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Thomas_White
Guest
I see. And how is it you know “on the face of it” that a person is in the objective state of mortal sin?
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Brendan
Guest
So what He said in the Gospels does not apply?
How does the Church view that passage? Does it do so incorrectly when it does not recognize attempts at remarriage?
Yeah me too, except I understand both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
So does the Church, so we can both accept what the Church teaches about marriage (and attempts at remarriage), correct?
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Thomas_White
Guest
What would immantism have to do with my comment? It is not the same thing.
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JimR-OCDS
Guest
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JimG
Guest
From the original linked article:
“Archbishop Chaput rejected claims that Church practice punishes and excludes those in irregular unions. He said the Church “cannot confirm human beings in patterns of behavior that separate them from God and remain faithful to her own mission at the same time.””
His thoughts may be supported by this recent article pondering the numbers of decrees of nullity being granted. The author believes that in fact, most marriages can be saved, and that applications for findings of nullity ought to be first preceded by divorce prevention programs. Speaking of a particular case, he writes:
“This might have been fully resolved had the Tribunal taken a different approach. Dr. Howard Markham, a marriage scholar at the University of Denver, believes most divorces and most marital unhappiness can be prevented, which is also my clinical experience over the past thirty-five years.”
Annulments, Justice, and Marital Healing
“Archbishop Chaput rejected claims that Church practice punishes and excludes those in irregular unions. He said the Church “cannot confirm human beings in patterns of behavior that separate them from God and remain faithful to her own mission at the same time.””
His thoughts may be supported by this recent article pondering the numbers of decrees of nullity being granted. The author believes that in fact, most marriages can be saved, and that applications for findings of nullity ought to be first preceded by divorce prevention programs. Speaking of a particular case, he writes:
“This might have been fully resolved had the Tribunal taken a different approach. Dr. Howard Markham, a marriage scholar at the University of Denver, believes most divorces and most marital unhappiness can be prevented, which is also my clinical experience over the past thirty-five years.”
Annulments, Justice, and Marital Healing
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jeannetherese
Guest
Hi LongingSoul,
Perhaps, I am misreading your quote, but isn’t Saint Paul criticizing those who pass judgement without repenting of the same misdeed themselves? It seems, from this reading of Saint Paul, that God’s kindness calls us to repentance. Paul also notes that God has already passed judgement upon the people who are being critiqued by those engaging in the same activities and seems to suggest that those critiquing will also receive judgement. From his tone, it seems the judgement might be against their actions and/ or lack of repentance. Might one anticipate, based upon the passage you have shared, that repentance precedes a positive judgement?
Perhaps you are equating kindness with mercy?
From Dictionary.com
noun, plural mercies for 4, 5.
1.
compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one’s power; compassion, pity, or benevolence:
Have mercy on the poor sinner.
2.
the disposition to be compassionate or forbearing:
an adversary wholly without mercy.
3.
the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone or to mitigate punishment, especially to send to prison rather than invoke the death penalty.
4.
an act of kindness, compassion, or favor:
She has performed countless small mercies for her friends and neighbors.
5.
something that gives evidence of divine favor; blessing:
It was just a mercy we had our seat belts on when it happened.
noun, plural mercies for 4, 5.
have mercy on the poor sinner.
kindness
[kahynd-nis]
Spell Syllables
Synonyms Examples Word Origin
noun
1.
the state or quality of being kind:
kindness to animals.
2.
a kind act; favor:
his many kindnesses to me.
3.
kind behavior:
I will never forget your kindness.
4.
friendly feeling; liking.
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St_Francis
Guest
A state of objective mortal sin would exist in those who had committed a mortal sin and had not gone properly to Confession.
The subjective state of a particular person’s soul would be judged in some instances by the Church, but generally by God.
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St_Francis
Guest
I thought your comment about Immanance was in response to what I wrote. If that is not the case, I don’t know why you wrote about Immanance and you can consider my comments about Immanatism an unsolicited elaboration of my previous comments.
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St_Francis
Guest
You do understand that to eat and drink of His Body and Blood leads to condemnation? This is why the Church asks that people who are aware that they are in an objective state of mortal sin abstain from receiving until they have made a good Confession.
Would you want the responsibility of deciding whether or not a couple were in mortal sin after the D&R, knowing that if you agree they can receive and they do so, 1. they would be eating and drinking condemnatikn unto themselves, and 2. that there would a chance of at least an equal cumpability on you, depending on why you judged wrongly? And if you were following the orders of superiors and that was the reason for your wrong judgement, cupability would also fall on them?
The current discipline of the Church protects not only the Body and Bllood of our Lord, but the souls of those receiving, as well as thise who might otherwise be called on to handle a really bad situation.
