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graciew
Guest
Thank you,Blue! I will read it slowly .
Have a good night!
Have a good night!
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Justin_Swanton
Guest
Wow. CA has gone further than I would ever have dared to:
My earnest prayer is that the pope will repudiate this document, affirm the traditional pastoral discipline regarding marriage and divorce, and help the Catholic flock view all of the gospel’s moral prescriptions not as mere ideals or options among many, but as the Narrow Way: difficult for fallen man but definitely possible by God’s grace.
Todd Aglialoro is absolutely right of course.
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billy15
Guest
I understand others better educated than myself accept this. But others educated better than myself also reject this, such as the 10 bishops whose positions I listed earlier in this thread. We’ve already agreed that adultery is evil. No qualifiers. Adultery is evil. To say that it is a necessity that one must commit evil to survive (I’m not talking about forced or coerced sex… that’s basically rape) is untenable in light of the Decalogue, not to mention 2,000 years of constant Church teaching. To quote St. John Paul again in VS:
According to St. Thomas Aquinas in CCC 1759: “An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention. (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Dec. praec. 6). The end does not justify the means.” In other words, “Adultery (evil action) cannot be justified by reference to the ‘good of the children’ (good intention).” I believe this is very straightforward.
Very well, but several other bishops and clergy disagree with what’s being put forth by the Maltese bishops, Bishop Elbs, the German bishops, and others. I still believe that Pope Francis is a son of the Church, as he has often said, and I believe Cardinal Muller’s words when he says that the Pope is not at odds with his two predecessors on this issue. AL changes nothing that was explained in FC, VS, or the 1994 letter issued by the CDF and then-Cardinal Ratzinger. But this is why the dubia need to be answered. One position is correct, the other is not. We don’t live in a morally relativistic world where both can be true. With bishops contradicting each other, I pray this gets resolved very soon.
Yes, but sin is sin. Should we not always try to avoid venial sins? Otherwise, wouldn’t we be lying when during our Act of Contrition we say “I firmly resolve… to avoid the near occasion of sin.” No qualifier of mortal or venial sin there. CCC 1871 refers to all sin. “Sin is an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law (St. Augustine, Faust 22
L 42, 418). It is an offense against God. It rises up against God in a disobedience contrary to the obedience of Christ.” For a priest to tell someone in the confessional that they do not need to avoid a certain sin any longer (in this case, not avoiding sexual relations/fornication with one who is not their true spouse) is anything but merciful, and makes a mockery of the sacrament of Reconciliation.I still think many are forgetting the real danger of venial sins: “Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin.(CCC 1863)” One can only be ignorant of the fact that adultery is a sin whose object is grave matter for so long, after being told this is so. St. Teresa of Avila makes an excellent point on the matter:
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JPUSC
Guest
LOOOOOL WHAAAAAAATTTTTT!!!
After 3 years, CAF is finally on my side!!! Looooooooolllll!!!
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
When you understand the difference between malum culpae and malum poenae we will be able to fruitfully discuss your confusions here.I understand others better educated than myself accept this. But others educated better than myself also reject this, such as the 10 bishops whose positions I listed earlier in this thread. We’ve already agreed that adultery is evil. No qualifiers. Adultery is evil. To say that it is a necessity that one must commit evil to survive (I’m not talking about forced or coerced sex… that’s basically rape) is untenable in light of the Decalogue, not to mention 2,000 years of constant Church teaching. To quote St. John Paul again in VS:
According to St. Thomas Aquinas in CCC 1759: “An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention. (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Dec. praec. 6). The end does not justify the means.” In other words, “Adultery (evil action) cannot be justified by reference to the ‘good of the children’ (good intention).” I believe this is very straightforward.
Very well, but several other bishops and clergy disagree with what’s being put forth by the Maltese bishops, Bishop Elbs, the German bishops, and others. I still believe that Pope Francis is a son of the Church, as he has often said, and I believe Cardinal Muller’s words when he says that the Pope is not at odds with his two predecessors on this issue. AL changes nothing that was explained in FC, VS, or the 1994 letter issued by the CDF and then-Cardinal Ratzinger. But this is why the dubia need to be answered. One position is correct, the other is not. We don’t live in a morally relativistic world where both can be true. With bishops contradicting each other, I pray this gets resolved very soon.
