Posted on 10/04/2015 3:49:07 PM PDT by ebb tide
A little while back I had the opportunity to attend a small conference about Marriage and Evolution, as in Darwinian evolution, specifically addressing the damage that the Evolutionary theory has done to society in general, and to the cultural foundation of marriage and family, namely by the Evolutionary base premise that everything is constantly changing and that everything “new” is “better” and everything “old” is “inferior” or, sin-of-sins, “unevolved”. The morning session was a series of presentations on marriage and family, and then the afternoon sessions were incredibly interesting hard science – fossil records, genetics, molecular biology, etc.
The final presentation of the morning session was an overview by a laywoman of the horrific situation in North America that has existed for decades now with regards to annulments. The Catholic church in America has been handing out declarations of nullity – de facto “Catholic divorce” – to pretty much everyone who asked for them for, well, completely coincidentally, just about 50 years now. That is no secret. Just ask any Kennedy.
In fact, permit me to quickly recount as an aside an illustrative horror story from my time in RCIA in the very (relatively) conservative neocon parish in Denver, which is itself one of the more conservative dioceses in the former U.S.
The RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) program was run by a “team”, which consisted almost entirely of laypeople, mostly middle-aged and elderly women. In fact, I entered the Catholic Church without ever, one time, speaking to a priest. The first time I spoke to a priest was my first confession several weeks after entering the Church. But I digress.
Anyway, one of the team members told one of the RCIA catechumens who was in a romantic relationship with a civilly divorced Catholic to – and I quote verbatim – “Just go to Vegas and get married and let the chips fall where they may. All annulments are approved. You just have to do the paperwork.”
This team member was advising a person getting ready to enter the Church to commit mortal sin, thus excommunicating themselves, not to mention the presumption upon God’s Mercy. This woman also thought that it was unfair that her sodomitical hairdresser and his boyfriend couldn’t adopt a pet child, and that when people die they become angels. Ah, the New Pentecost…. It is enough to make a person ask whether or not these people actually believe any of it in the first place…. So back to the conference I recently attended. At the end of the laywoman’s presentation about the extreme injustice of both the no-fault civil divorce culture in North America, as well as the push within the Church to make the annulment process into de facto Catholic no-fault divorce, she touched very briefly on the September 8th Motu Proprio and how it was simply moving the entire Church toward the North American model of “annulment on demand”. There was a Q&A period, and there were two visiting bishops present in the audience, one from the Middle East somewhere and one from subsaharan Africa somewhere.
So I raised my hand and asked the final question of the session. My question was this:
“The disastrous September 8th Motu Proprio contains a list of criteria that could be cited as grounds for declaring a marriage null, including “lack of faith”, which is a universal condition. I myself am already receiving questions from orthodox faithful Catholics who are happily married who are now questioning whether or not they are even married because one or both of the spouses was “nervous” on the morning of the wedding, perhaps indicating a “lack of faith” per the Motu Proprio. This is the diabolical fruit of the September 8th disaster. My question is, what can we do or say to people to assure them that they are, in fact, sacramentally married and should not doubt this?”
The laywoman gave a polite but not terribly helpful answer because there really was nothing she could say.
Then the bishop from the Middle East stood up, wheeled around, and glaringly addressed me.
He started with, “Why do you refer to the Motu Proprio as “September 8th”, like it was “September 11th”?
To which I instantly snapped back, “You’re right. It is far, far worse than September 11th.”
Some of you, dear readers, might be taken aback at my saying this. Make no mistake: the September 8th Motu Proprio is the attempted de facto abrogation of a Sacrament. If you can’t see how that is worse than a sneak attack in an earthly war that resulted in earthly losses, you need to sit down and think about it until it becomes clear.
The September 8th Motu Proprio is a war against human souls. It isn’t designed to kill physical bodies or destroy physical property. It is designed to kill people’s souls so that they are lost to hell for all eternity. It is a supernatural matter, and as the “super” in “supernatural” implies, and as the word “eternity” confirms, the stakes are far higher than any earthly war.
Still glaring at me, the bishop then launched into the first of his two defenses of the September 8th catastrophic Motu Proprio. First, he complained about the “stack of paperwork” backlogged on his desk from all of the annulment requests he had to deal with.
I interrupted him with, “Yeah, that’s just awful – almost as bad as being nailed to a cross….”
Thus ended the episcopal bitch-fest about the unbearable existential burden of backlogged paperwork.
