Cardinal Marx: Church should see positive aspects of homosexual relationships [CWN]

[JosieN]

Why would you put your phrase about “sinners” in the third person rather than the first person plural?

He was asking a question.

 

[JosieN]

Whoever is confused,has a door open to a priest
We know how to deal with our friends and our closer ones. The time to speak,the time to listen,the time to work, and so on.
In God’s s presence,we are in God’s s presence as we write. I often forget that too,and I am sorry for that. After all ,who knows who can be hurting behind the screen…
Go to your priests,ask a priest,that is what I would say .They know best when it comes to personal things.

I do not have a personal problem. I am seeking answers because it is good to keep up on what is happening around us. Thanks for your suggestions. I would also like to suggest that we ask our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for help and pray the Rosary daily. Praying one of the best ways to obtain grace. I believe God is always there if the heart is sincere and we are willing to do His Will.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I think this is a reasonable concern. People need to know right from wrong. Once they clearly know right from wrong, they can consider culpability. One has to avoid a way of thinking which sees no sin anywhere because of the various mitigating factors relating to culpability. We do not, for example, excuse bullying on the basis of subjective personal factors. We ask that the bullying first stop; then we counsel the bully on his behavior and how to avoid that action in the future. But he must stop the bad behavior.

I think that is a very good example.

No, actually, this would be a problematic example – because one is reducing human behaviour and applications of behaviour modification that are properly the province of the social and behavioural sciences to considerations when one is dealing with aspects of human behaviour that relate actually to ethics and moral philosophy (in the realm of philosophy unaided by revelation) or moral theology (in the realm of human knowledge aided by revelation, the deposit of the faith and the Magisterium).

Even in the example cited, apart from a consideration of acquisition of subjective moral guilt by the person who is bullying (and that determination of an acquisition of subjective moral guilt is the competence of moral theology) that may or may not conclude acquisition of subjective moral guilt, there can be a determination by, for example, a court of law that a severe psychological pathology does, in fact, cause one who has physically bullied someone to be exempt from certain forms of redress – and even to determine that the one acting cannot be held responsible for said action based on the determination of an altered state of consciousness. And that without making, or even being interested in, any sort of conclusion remotely derived from moral theology.

That is why distinctions in these various fields is not only essential for their respective operation but are essential for the humane dispositions of human interactions, which have a variety of loci of origin as well as termini. They of course all intersect within the person but unto different proper ends. The different bodies of knowledge can at times enrich each other…even as they remain distinct and properly their own.

 

[graciew]

I do not have a personal problem. I am seeking answers because it is good to keep up on what is happening around us. Thanks for your suggestions. I would also like to suggest that we ask our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for help and pray the Rosary daily. Praying one of the best ways to obtain grace. I believe God is always there if the heart is sincere and we are willing to do His Will.

May God have mercy on us,Josie.
You have my daughter’s name. May St Joseph help us be good brothers and sisters.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I bought a second Catechism recently, it should arrive in the mail soon. It is called The Catechism Explained. It is over 700 pages and has stories from the saints lives and things they said. I will take your advice and read through it and educate my faith better using a trusted Catholic source.

The text of which you speak was written in 1899.

Thanks be to God, the Pope who was then reigning saw himself and his mission in the light of living at the end of the 19th century and not the middle of the 18th century – or history might be radically different and not in a positive way. Rather, he saw the need as not retreating to the past but of boldly living in the present.

To retrogress to the the 19th century…or the 17th or the 13th…is to incredibly impoverish oneself intellectually and spiritually, particularly in the face of the advances in scholarship we have seen since the 1800s, which is not an era to be looked back upon as a halcyon age from the perspective of a Church historian.

A doctor as illustrious as Aquinas has been made improved by subsequent scholarship which has been able to elucidate points for which he had no answer and to correct points on which he was, in fact, too limited by his times to have or provide the correct answer.

Even for one who, as a theologian, was schooled as a Thomist, one does not live as if this were still the Scholastic epoch of centuries long dead or without taking account of just how very much things have changed in so very many senses…or looking only at those texts without accounting for subsequent developments, corrections, and improvements. Unless one wishes to be rather a walking anachronism on the one hand and to fall into gross error of failing to sentire cum ecclesia; it, after all, lives in the 21st century presently and not in past as though preserved in amber.