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LongingSoul
Guest
I really think this latest trend of going “no that’s not mercy. This is mercy” is off the point. Like the blind monks describing the elephant according to what he feels by touching it.
For those of us who believe that Pope Francis is serious about his mission to advance the mercy of God in the world through the experience of family life and the Church, there’s no doubt about the aspects of mercy that he exhorts us to embrace today.
It’s Pope Francis mission as Pope to guide us as a Church of Mercy and I read as much as I can that he speaks and writes in order to try and be a new person especially in relation to families and parish life.
He wants us to re-orient our hearts and to change. I’m not interested in dictionary, secular versions of these words. That just seems to give people fodder to reject the call of Pope Francis. For example from his book The Church of Mercy…
“Situations can change; people can change. Be the first to seek to bring good. Do not grow accustomed to evil, but defeat it with good.”
“To be faithful, to be creative, we need to be able to change. To change! And why must I change? So that I can adapt to the situations in which I must proclaim the Gospel. To stay close to God, we need to know how to set out; we must not be afraid to set out.”
“If we—all of us—accept the grace of Jesus Christ, he changes our heart and from sinners makes us saints. To become holy we do not need to turn our eyes away and look somewhere else, or have as it were the face on a holy card! No, no, that is not necessary. To become saints only one thing is necessary: to accept the grace that the Father gives us in Jesus Christ. There, this grace changes our heart. We continue to be sinners for we are weak, but with this grace which makes us feel that the Lord is good, that the Lord is merciful, that the Lord waits for us, that the Lord pardons us—this immense grace that changes our heart.”
“Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness God brings us, the newness God asks of us. We are like the apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises.”
“Spreading the Gospel means that we are the first to proclaim and live the reconciliation, forgiveness, peace, unity, and love that the Holy Spirit gives us.”
“Today I ask you in the name of Christ and the Church, never tire of being merciful.”
“Be so without being presumptuous, imposing “our truths,” but rather be guided by the humble yet joyful certainty of those who have been found, touched, and transformed by the Truth who is Christ, ever to be proclaimed (see Luke 24:13”)
“Let us try asking ourselves: Am I open to the action of the Holy Spirit? Do I pray to him to give me illumination, to make me more sensitive to God’s things? This is a prayer we must pray every day: “Holy Spirit, make my heart open to the word of God, make my heart open to goodness, make my heart open to the beauty of God every day.”
“God does not wait for us to go to him, but it is he who moves toward us, without calculation, without quantification.”
“Humility, meekness, magnanimity, and love to preserve unity! These, these are the roads, the true roads of the Church. Let us listen to this again. Humility against vanity, against arrogance—humility, meekness, magnanimity, and love preserve unity.”
Continued…
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LongingSoul
Guest
Pope Francis speech at the closing of the synod is so forthright about what not to do in striving for a merciful.
Certainly, the Synod was not about settling all the issues having to do with the family, but rather attempting to see them in the light of the Gospel and the Church’s tradition and two-thousand-year history, bringing the joy of hope* without falling into a facile repetition of what is obvious or has already been said.***
So when I see posts that are just facile repetition of what is obvious or has already been said, I reject it. Not as false… but as a barrier to embracing a more merciful Church.
It was about bearing witness to everyone that, for the Church, the Gospel continues to be a vital source of eternal newness, against all those who would “indoctrinate” it in dead stones to be hurled at others.
So when I see posts hurling dead stones at others to ‘indoctrinate’, I reject it. Not as false, but as a rejection of the mission of mercy that warrants a re-orienting of our focus.
*It was also about laying closed hearts, which bare the closed hearts which frequently **hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, *difficult cases and wounded families.
It was about trying to open up broader horizons, rising above conspiracy theories and blinkered viewpoints, so as to defend and spread the freedom of the children of God, and to transmit the beauty of Christian Newness, at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible.
Christian Newness. The fact that Newness is spelt with a capital N, strikes me as a serious consideration for today. I don’t think this is a demonstration of literacy deficiency… language is a strong focus of Church teaching and reading the word Newness gives the phenomenon of ‘the new’ a strongly divine aspect. I take these things so seriously in the desire to ‘think with the Church’ and be part of the evangelism she’s called to.
So in answer to your question about mistaking kindness and mercy, I say I’m taking my cues from Pope Francis and his perspective on mercy and how to be merciful, as a very serious calling of the Holy Spirit. I’m motivated most strongly by his words rather than seek a place of individual interpretation based on secular descriptions.
Certainly, the Synod was not about settling all the issues having to do with the family, but rather attempting to see them in the light of the Gospel and the Church’s tradition and two-thousand-year history, bringing the joy of hope* without falling into a facile repetition of what is obvious or has already been said.***
So when I see posts that are just facile repetition of what is obvious or has already been said, I reject it. Not as false… but as a barrier to embracing a more merciful Church.