Yes, but sin is sin. Should we not always try to avoid venial sins? Otherwise, wouldn’t we be lying when during our Act of Contrition we say “I firmly resolve… to avoid the near occasion of sin.” No qualifier of mortal or venial sin there. CCC 1871 refers to all sin. “Sin is an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law (St. Augustine, Faust 22
I still think many are forgetting the real danger of venial sins: “Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin.(CCC 1863)” One can only be ignorant of the fact that adultery is a sin whose object is grave matter for so long, after being told this is so. St. Teresa of Avila makes an excellent point on the matter:
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JPUSC
Guest
“If we speak explicitly about communion for the divorced and remarried, you do not know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”
Pope Francis to Archbishop Bruno Forte, the Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto, Italy chosen by the Pope to be the special secretary to the synods, relayed during a presentation on the Pope’s recent exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
Italian news website, Zonalocale.it
zonalocale.it/2016/05/03/…-chiesa-/20471
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_Abyssinia
Guest
The Maltese bishops’ document will hurt Catholics – especially women
catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/01/17/the-maltese-bishops-document-will-hurt-catholics-especially-women/
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Pulvis
Guest
With all do respect to Archbishop Fernandez, this sounds remarkably like those defending Obama. Resorting to this statement:
“Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, rector of the Catholic University of Argentina, said that, even if the pope’s adversaries tried to turn back the clock in the next pontificate, the People of God would not stand for it.
“The people are with (Francis) and not with his few adversaries,” he said in an exclusive published Sunday in the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera.”
signifies that mob rule negates Dogma and Sacred Tradition. This would be much more appropriate for a Protestant argument against the Magesterium than for an Archbishop to use to defend his friend and benefactor, H.H. Pope Francis.
I find it odd that those who support the “mess” that we now have seem to have no problem with undoing the previous Holy Father’s work or opinions, but “their” guy can do no wrong. Establishing an “Us against them” mentality is a shallow tactic best left to politicians.
Perhaps we should just get back to the totality of the Faith and stop slicing and dicing out just what we like.
“Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, rector of the Catholic University of Argentina, said that, even if the pope’s adversaries tried to turn back the clock in the next pontificate, the People of God would not stand for it.
“The people are with (Francis) and not with his few adversaries,” he said in an exclusive published Sunday in the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera.”
signifies that mob rule negates Dogma and Sacred Tradition. This would be much more appropriate for a Protestant argument against the Magesterium than for an Archbishop to use to defend his friend and benefactor, H.H. Pope Francis.
I find it odd that those who support the “mess” that we now have seem to have no problem with undoing the previous Holy Father’s work or opinions, but “their” guy can do no wrong. Establishing an “Us against them” mentality is a shallow tactic best left to politicians.
Perhaps we should just get back to the totality of the Faith and stop slicing and dicing out just what we like.
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Memaw
Guest
Interesting!! God Bless, Memaw
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OraLabora
Guest
No, but as an oblate I am very close to one and I work in its library. I of course use the same Rule for my own conversatio morum!
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OraLabora
Guest
As I noted above, the words “it seems” is pure speculation, and the rest of the quote on here reinforces that.
If we know it for a fact, it is news.
If it’s someone’s conjecture, as was clear in the article, it is opinion, not news.
We do not know who the ghost-writer for AL was. Until we do, please avoid publishing such articles. We live in a “post-truth” world (aka “full of lies”). If a speculation is repeated enough people start to take it as fact and that is a very dangerous trend. This is how conspiracy theories start.
If we know it for a fact, it is news.
If it’s someone’s conjecture, as was clear in the article, it is opinion, not news.
We do not know who the ghost-writer for AL was. Until we do, please avoid publishing such articles. We live in a “post-truth” world (aka “full of lies”). If a speculation is repeated enough people start to take it as fact and that is a very dangerous trend. This is how conspiracy theories start.
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Dominicans, as a young man I lived with their seminarians and professors for 5 years or so while pursuing my studies, majoring in Aquinas.
It was a real hothouse, usual uni studies by day, endless theological debates with the seminarians at home as well as with residing professors there in the evenings over a glass of spirits. Chivas Regal was a favorite, I only drank coffee and beer…far too innocent then. They were always challenging, thinking outside the square, but within the Church. They had their personal eccentricities, but fond memories and formed friendships with some great priests and mentors.
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Justin_Swanton
Guest
A little catechism here. Communion is a sacrament of the living, requiring that the recipient be in a state of grace. To lose grace and fall into mortal sin requires three conditions: grave matter, full knowledge and full consent.
Is a sexually active remarried divorcee in mortal sin? (or more precisely, must a priest assume that such an individual is in mortal sin?)
Grave matter: check.
Full knowledge: check. A Catholic who is a massgoer and wants to receive Communion, and especially a Catholic who is subject of the ‘accompaniment’ process AL describes, ***necessarily ***knows that he/she is in a gravely sinful state. No invincible ignorance here.
