Cardinal Cupich says "discern truth" - WHAT?

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runningdude said:
Living in a consensual putative marriage following a divorce is certainly not overtly evil like your above examples. However, it is still sinful (adultery against the first marriage), and those who receive communion while in a state of sin eat and drink judgement upon themselves, according to Saint Paul. Those living in such a relationship are also invited to repent and cease their sin, and thus be received back into communion.
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Do you assert that the remarried must separate to avoid grave sin and to be in a fit state to receive communion? Certainly JPII proposed something different.

When did your assertion first cease to be what the Church proposed?
 
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Rau said:
Do you assert that the remarried must separate to avoid grave sin and to be in a fit state to receive communion? Certainly JPII proposed something different.

When did your assertion first cease to be what the Church proposed?
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What are you accusing me of “asserting”?

They must repent and cease committing adultery to be readmitted. That is absolutely what the church teaches.

(Continuing to live together, but chastely, is not adultery - is that your concern???)
 
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irenaeus1 said:
. Recall that invincible ignorance is much more than merely not knowing, but rather not knowing when it could be easily known.
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In this case though, I do not think this can be easily be known outside of the Catholic Church. That is why I see this to be more of a problem. Most Christians outside do not hold to the absolute insolubility of marriage. Remember that one version of Jesus teaching on adultery has a clause that starts, "except for… (insert your translation here). Also, Moses really did permit divorce. It is in the Old Testament, where the law prohibiting adultery is also found.

So, I am not defending that interpretation, but it is a legitimate one outside the teaching of the Church, and one that is commonly held by Christianity. So, invincible ignorance is not only possible, but likely and predictable in a lot of cases.
 
runningdude said:
They must repent and cease committing adultery to be readmitted. That is absolutely what the church teaches.
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The Pope is proposing that there may be situations not forbidding communion. I understand you believe there are none.
 
I don’t see the need for controversy. If one is in a second civil marriage following divorce, simply refrain from communion unless and until the prior marriage has been declared null.
Or refrain from sexual relations in order to receive communion.

When we had to fast from food and water from midnight, a lot of people had to refrain from communion simply from breaking the Eucharistic fast.
 
Actually, even living together in a 2nd marriage is a mild to moderate form of what is traditionally incorporated under “adultery”. Even if abstaining.
By that word both Jesus and the OT meant “unfaithfulness” of which the carnal version is but one example.

Yet JPII admitted such adulteters to private Communion.
The question now is, are there also some forms of carnal adultery that may be admitted also?

Namely, where the 2nd marriage should be preserved and where a non Catholic partner cannot be expected to release his wife from the promise she made to him even though she would abstain if it didnt risk the 2nd marriage.
 
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JimG said:
I don’t see the need for controversy. If one is in a second civil marriage following divorce, simply refrain from communion unless and until the prior marriage has been declared null.

Or refrain from sexual relations in order to receive communion.
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This is really practical advice. I would add that we should also not lose sleep over what others do. Let that be between the person, his/her priest, and God, while all this stuff is sorted out.
 
I agree with you here.
But this comes up against the new (i mean re discovery) that Communion is essential nourishment for the journey.
The current situation contradicts that emphasis and undermines the necessity of eating His Flesh to be saved.

No longer can we assume the divorced and remarried are all pariahs in a state of mortal sin and damned unless they leave the marriage…in which case they are denied Communion anways until they confess which they wont.

Due to the very large numbers in the heart of the Church now it is realised that many are reasonably held to be personally in a state of sanctifying grace and at the same time in a state of grave objective evil. The issue is bigger tnan the personal freedom of all involved, there is a systemic issue which robs many of freedom to do otherwise at this stage in their lives.
If anyone needed this food for the journey its theze grace filled sick not the perfect. Yet the reverse is happening.

A more hard nosed consideration is also in play.
Before the strategy to save the Church was to pull up the drawbridge against divorce and remarriage and fill the moats.
That wasnt enough. The Church will haemorraghe new generations if their parents are excommunicated and treated as pariahs or 2nd class members. Popes since JPII seem to have suddenly woken up to this reality.

