Posted on 10/04/2014 4:51:49 PM PDT by ebb tide
Traditionally, social conservatism has enjoyed the support of Catholicism, whose body of teaching on morals is a mother lode of ideas and arguments that retain much of their force even apart from their theological context. Rumors that the Church is poised to relax its position on the indissolubility of marriage are therefore troubling or encouraging, depending on which side you stand in the culture war.
Tomorrow, a synod of bishops will convene in Rome to discuss the family. It’s a big topic, but what has developed as the headline item on the agenda is a question that on its face is technical and narrow: Should divorce and remarriage when the first spouse is still living continue to prevent a Catholic from receiving Communion? How the question is answered will directly affect only a sliver of the Catholic faithful, but its ramifications will eventually touch everyone, Catholics first and then, as the news sinks in, the culture at large. The Church holds that husband and wife remain married to each other until death. In civil law, they may be divorced, but in the eyes of the Church they are not, so that for either spouse to enter into a new marriage would be adultery, a grave matter standing between that person’s soul and the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian life.
A move to soften that impediment to the reception of Holy Communion is being led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, bishop emeritus of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Pope Francis has warmly praised his approach to the issue. You can keep the rule on the books, Kasper argues. But mercy dictates that pastors should have freedom to stretch it at their discretion. The question is pastoral, we hear repeatedly.
For pastors, pastoral care should be like Saint Francis’s instruction on preaching: Do it diligently, and when necessary use words. An excess of them usually signals trouble. In the contemporary Church, the rhetoric of pastoral care is often sheep’s clothing, a layer of euphemism for the push to elevate practice over doctrine and law. It goes like this: First establish facts on the ground. Our interpretation of what’s on the books will come to reflect them soon enough. When it does, that’s when you should invoke the authority of canon law, the Catechism, and even Scripture. Until then, don’t. Understand that praxis determines doxa, not vice versa.
Other cardinals have voiced strong objections to Kasper’s proposal. Many observers now predict that it will fail but that it will force the synod to agree on a “compromise” whereby the Church will maintain its teaching on marriage, in theory, while in fact changing the rules to make it easier for any married couple to obtain an annulment, a determination that their marriage was never sacramentally valid. A marriage that is annulled is not dissolved; it’s judged never to have taken place, for any of several reasons indicated in canon law. The law can be interpreted strictly or broadly. In the United States, it tends to be interpreted broadly, reflecting the same attitudes underpinning no-fault divorce in civil law. Canon 1095 in particular, which stipulates psychological criteria that a person must meet for the marriage he enters into to be valid, is treated as a gaping loophole by tribunals that are predisposed to approve every annulment case that comes their way.
In a related development, a special commission “for the study of the reform of the matrimonial processes in canon law” was established by the Vatican late this summer, during the run-up to the synod on the family. It is widely assumed that streamlining and expediting the annulment process is the commission’s main objective. Even Vatican Radio refers to it as a “commission to reform [the] marriage annulment process.” Edward Peters, an American canon lawyer, argues that what those who clamor for simplification really want is to eliminate the annulment process precisely as a juridic process. Their proposal comes in different guises: let the couple make the determination about whether they are married (you know, because divorced couples are so good at agreeing on things), or let their pastor decide for them, or their (presumably Catholic?) marriage counselor, and so on. Inescapably, though, such a proposal requires this: dropping the . . . presumption that when people wed they marry validly, so we don’t need a [legal] process to determine whether that presumption withstands objective scrutiny.
Again, law is demoted in favor of the notion that every man should have the freedom to do what is right in his own eyes. It’s the same maneuver that’s at the heart of the Kasper plan for allowing the divorced and remarried to take Communion, only here it’s translated from one sacrament to another — from the question “Who may receive the Eucharist?” to the question “What is matrimony really, anyway?”
Ping
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Is the False Prophet Among Us?
Pope Francis, there are many biblical teachings and prophecies about the false prophet, some of which you seem to be fulfilling. Why are you vigorously supporting dissenting bishops who are proposing heretical pastoral concessions and in effect seeking to tamper with sacred doctrine, while you are ruthlessly dismissing, demoting or disempowering other Bishops who are known to be faithful to doctrine? Why do you offer tremendous pastoral sensitivity to people who don’t even want to practice the Faith and are bent on offending it, while you have directed massive antagonism towards those who do? Why does it seem more and more to some that a diabolical though intentionally nebulous disorientation of the Church’s doctrine is afoot under your leadership?
The Bible warns of false teachers who lead God’s people astray with their lies and their recklessness. St. Jude says they will pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness. Our Lord too repeatedly warned about the false teachers who will lead many to spiritual ruin. Jesus tells the parable about the weeds and the wheat, whereby the cockle-seeds of false doctrine so resemble the wheat that even farmers (theologians/apologists/bishops) have difficulty distinguishing them, for the devil likes to mask falsehood with truth, to use virtue to justify vice, and twist doctrine to justify heresy so that even the faithful are deceived. Jesus indeed warned to beware of false prophets, who come to us in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. And St. Paul declares about such villains: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that of Christ, let him be accursed.”
I, will never marry.
Mark it.
Never. ...
The problem is the Catholics supporting the left and the democrat party with their vote, democrats winning, decides our laws and culture, and it is the party that wins that denominations vote.
So now both of those are are in a state of mortal sin bound for Hell?
Divorce in the Bible ALWAYS included a right to remarry. (Doesn't make divorce good or desirable--just sometimes necessary). But divorce with a right to remarry are the kinds of divorces that existed in Jesus' day...ALWAYS.
As strange as it may seem too, even God Himself, initiated and completed a divorce (ever hear of the "lost" northern tribes of Israel?): "That because the rebellious Israel had played the harlot, I had put her away, and had given her a bill of divorce:..." -Jeremiah 3,8
Seems to me a much better idea to understand what God expects of us in marriage or divorce--rather than looking to committees of celibate older men--is to check what the Apostles said, and that's found only in the New Testament: http://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_marriage.htm#communion
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