If you knew anything about the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple precincts, and the ferocity of the present tense in the Greek manuscripts of this incident, you would have to conclude that the whole scene was set up beforehand by those who wanted the death of Jesus. The woman herself was, to them, totally unimportant, disposable after use, even by stoning. What was important was the death of Jesus. I’ve written on that at length elsewhere. Can’t find it. The hermitage is not yet in order. So just a few comments:
If Jesus agreed to have her stoned, He Himself would be put to death that very day by Pontius Pilot, who could not tolerate an individual usurping the right of Rome to judge whether someone was worthy of capital punishment.
If He didn’t agree to have her stoned — which would be thought to be a disagreement with Moses — then He would lose all credibility, and could be stoned along with the woman.
Either way, He was a dead Man that day, no? The answer is yes, He was a dead Man that very day. You can’t infuriate the religious leaders of the day and live, not in yesteryear, nor today. You’ll have your head cut off one way or the other.
Some of the Fathers of the Church (by no means unanimous!) did not like this passage, saying that it let the woman off too easily. My response: No, it didn’t.
In fact, many religious leaders today would throw Jesus out of active ministry for being so “severe” with her, so “pastorally insensitive”. He said: “Do not sin again!” Those words should ring in our ears, given sound by the weakness we know ourselves to suffer. “How dare He not give us a loophole, a rationalization, a way to break the Law of God and please ourselves. How dare He tell us to do the impossible!”
Sometimes people don’t know what they are doing: “Father, forgive them… They know not what they do!” Those making the comments that Jesus let her off too easily ought to see things from her perspective. She could see quite plainly that Jesus, in doing what He did – turning the tables with a word, having those breathing death humiliate themselves – He Himself would pay the price. They would immediately plot His death another way, and be successful in doing this…
… until He rose from the dead.
It was in this moment in which Jesus said, “No more! No more will stoning of adulterers be a viable pedagogical witness to the justice of God in the face of sin. In laying down my life, I, being God and man, will be the only lesson which men will receive from now on about the horrors of sin and the mercy of God. I will take on the consequences of their sin, death, and so have the right in justice to have mercy on them. Father, forgive them…
Though some throw tantrums, wanting to stone this adulterous woman right out of the Scriptures, saying that she is not textually critically viable, the Church says otherwise. I’ve done some rather detailed studies of this. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to find those in the hermitage here, and publish them.
And oh, just to say, this woman does not object, nor throw a tantrum that she is too weak to stay away from sin. She has a sense of the strength and love of Jesus that will keep her on the right Way to heaven. Of course she is too weak. We are all too weak. Jesus doesn’t just command us not to sin. He gives us strength. He has the right to do this. He was, as it were, stoned to death for us.
To go further with this. This adulterous woman, no longer adulterous, but in the good graces of the Most High, is the image of the Immaculate Bride of Christ, the Church. She is transformed in grace. She is one with her Savior. The Sacred Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, are filled with references to this, no? Everywhere you look.
Any sin is an adultery, departing from the right Way to prostitute ourselves to the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil. With any sin, we are that adulterous woman. Sure, circumstances set me up for a fall into whatever sin, such as arrogance. But I could choose not to sin, depending on the grace of our Lord. But I can also choose to be the adulterer, prostituting myself to political correctness. The Lord will tell me: “Sin no more!” And, with His grace, I, like this woman, will look to Him with humble thanksgiving, knowing that His words are not mockery, but an invitation to trust in Him once again. Jesus, just that good, just that kind.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Father, I hope you are feeling better today. [Yes, thank you!]
Thank you so much for sharing this Article. Pointing the finger at others has always been a comfortable way of shifting the blame from ourselves. In recent years many Christians have taken to registering shock at social injustice in faraway places. They point to a tyrant in a foreign country or a rich man’s greed and thank God they are not like that, ignoring tyranny in their own workplace or family, or their own runaway materialism. This story urges us to examine our own lives and ask how we ourselves can be better people..
I believe the story is an extension of the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 7:1-5, (‘You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye’) which urges us to look to our own faults rather than complacently focusing on the faults of others.
Because the story is an almost visual narrative, many biblical scholars believe that it was a later insertion and did not form part of John’s original gospel. They suggest that it was a particularly popular story about Jesus that for some reasons had not been included in the first three gospels, but was placed in the fourth gospel some time after John had completed writing it, virtually by popular demand.
Whatever the truth about this may be, the message is timely and directed to all of us today!
[This belongs to the Sacred Scriptures. Yours truly wrote some 256 pages of horrifically scientific textual criticism in this regard, and that was just chapter 1, with the moderator being the Secretary General of a particular Biblical Institute and the second reader being a rather famous Cardinal, a biblical scholar in his own right. Pehaps I will have the opportunity to publish some of that in times to come. But it doesn't matter what I say. This passage was taken as Scripture by the Fathers of Trent, who had some rather sharp words of excommunication for the new Protestants of the day. The first decree of 8 April, 1546 is rather important, a dogmatic constitution. Those who disagree either don't know what they are talking about or are simply given to the easy kind of ecumenism which stomps on Sacred Tradition and the Sacred Magisterium, opting for Scripture alone, which really means oneself alone.
One can and must judge the external actions of those who make a practice of hurting others in the hopes of changing the situation, but always with the spoken understanding that one is oneself always in need of the Lord's goodness and kindness. We cannot let horrific injustice, such as the stoning of women, just go on for the sake of self-righteous adulterous men.]