The transition from patristicism to scholasticism was not greeted with universal contemporary acclaim…but that is not always remembered so many centuries later. The effects on the history of academics as we moved from one era to another was, of course, utterly extraordinary.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Then why the need to go back in time to try to blur the line between grave mater and mortal culpability?

That would seem to suggest that some here find something deficient in the way the Church currently expresses herself and want to assume that all grave matter is somehow mortally capable as well.

All the Church has done, is try to make a clear distinction between the gravity of the matter and mortal culpability by using more precise terminology.

It seems to me the current Catechism explains sin and culpability for it rather well using precise terms that mean what they say.

:yup:

:clapping:

We are blessed to live in a time in which moral theology has moved many steps forward from where it was in certain epochs of a span of the past as scholaticism waned and up to the era of Vatican II…even as contemporary moral theology has found new vitality in a remarkable synthesis of modern schools of thought alongside schools of thought from eras of the more remote past of a number of centuries ago, as Pope Saint John Paul II sagely indicated and other theologians have taken up.

 

[JosieN]

The text of which you speak was written in 1899.

Thanks be to God, the Pope who was then reigning saw himself and his mission in the light of living at the end of the 19th century and not the middle of the 18th century – or history might be radically different and not in a positive way. Rather, he saw the need as not retreating to the past but of boldly living in the present.

To retrogress to the the 19th century…or the 17th or the 13th…is to incredibly impoverish oneself intellectually and spiritually, particularly in the face of the advances in scholarship we have seen since the 1800s, which is not an era to be looked back upon as a halcyon age from the perspective of a Church historian.

A doctor as illustrious as Aquinas has been made improved by subsequent scholarship which has been able to elucidate points for which he had no answer and to correct points on which he was, in fact, too limited by his times to have or provide the correct answer.

Even for one who, as a theologian, was schooled as a Thomist, one does not live as if this were still the Scholastic epoch of centuries long dead or without taking account of just how very much things have changed in so very many senses…or looking only at those texts without accounting for subsequent developments, corrections, and improvements. Unless one wishes to be rather a walking anachronism on the one hand and to fall into gross error of failing to sentire cum ecclesia; it, after all, lives in the 21st century presently and not in past as though preserved in amber.

The transition from patristicism to scholasticism was not greeted with universal contemporary acclaim…but that is not always remembered so many centuries later. The effects on the history of academics as we moved from one era to another was, of course, utterly extraordinary.

I have a copy of the current Catechism but I want to read the older ones too. I plan to purchase and read the Baltimore IV Catechism and the Catechism of the Council of Trent also. Reading these will be like going back in time and learning the religion of my ancestors. I think knowing our faith is important and I can pass them down to my children and one day their children too.

 

[Sarah_B_Good]

A doctor as illustrious as Aquinas has been made improved by subsequent scholarship which has been able to elucidate points for which he had no answer and to correct points on which he was, in fact, too limited by his times to have or provide the correct answer.

St. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant and holy man, a doctor of the Church. And even as a former Catholic, I recognize him as such, but I am able to do so, despite the fact that he defended slavery and proclaimed the inferiority of women, precisely because I recognize that he was as you say, “limited by his times.”

The problem that I see in the Church today is the failure to recognize that we are also products of our times and limited, as such. Truth does not change, but our understanding of it grows with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is the height of arrogance to believe that we are at the pinnacle of our understanding of this truth as a Church…that the generations that came before us did not have a complete understanding, but the generations following us are headed down the wrong path. Why is there no trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us to a greater understanding?

The Holy Spirit is at work within the Church today, this very moment. Unfortunately, many will not recognize the Spirit.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I have a copy of the current Catechism but I want to read the older ones too. I plan to purchase and read the Baltimore IV Catechism and the Catechism of the Council of Trent also. Reading these will be like going back in time and learning the religion of my ancestors. I think knowing our faith is important and I can pass them down to my children and one day their children too.

As I told my own students, they are not without historical value and could be referenced as such in the context of their studies with me – which was a policy of the whole faculty, actually…but, given that most of them would be in a ministerial work, their references, beyond the historical, had to be drawn from The Catechism of the Catholic Church, once it was promulgated. It was what they were to use in their ministry under their bishops and also, to the extent that the task would be entrusted to them by their proper Ordinary, in adaptations of catechetical material for use by those over whom they had pastoral governance and the cura animarum.

