Pope Francis says most marriages today are ‘invalid’. This is a disaster for the Catholic Church

The Spectator ^ | June 17, 2016 | Damian Thompson

[ebb tide]

Pope Francis, spiritual leader of a billion people, has just informed them that ‘the great majority’ of sacramental marriages are invalid because couples don’t go into them with the right intentions. He was speaking at a press conference in Rome. Here’s the context, from the Catholic News Agency (my emphases):

‘I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said “I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years”. It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,’ he said.

‘It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say “yes, for the rest of my life!” but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.’

Uh? You can read the full report here but you won’t be much the wiser. The Pope, thinking aloud in the manner of some maverick parish priest after a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, has just told millions of his flock that they are not really married.

Did he mean to say that? What does he really think? What authority do his words carry?

And why should Catholics even have to ask these questions? Francis’s off-the-cuff ramblings on matters of extreme pastoral sensitivity are wreaking havoc in the Catholic Church, as I’ve written here.

Ross Douthat of the New York Times has just tweeted this response:

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I suspect that even the Pope’s most liberal admirers will have difficulty extricating him from this mess.

[Elsie]

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

[Mrs. Don-o]

HAH!!

[Mrs. Don-o]

?????

I still don't understand the bit about straw.

[metmom]

That does not equate to or justify changing what the Holy Spirit labeled her with and trying to justify it.

*Mother of Jesus is about who MARY is, not about who Jesus is.

Who Jesus is is very clearly spelled out in Scripture.

If people knew their Scripture and studied it, there would be no question about who He is and there would be no need to change Mary’s title to justify it.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Um... who's repeating what a billion times a day?

The ONLY people I've ever seen copy-and-pasting the Promises of the Rosary in their posts, are you and related Elsie-istas..

Ell. Cee. Istas.

L.C.-eeestas.

Whatever.

Nice, and I take it as well-intended, but ...weird.

[Rockingham]

And that degenerate, ill-tempered fat man, Henry VIII. Of course, if Pope Francis had been in office then, he would have granted Henry his annulments as readily as the Vatican issues new commemorative stamps these days.

[metmom]

But they have a logical point: if one thinks Mary had a "normal" marriage agreement with Joseph, you have to contemplate the "divine adultery" of God impregnating somebody else's wife. Which is, I would say, a blasphemous thought.

And on what basis would you even think that Mary and Joseph did NOT have a normal marriage agreement?

After all, when Mary turns up pregnant, Joseph contemplated DIVORCING her.

That tells me they did have a normal marriage agreement. If they didn't, it wouldn't make any difference to Joseph is she got pregnant.

[metmom]

But they have a logical point: if one thinks Mary had a "normal" marriage agreement with Joseph, you have to contemplate the "divine adultery" of God impregnating somebody else's wife. Which is, I would say, a blasphemous thought.

And just why would Joseph enter into a marriage agreement with a woman who had no intention of having sex with him? Whatever would possess him to enter into a not normal marriage arrangement?

[metmom]

Long story short, God does not commit adultery. If he did we’d know it wasn’t God.

I fail to understand what goes on in the Catholic mind that would assign to God sin like adultery for having Mary conceive and bear the Messiah.

The Catholic's problem is that if placing Jesus in Mary's womb were enough for a charge against God of adultery, they you have a god who committed adultery.

Why?

Because Mary was already betrothed to Joseph when the angel came. She was already legally and technically married to him.

God KNEW that. He knew that Mary was technically and legally a man's wife.

God had two choices. Impregnate a single woman or impregnate a married woman. IN EITHER CASE, then, God, by Catholic reasoning, could be charged with sexual sin.

And this nonsense about a *special* marriage arrangement is total assumption and speculation without a shred of support for it anywhere. On the contrary, the more Catholic push it and rationalize, they worse their position becomes because it can be refuted on so many levels.

Your arguments just. don't. work.

[metmom]

Where would God be without the Roman Catholic church to bail Him out cause He did not do a good enough job with Scripture?

That also must explain all their need for correctly *interpreting* the word He gave them.

The Holy spirit isn’t doing a good enough job the voila, here’s the Catholic church to the rescue to *help* Him along.

[ealgeone]

All of the redefining, clarifying, explaining of the catholic position on Mary and Joseph just illustrates how much catholicosm has confused the issue by ignoring the plain simple reading of the text.

[MHGinTN]

Don’t waste time explaining it to the poster, she doesn’t intend to understand ‘it’.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Bible" never appears in the Bible, either.

Nor "Trinity" nor "Incarnation" nor "Gospel According to Matthew" nor Gospel of "Mark" nor "Luke" nor "John."

The Bible (which never uses that name) has no defined chapters or verses. Goshdarn Tradition of Man!

The Bible does not say that the Books of Moses were written by Moses. In fact it does not use the term "Books of Moses." It says nothing of a "Supreme Being." Nor about "my personal Savior". Nor about "atheism". Nor about "divinity," "monotheism," "rapture," nor "evangelical", "evangelisic", or "evangelist."