Then he moved to his second point, which is even worse. He said that if he doesn’t grant people annulments they will get mad at him and go to the Eastern Orthodox or apostasize to the … wait for it… MUSLOIDS in order to get their “divorce”.
The organizers, perhaps seeing the plasma jets shooting from my ears, quickly moved to the next question. But that’s okay. Instead of the few dozen people there present hearing my rebuttal, now just a tiny handful more people will be able to read it. This is what my rebuttal would have been:
“First, your answer indicates that you too, Excellency, have the garnering and maintenance of human respect as your top priority. Your job is not to be personally liked. Your job is to preach and bear witness to the truth without compromise. Because modern men are inclined to believe lies about the Truth, and pathologically disinclined to believe the Truth about a lie, if you do your job properly, you are guaranteed to be not only “unpopular”, but actively persecuted, perhaps unto death. In fact, do you know why you and all of your brother bishops wear purple? It is because it is your job, Excellency, to be crucified.
But beyond that, Excellency, what does it say about the faith of a person who would entertain the thought, much less actually go through with apostazing from the One True Faith, turn their back on Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and Our Blessed Lord physically, substantially present in the Eucharist, and take up with a satanic political system (islam) so that they could fornicate in an adulterous union?
And perhaps more to the point, what does that say about YOU, Excellency, and your catastrophic failure to catechize your flock? Tell me, because I’m really curious about this point:, Do you actually believe any of this…?”
After the conference broke for lunch, a young priest or seminarian came up to me and started talking to me about my “anger” and how so long as I was angry, I was closing myself off to… wait for it…
Dialogue! and Encounter! When I told him that yes, I was angry, and asked why he wasn’t angry too, and that I had no interest in “dialoguing” because error has no rights, he looked decidedly like a cow pondering a new gate.
Then I went and ate lunch, as one does after a hard morning of bishop-heckling.
I’m sure she and I do not agree on all things, but man, was that good.
Brava!
Thanks for posting. Ann is awesome.
“Modern men are inclined to believe lies about the Truth, and
pathologically disinclined to believe the Truth about a lie.”
She has a way with words. For example,
“two and two are four” seems repulsive to some people. It is too obvious.
And “two and two are five is wrong” seems repulsive to some people. It is unfair to be critical of people who think 2+2=5.
We were “treated” to a homily by our pastor a few weeks after the disastrous SCOTUS decision on gay marriage on “What it takes to be a Ctholic.” His points were 1) you have to be Baptized and 2)you have to help the poor. That’s it. He went on to say that “none of this social stuff — marriage, adultery, divorce, etc. is in the Bible”. He actually said that. I was so steamed that I didn’t even linger afterwards to ask what he meant.
This follwed a sermon the previous week by the young assistant that said that we all had to accept the SCOTUS decision as the law of the land. And that we had to treat everyone kindly. You never know what burdens, or insults, that the person sitting next to you in church had borne in their life. He said that this sermmon had been prepared with the direction of the pastor.
What???
My husband spoke to him afterwards and he didn’t want to talk about it. He just said, “I’m just trying to keep people in the pews.”
I’ve got news. He’s not going to keep people in the pews and donations coming in THAT way.
I should add (although it has noting to do with these seromons, that our pastor has been suspended due to some 34 year old charges against him bubbling to the surface. He’s being investigated by the Bishop.
Wow! I’m sorry you have to put up with that. I belong to a very conservative church in NYC; is there no way you can find a similar church? You don’t need that kind of demoralization in your life.
The people are more conservative than our pastor. In fact this attitude is new here. It could be that he had advance word of these old charges coming to the forefront and was harboring bad feelings.
In any case, he’s been gone for more than a month now, and the poor associate (who has only been a priest for 18 months) is carrying the burden of running the parish all by himself with an occasional assist from outside. The sermons have been good and thoughtful. The parish manager from a nearby church is helping with the finances.
I’m not going to jump ship while we are in crisis, but I have my eye on a more conservative parish nearby if things get too bad.
you know, I stopped reading her blog a while back because it just became too much, but this is fantastic lol
pingeroo
Ann: I have been asked to contribute to a new, temporary website that will be covering the Synod to Destroy the Family in Rome. My first piece is posted there now. It is titled “Ann Barnhardt Heckles Bishop”.
Now THAT's writing!
I second your “Brava!”
Ping!
Run, do not walk, to the nearest Tridentine Rite Catholic Church in communion with the diocesan bishop and Rome. Those who say that Mass can be depended upon to be very different and far more Catholic than your pastor.
The mystery of iniquity.
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