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puppypatrol
Guest
Actually, it isn’t divorce that was outlawed, it was the re-marrying and living in adultery
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EasterJoy
Guest
Not quite. Civil divorce is immoral when done for less than serious reasons.
If you go back to the Gospels (Mark 10: 2-11, Matt. 5:31-32, Matt. 19:3-12) I think that several things are striking.
a) Jesus says clearly, “Let no man separate what God has joined.” In the cases where it can be managed peacably, staying together is a positive good, and the Church teaches this. Paul also teaches that marriage is a model of Christ and His Church. Whether the couple lives together in mutual love does matter.* The Church teaches that civil divorce is seriously immoral when done for any but serious reasons concerning peace and justice between the spouses that cannot be achieved in another way.*
b) Jesus also says in Matt. 5 that everyone who divorces his wife *forces her *commit adultery. In other words, I think it is clear that even when a civil divorce is permissible within a valid marriage, there remains a responsibility to see to the social and economic welfare of the divorced spouse, lest a spouse who does not re-marry still be partly responsible for adultery because the other spouse felt forced to re-marry for reasons of survival. (A spouse who takes no prudence for himself or herself being an exception. Some money problems aren’t going to be solved with more money.)
c) Although Matthew talks only about the responsibility of the husband (likely because the situation of the intended audience was one where only husbands could initiate a divorce), in Mark, the passage makes it more clear that the question of divorce go both ways. The passage is clearly worded to show that the responsibility is the same for both husband and wife.
d) It is hard to imagine how “Bible-believing” Protestant churches get around these passages. Lewd conduct being the only exception, the Church’s willingness to investigate and find a marriage defective from the beginning is about as far as I can imagine going, without clearly violating these passages. Also, St. Paul allowed Christians to let a non-believing spouse depart, if the non-believer wouldn’t remain married to a Christian. That’s about the only “outs” the Bible allows, as far as I can see.
So…OP, what churches are these unhappy people going to? Do they preach the Gospel there? Because I don’t see any way around what Jesus Christ himself taught.
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rwillenborg
Guest
Hi maryelise -
I just wanted to say a few things about not receiving communion.
I went to church for YEARS without receiving communion. I was contracepting. And I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.
So, no communion for me.
Your friend should in no way feel she is somehow being singled out. Probably most of the people who are ACTUALLY receiving Communion shouldn’t be anyway.
If she’d like, she can still approach the priest, cross her arms, and she will receive a blessing. No one even really knows that just went on except her and the priest.
Even now, I probably only receive communion half the time. We’re not contracepting, but I’ll miss mass and then it takes me like two weeks to get to confession.
So, there you have it.
I happen to think that her going to church, even without physically being able to receive the body of the Lord, might be even MORE pleasing to Him. I mean, really, how much does that show she WANTS to be with Him than by allowing herself to be in His presence without illicitly receiving His body.
And again, as everyone else said, all of this might be moot in that your friends can receive communion anyway, but I just thought I’d share.
Best wishes to you and your friends!!
I just wanted to say a few things about not receiving communion.
I went to church for YEARS without receiving communion. I was contracepting. And I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.
So, no communion for me.
Your friend should in no way feel she is somehow being singled out. Probably most of the people who are ACTUALLY receiving Communion shouldn’t be anyway.
If she’d like, she can still approach the priest, cross her arms, and she will receive a blessing. No one even really knows that just went on except her and the priest.
Even now, I probably only receive communion half the time. We’re not contracepting, but I’ll miss mass and then it takes me like two weeks to get to confession.
So, there you have it.
I happen to think that her going to church, even without physically being able to receive the body of the Lord, might be even MORE pleasing to Him. I mean, really, how much does that show she WANTS to be with Him than by allowing herself to be in His presence without illicitly receiving His body.
And again, as everyone else said, all of this might be moot in that your friends can receive communion anyway, but I just thought I’d share.
Best wishes to you and your friends!!
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EasterJoy
Guest
Pleasing wouldn’t be the first word I’d use if one was kept from Holy Communion by a mortal sin that one did not get around to confessing, BUT…yes, absolutely, having the respect and faith that keeps one from receiving Holy Communion when one is fully aware that one is not in a state of grace is pleasing, and I think is a step towards doing what you need to do in order to get back into full communion. When you go to Mass and cannot receive Holy Communion in good conscience, that makes a huge impression on you. It hurts, but in the sense of removing the anesthesia we all tend to build up around our sins. If you’re having trouble finding what it takes to deal with the problem, it is not an entirely useless hurt. It is FAR better to be thought a sinner (even though refraining from Holy Communion doesn’t automatically mean the person isn’t in a state of grace and people should mind their own business) than to go to Holy Communion under false pretenses!!Hi maryelise -
I just wanted to say a few things about not receiving communion.
