Here at the Compound we often feel that a picture's worth a thousand words.
Peace out,
LSP
Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable? How should this blasphemy be understood? Saint Thomas Aquinas replies that it is a question of a sin that is 'unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place' (ST 2b:14:3). According to such an exegesis, 'blasphemy' does not properly consist in offending against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the Cross. If man rejects the 'convincing concerning sin' which comes from the Holy Spirit and which has the power to save, he also rejects the 'coming' of the Counsellor...
If Jesus says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or in the next, it is because this 'non-forgiveness' is linked, as to its cause, to 'non-repentance', in other words to the radical refusal to be converted... Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil—in any sin at all...
[T]he Church constantly implores with the greatest fervor that there will be no increase in the world of the sin that the Gospel calls 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.' Rather, she prays that it will decrease in human souls" (Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem ["The Lord and Giver of Life"] 46-47).
Let's get something straight (no pun intended.) Businesses are not refusing to serve people who are homosexual. Christian-owned businesses are simply not wanting to use their art to participate in practices that are clearly wrong. That would include a baker refusing to make a cake with a Nazi symbol on top, or any other offensive depiction.