It is, of course, important as we look back at the past that we keep in mind the words of Pope Saint John Paul II in the face of the truly horrifying and repugnant schismatic act of 1988, which he said constitutes a warning to every Catholic in his motu proprio apostolic letter, Ecclesia Dei:
*The particular circumstances, both objective and subjective in which Archbishop Lefebvre acted, provide everyone with an occasion for profound reflection and for a renewed pledge of fidelity to Christ and to his Church. In itself, this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience - which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act /…/

The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, "comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways.

But especially contradictory is a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops. It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his Church.*
In my lectures after 1988, it was a theme I often returned to…that our adherence to Tradition must be anchored in our adherence to the living character of Tradition as found in the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops…lest the error of those who committed such a schismatic act be replicated.

 

[zz912]

This is not Catholic Teaching ZZ.
Non imputable deeds of grave matter may not even be venial sins in some cases.
Whence then the dire consequences of purgatory you speak of?
Whence then the grave offence against God?

Obviously there may still be negative temporal consequences from unforgiving men on earth…Eye for eye, Pharisees in power, older brother types and so on. Restitution or legitimate civil punishment may also be required.
But God all the same continues to grace those with impaired understanding or who do not consent interiorly as the CCC and Pope Francis clearly teach.

It most certainly IS Catholic teaching Blue. Purgatory purifies us of the temporal effects of sin, and ALSO our attachment to sin. Those who are committing grave sins/matter, but do not have one of the other two components necessary for mortal sin, are still committing grave acts and have an attachment to those grave acts.

1030 All who die in God’s grace and friendship,** but still imperfectly purified**, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

Take for instance a man who is committing fornication with his girlfriend, but is missing one of the other two components so his actions are not mortal sin. He still has an ATTACHMENT to the fornication that must be purified from him.

Cite for me your claim that the Church teaches that grave offenses we have committed do not need to be purified.

 

[zz912]

Yes Catholic Teaching on mortal sin obviously involves this text.
However the scholastic medieval phrase we use today “mortal sin” is not exactly the same as that concept used in 1John. Nor is the phrase in 1Jn always well translated from Greek in your translation above. The expression is better rendered as “sin leading to death”. This is more ambiguous than the scholastic phrase.

This is called moving the goalposts.

 

[zz912]

No, actually, this would be a problematic example – because one is reducing human behaviour and applications of behaviour modification that are properly the province of the social and behavioural sciences to considerations when one is dealing with aspects of human behaviour that relate actually to ethics and moral philosophy (in the realm of philosophy unaided by revelation) or moral theology (in the realm of human knowledge aided by revelation, the deposit of the faith and the Magisterium).

Even in the example cited, apart from a consideration of acquisition of subjective moral guilt by the person who is bullying (and that determination of an acquisition of subjective moral guilt is the competence of moral theology) that may or may not conclude acquisition of subjective moral guilt, there can be a determination by, for example, a court of law that a severe psychological pathology does, in fact, cause one who has physically bullied someone to be exempt from certain forms of redress – and even to determine that the one acting cannot be held responsible for said action based on the determination of an altered state of consciousness. And that without making, or even being interested in, any sort of conclusion remotely derived from moral theology.

That is why distinctions in these various fields is not only essential for their respective operation but are essential for the humane dispositions of human interactions, which have a variety of loci of origin as well as termini. They of course all intersect within the person but unto different proper ends. The different bodies of knowledge can at times enrich each other…even as they remain distinct and properly their own.

So a mentally ill bully can continue on bullying? Because he doesn’t know what he’s doing is wrong?

 

[JimG]

Persons grow in families and communities. We cannot have everything under control…
I will be as honest as I can be: once you have walked the walk with a priest,a good community of good willed people and particularly in the Church,well,because it is where we belong, everything falls gently in its place.
It is diffficult to convey experiences,it is a matter of trust,but I wholeheartedly wish there was more silence of words,more trust and more personal dealing with priests and walking the walk.
There is a saying in Spanish" Do not clarify,that it makes it darker"
I have zero concern and all my trust in the Church,out of faith,out of reason.
Within these walks one may be comfronted with ourselves,and others by the hand of Jesús,and start a lifetime relationship which grows with its lights and shadows but foward.
Be calm,all will be well.