Nor "theology" nor "Master's Degree" nor "Bible College".

No "Easter" (nor even Pascha or Pasqua or Pesach or Pasko)--- whoa, and nothing on "Sunday Sunrise Service," either.

Nothing on "Sunday".

Nothing on "Sunrise".

In fact, nothing on "Services," period.

Nothing about "Sola Scriptura" or "Five Solas" (why five? Why not six, or four? O Sola Mio!) No "Sinner's prayer", no "personal relationship", no "altar call", no "faith alone" --oops, unless you count the place where it says "not by faith alone," (James 2:24)---

Now I've been checking this all out in my KJV, and this concern has been "laid on my heart" and I wonder if I can really be "fellowshipping" with you if you use all these terms I can't find in the "Bible" (including "Bible")

I'm just teasing you, hon.
But why do you use these wacky, unnecessary non-Biblical terms???

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Holy Mother of God!

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Holy Theotokos!

[metmom]

So then, by that reasoning, (because a specific word or phrase is not found written down in Scripture it's not Scriptural), the Bible must not be “scriptural” and the Holy Trinity must not "scriptural".

Then that must mean that these things are not Scriptural either.

trinity

catholic

pope

eucharist

sacraments

annulment

assumption

immaculate conception

mass

purgatory

magisterium

infallible

confirmation

crucifix

rosary

mortal sin

venial sin

perpetual virginity

apostolic succession

indulgences

hyperdulia

catechism

real presence

transubstantiation

liturgy

free will

holy water

monstrance

sacred tradition

apostolic succession

Benefactress

Mediatrix

Queen of Heaven

Mother of God

beatific vision

invincible ignorance

Divine Office

guardian angel

Corporal Works of Mercy

Petrine authority

infallible

heresy

[metmom]

Except that *mother of Jesus* DOES appear in the Bible.

[HossB86]

*KA-POW!*

that'll leave a mark.

:D

Hoss

[metmom]

Ya’d think.....

[Mrs. Don-o]

"God had two choices. Impregnate a single woman or impregnate a married woman. IN EITHER CASE, then, God, by Catholic reasoning, could be charged with sexual sin."

I *do* wish you wouldn't make stuff up and call it "Catholic reasoning". You'd do better to put that in the form of a question, e.g. "Wouldn't it follow from Catholic doctrine that...?"

Why say God had just two choices? There's a third.

1. Mary was single (nothing special, just like any other single gal in Galilee), or
2. Mary was married (just like any other married gal, vowed to have exclusive sexual relations with Joseph, and they justly owed each other such exclusivity), OR,
3. Mary was consecrated, set aside somehow for her unique role as Mother of the Divine Son.

St. Paul says of us all that we were "chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1: 4). If this has a general application to every one of us, does it not have an especially striking application to her from whom Christ Himself was to receive that flesh and blood which was to redeem mankind?

Open your Bible and see how the predestination and consecration of Mary are repeatedly foreshadowed in an unbroken chain of types, figures, and prophecies concerning the Incarnation, which necessarily involves Mary, the Mother of the Incarnation.

Right from the beginning (Genesis) God says to Satan , "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; "that" (ipse) shall crush thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Gen. 3: 15). So right from the beginning, war is declared between the Seed of the Serpent and the Seed of the Woman: a seed is being prepared which will defeat the ancient Adversary.

What was God doing in the OT? Here's a succinct and summary answer: preparing the seed.

In this Genesis protoevangelium, the Redeemer Himself is mentioned only in relation to "the woman"; He is "the woman's" seed; a very peculiar expression, showing one born in some wonderful manner, not according to the ordinary laws of generation. It points unmistakably to the Blessed Mother and her Child. Thus the two adversaries, whose combats make up the history of the world, are, on one side, the devil, on the other, the woman; and again, the seed of the devil and the seed of the woman.

I could go through the rest of the Bible book by book identifying the prophecies and types (and there is more about Mary in the OT than in the NT) but for now, let me just conclude that Mary's existence was being planned out by God from the dawn of the human race. She was neither an ordinary single gal nor an ordinary married woman, but "chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world," a Woman Predestined.

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[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes. And it's a good phrase.

And so......?

[Mrs. Don-o]

Whoa. Nice long post, but your initial premise is wrong.

"So then, by that reasoning, (because a specific word or phrase is not found written down in Scripture it's not Scriptural), the Bible must not be “scriptural” and the Holy Trinity must not "scriptural". "

That's not my assumption. I accept "Trinity" AND "Incarnation" AND "Mother of God" AND "fellowshipping" with my dear metmom.

I'm not the one who thinks that truth is limited to "Sola Scriptura", remember? I'm a Catholic.

But "a term is illegitimate if it's not in my Concordance" seems to be your assumption, since you are trying to disqualify "Mother of God" because that particular phrase is not found in the Bible.

You're the one who says a phrase HAS to be in the text, ipsissima verba, or it's not really needed or not really legit. That has been your ultimate backup argument against "Mother of God."

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