It was about bearing witness to everyone that, for the Church, the Gospel continues to be a vital source of eternal newness, against all those who would “indoctrinate” it in dead stones to be hurled at others.
So when I see posts hurling dead stones at others to ‘indoctrinate’, I reject it. Not as false, but as a rejection of the mission of mercy that warrants a re-orienting of our focus.
*It was also about laying closed hearts, which bare the closed hearts which frequently **hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, *difficult cases and wounded families.
It was about trying to open up broader horizons, rising above conspiracy theories and blinkered viewpoints, so as to defend and spread the freedom of the children of God, and to transmit the beauty of Christian Newness, at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible.
Christian Newness. The fact that Newness is spelt with a capital N, strikes me as a serious consideration for today. I don’t think this is a demonstration of literacy deficiency… language is a strong focus of Church teaching and reading the word Newness gives the phenomenon of ‘the new’ a strongly divine aspect. I take these things so seriously in the desire to ‘think with the Church’ and be part of the evangelism she’s called to.
So in answer to your question about mistaking kindness and mercy, I say I’m taking my cues from Pope Francis and his perspective on mercy and how to be merciful, as a very serious calling of the Holy Spirit. I’m motivated most strongly by his words rather than seek a place of individual interpretation based on secular descriptions.
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Thomas_White
Guest
You did not answer the question. The question was how would you know “on the face of it” that a person is in the objective state of mortal sin?
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Thomas_White
Guest
Rather than lecture me about the teachings of the Church, try instead to answer the question of how you would know a person is in the “objective state of mortal sin”.
T
Thomas_White
Guest
I am well aware you did not understand the comment.
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clem456
Guest
Did the poster claim he would know if a person was in a state of mortal sin?
J
jeannetherese
Guest
LongingSoul;13456969 said:
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Brendan
Guest
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LongingSoul
Guest
You’re wrong there. I’m not ‘pushing for rule changes’. I want the Holy Spirit to be heard so that we have the best attitude we can have going forward as Catholics. If that is reflected in some new way in the Church teachings well and good. If it is indeed not a time to change anything at all, well and good also. What’s being called for is openness to the new… synodality in the Church that includes the lay faithful. Openness to the sensus fidelium and a less top heavy Church structure. Those things weren’t determined by Jesus other then the place of the Pope. The structures of the Church have developed over the 2000 year history in response to the culture and its needs.
In his synod closing speech Pope Francis said…
Certainly, the Synod was not about settling all the issues having to do with the family, but rather attempting to see them in the light of the Gospel and the Church’s tradition and two-thousand-year history, bringing the joy of hope without falling into a facile repetition of what is obvious or has already been said.
But over and over we are hearing facile repetition of what is obvious and has already been said.
*Surely it was not about finding exhaustive solutions for all the difficulties and uncertainties which challenge and threaten the family, but rather about seeing these difficulties and uncertainties in the light of the Faith, carefully studying them and confronting them fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand.
*
Why do some people keep pushing back against the discussion to confront issues fearlessly?
It was about bearing witness to everyone that, for the Church, the Gospel continues to be a vital source of eternal newness, against all those who would “indoctrinate” it in dead stones to be hurled at others.
Their is constant reference to the people at question as being ‘adulterers’. Not even the Church uses that description of these people anymore as we have evolved to understand the part of cultural influences and the erosion of faith and it’s impact on culpability.
- The Synod experience also made us better realize that the true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit; not ideas but people; not formulae but the gratuitousness of God’s love and forgiveness. This is in no way to detract from the importance of formulae – they are necessary – or from the importance of laws and divine commandments, but rather to exalt the greatness of the true God, who does not treat us according to our merits or even according to our works but solely according to the boundless generosity of his Mercy (cf. Rom 3:21-30; Ps 129; Lk 11:47-54). It does have to do with overcoming the recurring temptations of the elder brother (cf. Lk 15:25-32) and the jealous labourers (cf. Mt 20:1-16). Indeed, it means upholding all the more the laws and commandments which were made for man and not vice versa (cf. Mk 2:27).
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St_Francis
Guest
I do not understand what you are asking me. I told you the way one judges whether an objective state of mortal sin exists in a situation.
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LongingSoul
Guest
No, no, you didn’t offend me. I think I was still responding to the ones here who are in war mode.
I really feel that if everyone read everything that Pope Francis has said since being elected, it would be now becoming obvious what his Spirit inspired vision is. I can sense a path appearing before us with everything he says and I’d love to be part of encouraging people to go with it rather than looking back to the past and trying to go back.
It involves a new more radical way of regarding mercy so it’s even more intensely observed as per the Gospel and to me that involves looking at the gospels through new eyes, rather than trying to keep our concept of Gods mercy locked up behind the ‘door of justice’.
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