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philipl
Guest
Because they wont reconcile them as it now believed that both can be right depending on the circumstance.
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_Abyssinia
Guest
How do you reconcile this with the following?
From 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)
From 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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JimG
Guest
That is a good question.
If someone in an invalid marriage concludes that they are at peace with God despite engaging in objective adultery and thus may receive communion, why could not an unmarried cohabiting couple or a same sex couple make a similar determination? Indeed, there are many situations in which a person might be in objective disobedience to the moral law, yet think themselves to be at peace with God.
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JimG
Guest
If a couple is living in an irregular marital situation, wherein their current partner is not their valid spouse, and living in continence is deemed impossible, would not the better course simply be to refrain from communion?
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Stat_Crux
Guest
The issue of Communion or no Communion, whilst obviously important, is actually a secondary consideration. In the situation you describe the couple avoid the sin of sacrilege in receiving Communion whilst knowingly being in a state of mortal sin. However, they still remain in a state of mortal sin because they engage in sexual activity whilst not married. Thus directly contradicting the words of Christ on the subject. So they’re in a state of mortal sin whether or not they compound it by committing sacrilege. It’s the sex outside of marriage which is the real problem, solve that and you solve the Communion issue at the same time.
If we’re to have charity for our fellow Catholics we need to understand that it’s not just a case of helping people to understand that sacrilege is bad, but that continuing to live in an adulterous relationship is just as bad.
The Church withholds Communion from those with unconfessed mortal sin not only as a matter of applying the teachings of scripture, but also as an act of mercy to teach us those times when we have rejected God by our actions, and when we need to repent of our mistakes and be reconciled to him to return to a state of grace. God’s teachings are hard, but His grace and mercy to help us follow them is greater.
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FollowChrist34
Guest
You don’t. You discern the flow of the moment according to your perception of that situation; does it feel right? We are post-rigidity, post-clericalism; have you not received the memo? My goodness. You must be in a cave.
Mend your ways.I do seriously believe we are entering Anglicanism territory - different wings if you will of the Church. Some say this some say that. This multiculturalism will flourish, expand, more and more and more. What is ironic but not surprising is how it is coming from the weakest regions of the Church, Europe, South America. Africa is resisting (as the Anglicans there do too), also some spots in Europe, Poland. The US seems divided, which signals to me that there is still a fair amount of life in our parishes. Though how long that will last I think is now open to question. A lot will depend on the next 10-20 years.
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JimG
Guest
What you say is true. However, refraining from communion while coping with a situation of sin can itself be a form of cooperation with grace.
I have often recounted the story of my wife’s aunt, whose first marriage ended quickly in abandonment. A tribunal denied her request for a declaration of nullity, finding (this was in the 1950’s) no defect in consent.
She later married civilly a good man in a civil union that lasted until death. He was not Catholic. She would not refuse him marital rights; neither would she reject the decision of the tribunal. She remained a weekly Mass attendee at her parish church, active in the parish, but refrained from communion.
Was that the right thing to do? I don’t know. Should she have appealed the tribunal decision? Maybe, but things were quite different then. The situation ultimately resolved itself when her husband became aged, ill, and impotent. She made a confession and returned to communion, her pastor being well aware of her situation. I simply think that her manner of coping with this may have been better than seeking a permission from her pastor to receive, despite her situatioin—a permission which she would have declined as questionable in any case.
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Stat_Crux
Guest
Can’t tell if serious…
Speaking as an Englishman, the most demoralised Christians I know are all Anglican. They don’t know where they stand on sacraments, women priests & bishops, contraception, abortion, homosexuality and gay marriage to but name a few. I speak to one and I find a “high-church” Anglican (aka “catholic without the pope”), another I find a bible-bashing fundamentalist protestant who rejects any sacrament but Baptism and “the Lord’s Supper”, I speak to another and I find a “cultural christian” who doesn’t believe in God.
We shouldn’t be enthusiastically trying to copy a church established to allow the then monarch to marry whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Ever since abdicating its moral authority at that time, the Anglican church has been at the mercy of the passing fashions of British society; always being converted by it and never converting it.
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Thomas_White
Guest
RE: Comment #136
For an understanding of revelation in Dei Verbum and of the contribution of the young theologian Fr. Joseph Ratzinger to the formulation of this Dogmatic Constitution:
hprweb.com/2014/06/the-understanding-of-revelation-in-dei-verbum-and-the-response-of-faith/
For an understanding of revelation in Dei Verbum and of the contribution of the young theologian Fr. Joseph Ratzinger to the formulation of this Dogmatic Constitution:
hprweb.com/2014/06/the-understanding-of-revelation-in-dei-verbum-and-the-response-of-faith/
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FollowChrist34
Guest
- Yes, I am serious.
- I agree that this is a sad thing - a bad thing even. Think of my post as a deliberate ‘understatement’ of my response to the current situation.
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Stat_Crux
Guest
But is it fair to say that it is a development of “Doctrine”? The phrase is banded about, but not many seem to understand how its author intended it.
There is another Cardinal, Cardinal Newman, who literally wrote the book on the development of doctrine and also defined 7 criteria which identify a genuine development from “a corruption” (his words):
- Preservation of Type - A valid development preserves the essential form and structure of what came before. If that type is undermined, we are dealing with a corruption.
- Continuity of Principles - It must preserve the principle with which it started. While doctrine may grow and develop, principles are permanent.