These are peaceful thoughts, and I think that I agree with everything you said, except perhaps the part about “do no clarify, that makes it darker.” (I think the saying may have some applicability to spiritual matters of prayer and contemplation, but when it comes to academic matters of moral theology, clarity is a virtue.)

Despite my agreement with these comments, I cannot see that they have any relationship to the matter at hand, which is the distinction between grave matter and moral culpability for sin. There seems to be a consensus that the two are distinct, yet it also seems to me that the thrust of the discussion is to confuse the issue of wrong action to the point of non-existence.

Surely the Church teaches that some actions are wrong in themselves. Murder is wrong, fornication and adultery are wrong. Assault and battery are wrong. Stealing is wrong. Mowing down pedestrians with a truck is wrong. Examples could be multiplied. These things are wrong in themselves, even if the perpetrator does not have full knowledge and consent, even if he thinks that the wrong action is what the Almighty demands of him. Culpability or not, wrong actions remain wrong. They violate the moral laws of our Creator. They have bad personal and social and spiritual consequences.

That is my only point. I only ask this: Is it possible for anyone to recognize right and wrong any longer? Or have we so drowned the simple idea of right and wrong in a sea of words about culpability as to deprive them of meaning? If we have, then society is in trouble.

 

[graciew]

These are peaceful thoughts, and I think that I agree with everything you said, except perhaps the part about “do no clarify, that makes it darker.” (I think the saying may have some applicability to spiritual matters of prayer and contemplation, but when it comes to academic matters of moral theology, clarity is a virtue.)

Despite my agreement with these comments, I cannot see that they have any relationship to the matter at hand, which is the distinction between grave matter and moral culpability for sin. There seems to be a consensus that the two are distinct, yet it also seems to me that the thrust of the discussion is to confuse the issue of wrong action to the point of non-existence.

Surely the Church teaches that some actions are wrong in themselves. Murder is wrong, fornication and adultery are wrong. Assault and battery are wrong. Stealing is wrong. Mowing down pedestrians with a truck is wrong. Examples could be multiplied. These things are wrong in themselves, even if the perpetrator does not have full knowledge and consent, even if he thinks that the wrong action is what the Almighty demands of him. Culpability or not, wrong actions remain wrong. They violate the moral laws of our Creator. They have bad personal and social and spiritual consequences.

That is my only point. I only ask this: Is it possible for anyone to recognize right and wrong any longer? Or have we so drowned the simple idea of right and wrong in a sea of words about culpability as to deprive them of meaning? If we have, then society is in trouble.

Thank you,Jim.
I applied the phrase of " clarifying" as a reminder to myself…so that I would not mess it up
There are persons who can explain things better.

 

[Maximilan_Kolbe]

St. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant and holy man, a doctor of the Church. And even as a former Catholic, I recognize him as such, but I am able to do so, despite the fact that he defended slavery and proclaimed the inferiority of women, precisely because I recognize that he was as you say, “limited by his times.”

The problem that I see in the Church today is the failure to recognize that we are also products of our times and limited, as such. Truth does not change, but our understanding of it grows with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is the height of arrogance to believe that we are at the pinnacle of our understanding of this truth as a Church…that the generations that came before us did not have a complete understanding, but the generations following us are headed down the wrong path. Why is there no trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us to a greater understanding?

The Holy Spirit is at work within the Church today, this very moment. Unfortunately, many will not recognize the Spirit.

I don’t disagree, but if you aren’t recognizing it (since you admit you left), why are you lecturing Catholics on the same thing?

 

[JosieN]

I don’t disagree, but if you aren’t recognizing it (since you admit you left), why are you lecturing Catholics on the same thing?

She is offering her opinion, I do not believe it is lecturing, An opinion always gives us something to consider and think about. Some will agree, some will not.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

This is called moving the goalposts.

Its called critical scholarship ZZ.

Blackboxes aren’t black.
Is it shifting the goalposts to try and inform you they are bright orange?
We will never understand Catholic Teaching if we think words and phrases don’t mean different things at different times, in different places, when used by different groups and when translated from other languages.