But me, I am old school. I have great respect for the Eucharist but like the desert monks of old, I think the means to sanctity and the presence of God and Christ is still superabundant outside of the normal ways.
At one stage of my life due to circumstances outside of my control I had to sit in the back pew without Communion for a number of years. Christ sat quietly next to me regardless.
 
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JimG said:
When we had to fast from food and water from midnight, a lot of people had to refrain from communion simply from breaking the Eucharistic fast.
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You mean they had really late dinners, or couldn’t delay breakfast??
 
Rau said:
You mean they had really late dinners, or couldn’t delay breakfast??
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Usually Sunday Mass was early, and breakfast followed Mass. But even a drink of water broke the fast. And sometime teens (or adults) would even take a drink of water ‘inadvertently’ to avoid going to communion when they needed to go to confession first.
 
Simply refraining from communion does not make any a pariah or even infer it.
 
You may have misunderstood.
The civilly divorced, let alone the remarried, were treated as pariahs in the very old days.
Not only was Communion denied them (the remarried and the unrepentent divorced) but also respected membership.
 
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JimG said:
Usually Sunday Mass was early, and breakfast followed Mass. But even a drink of water broke the fast. And sometime teens (or adults) would even take a drink of water ‘inadvertently’ to avoid going to communion when they needed to go to confession first.
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Aaaah, I see. Though I read the 1917 Canon Law limited this to those aged 21 to 60, which would be odd, given today the communion fast applies to essentially all who are medically able.

Certainly the current rule does seems so “easy” as to be unnoticeable.
 
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The problem for me is when the Church sanctions unworthy reception by apparent removal of all impediments so that one mistakenly feels worthy…“Don’t worry about repentance, because most likely, you’ve not even sinned because you’re not culpable. After all, you can’t help it.”
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I don’t believe this is a fair representation of what the Magisterium is teaching.
It may well be what young liberal priests imprudently advise.

The two Canons involved are very clear.
One places a responsibility on the individual to approach or not based on their consciousness of grave sin. Noone can absolve them of that responsibility, nor will any priest deny them Communion simply because that judgement can only be made between God and the communicant.
Even if a priest suggests (sometimes rightly) from his understanding of the revealed circumstances of this particular individual that grave personal sin is unlikely even though grave matter is present…a penitent must still examine their own conscience and follow the verdict of their own conscience.
If they blindly follow the priest without doing so then that is surely culpable - and I would not think that even the foolish priests you speak of would deny the necessity of always personally reflecting on all counsel and making one’s own personal decision in this regard before one’s own conscience.

The other Canon places responsibility on the priest to deny giving Communion to approaching communicants over specific and well known grave public objective disorders if certain additional conditions are met (based on the disposition of the Communicant).

These objective conditions have nothing to do with directly identifying the presence of sanctifying grace…though those with sanctifying grace are unlikely to have a poor disposition (i.e. flaunting, stubbornness etc).

Some of these criteria are obviously a prudential judgement and may differ from priest to priest.

Currently we appear to be in a situation where the mere existence of an ongoing sexual relationship, in some very few somewhat unusual cases, is no longer considered a category of objective sin that essentially requires a priest to deny Communion always and everywhere by that reason alone.
 
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BlackFriar said:
You may have misunderstood.

The civilly divorced, let alone the remarried, were treated as pariahs in the very old days.

Not only was Communion denied them (the remarried and the unrepentent divorced) but also respected membership.
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I don’t think they were treated as pariahs even though there was a stigma to divorce. I have given the example of my wife’s aunt who was a respected member of her parish even though divorced and civilly remarried. She never missed Mass. Divorce was rare then, but it didn’t mean that one was ejected from the Church or the parish.
 
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“JimG said:
As to my wife’s aunt, she firmly accepted the finding of the tribunal and did not wish to second guess them. I got the impression that she believed the first marriage to be valid, because she meant her vows and she believed that the ex-husband meant them as well. He just changed his mind. But changing one’s mind does not dissolve a marriage. In any case she remained a devout Catholic whether receiving communion or not.
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Ummm… correct me if I’m wrong, but did you say that your Aunt married someone in a State union, after the Church confirmed her marriage valid? And you call her a devout Catholic?

Not receiving Communion is NOT being a devout Catholic. Receiving Communion while Reconciled with Jesus and the Church is being a devout Catholic
 
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