I see people engaged in the self -justified practice of everything the Bible categorizes as porneia struggling to find their way and to find some sense of dignity and righteousness. There is a real desire to find forgiveness, to live more just and holy lives. There is real love, compassion for the poor, the sick and the suffering. There is much faith, much true repentance and much loyalty to the Apostolic faith. There is also much unacknowledged sin and much of the faith of the Apostles, which remains unconfessed.
Every parish is a mixture.
People come in the doors saturated with the moral and religious pluralism and relativism of our time. This is the context in which most clergy minister. We minister in a context fraught with a severe tension between our desire to offer acceptance and hospitality to seekers, and our desire to be true to the standards and norms of Christian belief and behavior. Great is the temptation to collapse this tension either in the direction of uncritical acceptance on the one hand, or the rigid and impersonal application of norms and standards on the other. If I begin my conversation with the cohabiting couple with an insistence that they promise to remain chaste until their wedding day, they will most likely go elsewhere or, worse yet, turn away from the Church altogether.