You either get it or you don’t so no point discussing this further with you sorry.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Why is there no trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us to a greater understanding?

Sarah we might equally well ask why lay people do not trust the common understanding of our theologically and pastorally experienced leaders - in which I include Fr Don.

Perhaps that is the trust the Holy Spirit is wanting of us rather than some unsubstantiated lay belief in our own infused knowledge which the HS may or may not be responsible for.

Regardless of Aquinas’s alleged errors, the Magisterium and certainly the CCC are very heavily based on Aquinas’s very influential understanding of the Human person and creation before God.

One cannot understand the finer points implicit in the CCC nor the relatively seamless connections between all parts of the CCC without long training in Aquinas’s system.

Personally I would reflect considerably more on the broad outlines that Fr Don kindly contributes on this thread.

 

[JosieN]

Sarah we might equally well ask why lay people do not trust the common understanding of our theologically and pastorally experienced leaders - in which I include Fr Don.

Perhaps that is the trust the Holy Spirit is wanting of us rather than some unsubstantiated lay belief in our own infused knowledge which the HS may or may not be responsible for.

Regardless of Aquinas’s alleged errors, the Magisterium and certainly the CCC are very heavily based on Aquinas’s very influential understanding of the Human person and creation before God.

One cannot understand the finer points implicit in the CCC nor the relatively seamless connections between all parts of the CCC without long training in Aquinas’s system.

Personally I would reflect considerably more on the broad outlines that Fr Don kindly contributes on this thread.

If we can find what we are looking for in an old Catechism or an older version of the Bible, then maybe that is where the Holy Spirit is leading us. When the Holy Spirit says to us, something is not right, we should listen, and when the truth is presented to us in a way we no longer recognize it, we should open our eyes. With searching and God’s guidance I believe we will find what we are looking for.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

If we can find what we are looking for in an old Catechism or an older version of the Bible, then maybe that is where the Holy Spirit is leading us. When the Holy Spirit says to us, something is not right, we should listen, and when the truth is presented to us in a way we no longer recognize it, we should open our eyes. With searching and God’s guidance I believe we will find what we are looking for.

Josie good luck with that approach though I fear it will not pull you out of the theological confusion you seek to free yourself from.

Trying to clarify by returning to old formulations meant for long gone times and circumstances is difficult even for scholars. For example I do not think it will help to better understand what is meant by the word “gay” by looking up the Oxford dictionary of 100 years ago.
Most lay people cannot hope to attain the clarity of “under the hood” understanding that our trained and pastorally experienced and sanctioned leaders commonly possess.
And one on this thread, Fr Don, has already advised you against this approach of returning to the past. Perhaps the Holy Spirit is talking to you here as well.
The Holy Spirit I think expects us to accept our limitations as untrained lay people - especially when it comes to teaching persons other than ourselves.

Of course you will not fall from God’s love if you follow your conscience and equally strive to have it informed accurately from such respected sources.
That does not mean you are immune from error even on teachings you believe you understand or feel good about - especially when such trained persons on this Forum suggest you may not have a complete grasp of some issues.

And this is just the contradiction some of us are attempting to explain.
We can be objectively “wrong” (both morally and intellectually) even when subjectively following our conscience which of course is the right thing to do. However we must not refuse “accompaniment” from the experts whether that be a Confessor for the practising homosexual or a Theological Advisor for the theologically confused.

A book by itself rather than a respected, trained person doesn’t really cut it whether that be a Bible, the Council of Trent or a Baltimore Catechism (which never had universal standing anyway).

The limitations of “education” simply from a French-English dictionary is realised the moment one opens one’s mouth in Paris .

Going back to the ambiguous past “to find what we are looking for” does sound to me like a preconceived answer looking for a justifying “explanation”. I would not think such an approach is intrinsically of the Holy Spirit but perhaps more of Man myself.

We can all find cherry-picked authors or half-understood, disjointed Magisterial phrases or sentences that seem to back up our assumptions if we try hard enough.

I won’t be attempting to assist you further here as I fear you are not really open to such observations. Instead of dialoguing with me on particular points (which you still do not accept though you are unable to justify such rejection) you simply move to some other cherry picked objection rather than question your assumptions. I fear I am simply enabling you to formulate more sophisticated objections that still do not hold water and which tie you and others up in even more intractable knots.