- Power of Assimilation - Just as a healthy organism can take in what it can from its environment, even as it resists what it must, so a sane and lively idea can take to itself what is best in the intellectual atmosphere, even as it throws off what is noxious.
- Logical Sequence - A doctrine that’s defined and professed by the Church at a point historically distant from its original founding can be considered a development, and not a corruption, if it can be shown to be the logical outcome of the original teaching.
- Anticipation of Its Future - Doctrines in some way imply or allude to their later development. So authentic developments will have some logical connection to the original deposit of faith.
- Conservative Action upon Its Past -* An evolution that simply reverses or contradicts what came before it is necessarily a corruption and not a development*.
- Chronic Vigour - As long as a doctrine maintains its life and vigor, its ongoing development is assured. However, once a corruption enters into the process, it leads, by its nature, to death and decay. Corrupted doctrines fail to display much historical longevity and ultimately die off.
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_Abyssinia
Guest
This is depressing. Thank God for Cardinal Burke and the others that see that there is something not right going on and are standing up to try and get clarity.
I don’t see how these differing interpretations, confusion resulting from this and the seeming lack of reconcilability between these differing interpretations can continue to go and on and on. This is draining and it is dividing the Church.
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edwayne
Guest
It would seem strange to me to use ‘addiction’ to describe intimacy with your partner who is not your spouse, just as it would seem strange to state that a husband and wife who are regularly intimate are addicted to sex. There could be any number of extenuating circumstances where ‘addiction’ would then mitigate moral culpability to something negligible. What if my spouse was not ‘available’ for sexual intimacy – anywhere from, she just doesn’t want to have sex anymore and could do without it… to my spouse works long stints away from home (military, offshore oil rig, etc.)… to my spouse is in the hospital in a coma – so the moral culpability of ‘addiction’ would then excuse me, at least to some extent, if I were to take on a mistress, seek out a prostitute or escort service, etc. After all, it is an addiction. We need to avoid confusing the natural temptation or tendency towards sin (concupiscence) which is a consequence of our fallen nature and using that as a reason to call something an addiction, thereby mitigating one’s culpability because it excuses us from having to fight the temptation. We seem to ignore the real issue of being empowered by the Holy Spirit to follow God’s will in all things and are focusing as if we are to do this under our own strength, and then throw up our hands when we realize we cannot do it.
Interesting thought. While I agree with you that what may not have been full consent might later become full consent, no one has mentioned what this would look like in practice regarding access to Holy Communion; i.e., that a divorced and remarried couple who has been admitted to Holy Communion would then later have it retracted.
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edwayne
Guest
There’s the rub. If more and more particular cases that are to be evaluated to the point of wider and wider application, this will eventually get to the point where this is no longer an exception but will eventually become the rule.
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Thomas_White
Guest
Very broadly, I would think it concerns a development of the concept of culpability with respect to manifest grave sin.
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edwayne
Guest
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Stat_Crux
Guest
Wouldn’t that breach these two criteria?
Continuity of Principles - Because the principle until now is that sex outside of marriage is an objective moral evil, and is never justified or anything other than mortal sin. This is one of the questions of the Five Dubia, which ask if the Church still teaches that there is such a thing as an intrinsically evil action (e.g. always morally wrong, such as abortion) as taught in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor
Conservative Action upon Its Past - The “development” of doctrine to suggest the divorced and remarried can receive Communion while willfully engaging in sex outside of marriage contradicts Familiaris Consortio 84, Catechism of the Catholic Church 1650 and the teaching outlined in Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1994 letter of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith? Any development must be complementary with what has gone before. This is the elephant in the room and one which, to date, no convincing argument has been put forth to explain away. If we follow the “liberal” interpretation of AL without a satisfactory argument to reconcile it to the historic teaching, we would appear to be contradicting past teaching in not just failing to follow past teaching, but doing what was explicitly forbidden by past teaching.
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FollowChrist34
Guest
I agree with every word.
We could well reach the point where both sides heartily wish the other good riddance, for the sake of a little peace if nothing else. In many ways, we are already there. (This is Anglicanism all over too.) God will deal with it. I wonder if human beings can resolve it - though they are causing all the ruckus. I don’t think we should let faith in the Gospel sour us - for me, the key is to stay true to the faith and to the love of Christ, being a witness to that. This is trial. Don’t lose your soul, along with your Church. 
In a practical sense, I am more worried about what is to come after CDR, not so much CDR, but I am not such a fool that I don’t plainly see the trajectory of this - I am surprised at how few are talking about that - the broader implications. Just wrapped up in the details of the first squabble…of many to come I assure you.
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JPUSC
Guest
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Stat_Crux
Guest
Agreed, it may be the trajectory over the coming weeks, months, years or even decades but we must always be ready to give witness, with lamps ready to light at a moment’s notice. The Saints endured much worse than indifferentism, insults and ad hominem attacks.I agree with every word.
The intellectual argument used in supporting the liberal interpretation of AL can be used to justify access to Communion for anyone on the basis of their own subjective conscience This is in effect what the Maltese Bishop’s document is saying in suggesting that private conscience has the final say. Whether they realise or intended it or not, we’re already seeing the signs of the new “teaching” getting out of control in San Diego and Malta. While the “liberals” and “conservatives” are bickering, the “liberals” themselves equally can’t even agree on how far to interpret AL.
When I converted to Catholicism, I remember at the start wondering what to actually do with my faith once I’d found it. In a way, I should probably be happy for this situation; I’ve now got something to keep me busy with teaching for the next 50-60 years
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