Posted on 04/10/2016 10:06:01 AM PDT by Steelfish
Divorced Catholics Cheer Pope Francis' Views On Modern Family.
Michael Martinez and Richard Allen Greene, April 10,
"He's shining a light in this darkness, and that's a wonderful thing," a divorced Catholic says of Pope Francis.
Francis urges priests to be more accepting of divorced Catholics Pope is trying to influence pastoral behavior without changing doctrine.
Pope Francis' call for mercy toward divorced Catholics arrived as "a breath of fresh air," Vince Frese says.
As a conservative Catholic, he's endured it all: married, divorced, secured an annulment and remarried. For so long, the Catholic Church offered nothing to its divorced faithful such as Frese, who became a single parent after winning custody of his three daughters. Divorced parishioners felt excommunicated by the church, which has long disdained divorce. Many just went to another Christian denomination, but not Frese.
"They don't feel welcomed and they don't feel understood and they're hurting and they need help," Frese said.
Vince Frese appeared on his Twitter account beside wife Monica on their way to attend a retreat for divorced Catholics for the Diocese of Toledo. Vince Frese appeared on his Twitter account beside wife Monica on their way to attend a retreat for divorced Catholics for the Diocese of Toledo. But the Pope on Friday spotlighted this "underserved" flock by issuing a sweeping statement instructing priests to be more welcoming to divorced Catholics.
The declaration promises a new era for Frese, 55, a software firm owner who lives with his family outside Atlanta. He and wife Monica, who also went through a divorce with children and an annulment, now have seven children together.
Don't 'pigeonhole' those who divorce
(snip)
Francis added: "It can no longer simply be said that all those living in any 'irregular situation' are living in a state of mortal sin."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Shun the sin, not the sinner.
Thousands cheer loudly.
Millions sigh silently.
Guess a modern family would have to include the Clintons.
Fixed it.
What, exactly, would divorced Catholics be getting under Francis’ direction that they don’t get already? Support groups? Already have those. Annulments? Rather freely available. What is “more accepting?”
Hypocrites. They have had divorce for several decades that I know of. Probably longer. Only they went through the fiction of calling it annulment. This was a religious fiction that held the marriage was never real in the eyes of God to begin with.
You just needs the right indulgence cash or political office to get that fatwa, then it was cool. The protests against this is really that the church winds up getting cut out of the action financially or in influence peddling.
Ignore the latest ramblings from Bergoglia, aka
Pope Kaspar.
Huh? If he married, divorced and received an annulment, he’s not even the group this is addressing. Don’t tell me he’s a “conservative Catholic” - he’s just another liberal goombah trying to score points against the Church.
Recent emphasis on divorced Catholics and their treatment in the Catholic Church has confounded me. I’ve been divorced for awhile and have never been shunned or treated differently. Never noticed this as a child and young man growing up in the Church either. Discussed my divorce and annulment with my priest and he treated me well. I don’t know what the fuss is about.
An annulment is usually a slap in the face. If the marriage was never “real”, that means the person being dumped is told they were fornicating, that their kids are born out of wedlock in the eyes of the church.
99% of the time annulment is a lie, meant to pretend a marriage was not genuine, when it actually was. All a bunch of rules promulgated by virgin men in dresses.
It sounds as if the Church now accepts divorce. Imagine how many people have been waiting for this moment to end their marriages.
It sounds as if this guy got an annulment, so he’s OK. But how many divorced and remarried Catholics are likely to end up in Hell because Pope Francis has misled them? This is NOT doing divorced Catholics a favor. Or any other Catholics who are persuaded that it’s OK to receive Communion in a state of mortal sin because their bishop or their pastor says so.
And even if this Catholic is OK in his new marriage, his salvation is being risk if he is encouraging fellow parishioners to violate the Sacraments.
The idea of the Church shunning the divorced is a lie — a straw man concocted by the Left — intended to convince the ignorant that Jesus’s teaching about marriage should be ignored. And now it is.
Sorry, but I beg to differ.
My ex was criticized from the pulpit after our divorce.
Sounds like individual pastoral malpractice to me. Nothing to do with Catholic doctrine or Canon Law.
This Pope likes to pick and choose what parts of the Bible he likes. Isn’t there something in the Bible about false teachers and a special place for them?
If she was, that occurrence was as rare as a unicorn. I have attended around 3500 Catholic masses and have heard the word divorce mentioned four times at most. The times I have heard a priest criticize an individual from the pulpit is zero. This is the experience of millions of Catholics, so you must excuse us when we naturally blanch at the Papal straw men. It's is so far outside of reality that to base a change of doctrine on it smacks of agenda-driven dishonesty.
Perhaps your wife read more into the priest's words than were actually there?
It sure does. But I guess we have to change the Church's teachings based upon a one-in-a-million abuse, which is put forward in the media (and at the Vatican!) as the norm.
Here’s the issue: There are divorced and remarried Catholics in stable second marriages with children. They want to receive communion. The Church wants them to receive communion. Their priests want to give them communion.
All it takes is an annulment which, as you point out, is freely available. Cost is not an issue, speed is seldom an issue. There are entire fleets of canon lawyers, nuns, former and current tribunal officials to help. There are books, tapes, YouTube videos and who knows what else to explain how to file the perfect pleadings.
All you have to do is lie.
I believe diocesan bishops, some of them anyway, are sick of granting annulments is mass quantities based on perjured testimony and phony grounds like “psychological immaturity”. What they want is a quasi-Eastern Orthodox solution.
As far as a second marriage being adultery? Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
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