Full consent: check. Moral theology is clear on the conditions that remove free will to the extent of making a sinful act not sinful, or at least not mortally sinful. Conditions such as brute force, fear of one’s life, and so on. ***None ***of these conditions apply to a couple cohabiting in an irregular union and freely engaging in sexual acts. I can give you the necessary references if you like.
The whole Communion-for-remarried-divorcees question is not actually a complicated one from the moral theology POV. It’s indefensible unless you toss the principles of Catholic morality overboard and reinvent the Ten Commandments.
One last thing: the distinction between remorse and repentance. An irregularly cohabiting Catholic may feel remorse for his/her state of life, but that does not equate to an effective repentance (which includes a firm purpose of amendment - ‘firm’ means you actually ***do ***something about putting your situation right). Judas was filled with remorse but that didn’t help him - “it would have been better for him if he had not been born”. Every soul in hell has remorse - “the worm that dieth not.”
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Justin_Swanton
Guest
A little clarification on my contribution. The Pope does not advocate Communion for homosexual/lesbian couples, nor for assisted suicides. He does however advocate Communion for remarried divorcees who are sexually active, something he made very clear in his endorsement of the Argentinian bishops’ guidelines of Sept 2016. I can do an analysis of that text if you wish although it’s already been done by others.
AL however can be cited as support for those who ***do ***advocate Communion for Catholics in other irregular situations, as has happened in Canada. The principle invoked is that if one feels it morally impossible to keep a commandment one isn’t obliged to keep it. Again, I can do an analysis of AL to prove the point although - again - it’s already been very ably done by others.
My final point is that IMHO the majority of Catholics will come around to these practices. I agree that orthodox Catholics won’t if one accepts ‘orthodox’ in the sense of Catholics who will not go against the perennial teaching of the Church regardless of which ecclesiastic tells them to.
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Ender
Guest
Well, I am sure we are all relieved that you had sufficient time to pen several paragraphs of gratuitous insults.
The scholastic meaning…that would be the (unspecified) definition that allows your assertion to be considered accurate. This would be in contrast to the (previously specified) church’s meaning which is what makes my assertion accurate.
It would seem the point to take away from this is the fact that merely following one’s conscience does not guarantee lack of culpability for the sins one commits - whether the guilt lies in the commission of the act today or in the assumptions made yesterday that justified it.
In theory perhaps, but not so much in practice. Take the case of a couple who, though familiar with the church’s teaching on contraception, decide they are justified in using it, and do so with a clear conscience. Is theirs vincible or invincible ignorance? If they assume that they are justified in rejecting doctrine in this case (primacy of conscience) they may be distressed to learn at the Last Judgment that while each particular use of contraception was indeed considered guiltless, their imputable error lay further back. The point is the same: a clean conscience is no guarantor that there is no imputable sin.
Our debate is not over the existence of invincible ignorance but how it is constituted, and it is not guaranteed merely by sincerity of conscience.
Is a material sin a moral evil?
This will be an interesting answer in that If you say no then you disagree with the church which defines sin as “nothing else than a morally bad act…", while if you say yes then you will disagree with yourself when you claimed "’**moral evil’ must always imply the presence of consent and understanding.”
Ender
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Justin_Swanton
Guest
Does he indeed.
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johnnyc176
Guest
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_Abyssinia
Guest
How do the Maltese guidelines reconcile with the following quotes? Can they be reconciled? If they can be reconciled, then I suppose there is not a problem here but if they cannot be reconciled, then aren’t concerns justified?
I’ve seen an astonishing level of concern and criticism regarding these Maltese guidelines since they were released.
Familiaris Consortio
(84)
Sacramentum Caritas
(29)
‘LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
CONCERNING THE RECEPTION OF HOLY COMMUNION
BY THE DIVORCED AND REMARRIED MEMBERS OF THE FAITHFUL’
Catechism of the Catholic Church
(1650)
I’ve seen an astonishing level of concern and criticism regarding these Maltese guidelines since they were released.
Familiaris Consortio
(84)
w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html
Sacramentum Caritas
(29)
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20070222_sacramentum-caritatis.html#The_Eucharist_and_the_Sacraments
‘LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
CONCERNING THE RECEPTION OF HOLY COMMUNION
BY THE DIVORCED AND REMARRIED MEMBERS OF THE FAITHFUL’
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_14091994_rec-holy-comm-by-divorced_en.html
Catechism of the Catholic Church
(1650)
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm
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