has it right that sexual sins are devastating to people.”
Bishop Strickland hits back at Church leaders and pastors who “de-emphasize” the gravity of sexual sin, saying “it’s very dangerous” and is often accompanied by a failure to adequately teach the “beauty” of an ordered sexuality in the context of marriage, between one man and one woman, that’s ordered toward the procreation of children.
“The sexual deviancy, the sexual sins that we’re dealing with, is a spiritual fentanyl that is really more devastating than the worst drug,” he says. “And we’ve got to speak up. We’ve got to bring people back to the truth, and to speak up any time we see the culture continuing to erode in more and more darkness because of the evil of misunderstood sexuality.”
Later in the episode, Bishop Strickland gives a magnificent commentary on how God’s mercy is always on offer for us sinners, and that the only sin God can’t forgive is our own obstinate refusal to be forgiven in the first place.
“Every sin is a small betrayal of the Lord. But we can always ask forgiveness. That’s the joy of our faith,” he says. “We should always remember that. If there’s anyone listening now that says, ‘Oh, my sins are too big,’ that’s never the truth. God is always ready to forgive us. That’s why His Son died on the Cross and rose from the dead, so that mercy would flow abundantly from the side of Christ.”
To watch all previous episodes of The Bishop Strickland Show, click here to visit LifeSite’s Rumble page dedicated to The Bishop Strickland Show.