I went to church for YEARS without receiving communion. I was contracepting. And I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.
So, no communion for me.
Your friend should in no way feel she is somehow being singled out. Probably most of the people who are ACTUALLY receiving Communion shouldn’t be anyway.
If she’d like, she can still approach the priest, cross her arms, and she will receive a blessing. No one even really knows that just went on except her and the priest.
Even now, I probably only receive communion half the time. We’re not contracepting, but I’ll miss mass and then it takes me like two weeks to get to confession.
So, there you have it.
I happen to think that her going to church, even without physically being able to receive the body of the Lord, might be even MORE pleasing to Him. I mean, really, how much does that show she WANTS to be with Him than by allowing herself to be in His presence without illicitly receiving His body.
And again, as everyone else said, all of this might be moot in that your friends can receive communion anyway, but I just thought I’d share.
Best wishes to you and your friends!!
You don’t fix an overdraw on your checking account by throwing the accounts register into a drawer and trying to ignore it. You certainly don’t continue to write checks as if nothing was wrong. I’m not trying to draw a direct analogy, only saying that if you’ve dug yourself into a hole and won’t ask to be hauled out, God would indeed be pleased if you’d at least stop digging.
Having said that…it is much better to see the priest than to continue suffering and refusing grace. That is going to be one happy priest, too. They love helping people out of suffering like that. That is why they give up wife and family, to be able to devote themselves entirely the lost sheep who are suffering. It gets discouraging when the sheep limp around, dragging their useless limbs, not even caring.
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Ockham
Guest
Actually, this little ditty isn’t proper, it isn’t in the GIRM (gosh, I can’t believe I just said that).
I too have gone stretches of not being in grace so no Holy Communion for me. Keep in mind that most people in line are not in a state of grace, thus commiting a sin, so pray for them.
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diggerdomer
Guest
Who are you to judge another’s state of grace? I was taught that’s left to God (not by the GIRM that you so freely cite).
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EasterJoy
Guest
It would have been better to phrase it, “for all we know, there may well be many people who are not in a state of grace”…because you are right, we don’t know whether there is a single person in line who is not in a state of grace. I wouldn’t mind so much if someone decided I was a terrible sinner and needed the prayers, because I do need prayers and the judgement means nothing to me, but it puts the judge’s soul in a faulty spot, and a perilous one, you’re right about that.
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Ockham
Guest
I stand corrected, Digger is correct (gosh, I can’t believe I just said that either). What I meant to say was most people in line are probably not in a state of grace. I base that observation on the fact most confessionals are empty and confession times themselves are few are far between. Confession should be offered prior to Mass. Now that is usually only so for the Saturday vigil (oddly enough) in most Novus Ordo parishes and all the Tridentine Masses I’ve been to.
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dashso40
Guest
Annulment doesn’t say anything about the children…Alot of people have many misconceptions about annulment…My in laws divorced after 35 years of marriage and 4 kids…and were able to get an annulment…Anyway, your friend could still go to church, you can be divorced and still take communion, as long as you are chaste…I see people not take Communion at church, I don’t think twice about it…The misconceptions you have are so common and are the reason for the Catholic bashing that has become so popular among Catholics and non Catholics…I know, I use to be a Catholic basher before I converted and now I am a defender
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EasterJoy
Guest
Not only that, but the children aren’t “born out outside of marriage” or anything like that. They were born within a presumptive marriage, in which their parents had a conjugal duty to be open to their arrival. It is very important for children to realize this…just like parents would tell them that the divorce itself was in no way the fault of the children. They need to be spared the torment of false notions.Annulment doesn’t say anything about the children…Alot of people have many misconceptions about annulment…My in laws divorced after 35 years of marriage and 4 kids…and were able to get an annulment…Anyway, your friend could still go to church, you can be divorced and still take communion, as long as you are chaste…I see people not take Communion at church, I don’t think twice about it…The misconceptions you have are so common and are the reason for the Catholic bashing that has become so popular among Catholics and non Catholics…I know, I use to be a Catholic basher before I converted and now I am a defender
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EasterJoy
Guest
I think it is far better for the state of our own souls to not even go there. Remember the Lord’s parable about the man who prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for not making me like other men…”
Spiritual pride is a deep pit to hazard. Let’s not dance on the edge of it. We sin, we’re not alone, there is a way up and out, we want people to pray for us, we ought to pray for others. It’s probably better to leave it at that.
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Ockham
Guest
It’s not about pride, it’s about not feeling ashamed and possibly falling away from the Church. My advice to the OP is to not let that deter from attending Holy Mass nor feeling ashamed at not getting into the Communion line. Although we can’t know the state of other people’s souls, it isn’t hard to extrapolate from the miniscule numbers at Confession to the near perfect attendance in the Communion line. The math doesn’t add up. Therefore, I suggest offering youself in prayer on your knees while others pass by. Hopefully they will ask themselves if perhaps they too should refrain from receiving until a return to the Confessional as the Church teaches. It’s all how you look at things. This time in the OP’s friend’s life could be an opportunity to lead by example.
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recidite_plbs
Guest
Spoken like a typical box-ticking, “I’m alright mate”, never had to deal first hand with the fall out of life not being entirely in your control and putting you on the wrong side of the rules, sanctimonious chod that makes my urine boil!
The fact many of the responders in this thread seem to blatently overlook is that the whole anullment process is to many of us who have been divorced utterly duplicitous. It really is a case of splitting hairs and finding a method of being hypocrytical and having it both ways. If a marriage wasn’t valid from the outset, it wasn’t valid. Bunging the diocese a few hundred pounds to allow it to do a Spanish Inquisition and crawl all over the minutiae of your life to sit in judgement doesn’t change the fact it wasn’t valid. It’s simply a case of the RCC wanting to impose beaurocracy and exercise control. Is God really only going to see a marriage as invalid only if some quasi-civil servants busy-bodies who would be better off minding their own business and a couple of clergy who would be doing (arguably) more good in a parish doing real work rather than having a cushty number in a Tribunal stamp a bit of paper so more feather-cushioned admin clergy and quasi-civil servants can rubber stamp it further up the eccliesiastical chain say it is invalid?
I expect that some people will come back and try and argue that tribunals serve some sort of purpose to an ill-defined common or higher good. They don’t. Divorces (for those of us with first hand experience rather than sitting their potificating about them while reminding themselves how good they are in comparison to us mere mortals) are painful things, I don’t reccomend it, but some of you ought to try it some time if you don’t believe me. Re-opening old wounds to satisfy the agony-lust of the RCC doesn’t help anyone put it behind them and get on with their lives.
Also, what does it say to the spouses of divorcees? Especially if they are not Catholics themselves? The only message an anullment serves is to suggest that the marriage isn’t worthwhile, that the spouse of a divorcee is somehow second class, or that the irretreivably broken relationship that caused so much pain and suffering that preceded this one is somehow worth more or is superior than this, presumably perfectly functioning one simply because someoen in a curial office says so? Have any of you actually stopped for just one second and actually considered that? I didn’t think so.
If the RCC were to be completely honest they would do one of 2 things: firstly say marriage is a one-shot weapon and once it’s spent you are screwed, or secondly take a more pragmatic approach and deal with it in the same way the Orthodox church do and leave the matter between God and your internal forum. Again, the RCC is hypocrytical in that it asserts the supremacy of the informed conscience, internal forum, and free will, then denies the person the dignity of this free will by requiring an Inquisition.
Faced with this, is it actually any wonder that divorcees have no interest in returning to the church? That’s before you get to the issues around communion, the way that divorcees are treated like plague-carrying infectors in the midst of the congregation (divorce is NOT a communicable disease and you cannot catch it), the clergy’s inability to comprehend how and why relationships fail and their reliance for advice on people who have never experienced relationship failure, and the church’s propensity for quoting rules and consequences and offering all forms of censurial advice short of actual help. I’m amazed it quizically naval-gazes and fails to understand why divorcees want nothing to do with the church when the answer is there in front of them: when my daughter trips up and grazes her knee and cries with pain and wants to be cuddled until the hurt goes away, that’s what, as a parent, I do. What I don’t do is tell her off for running and not watching where she is going, then smack her, and threaten to send her to her room for all eternity unless she submits entirely to my authority.
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Ockham
Guest
This phrase folks is pretty much all you need to know about the rest of his post.
May God reach you and bring you back to His Church someday.
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