Posted on 10/09/2016 1:12:34 AM PDT by BlessedBeGod
ROME, October 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – New guidelines about the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia issued for the pope’s own diocese of Rome suggest that couples living in a state the Church labels objectively sinful may in limited circumstances receive Holy Communion in a "discreet manner." The release of the new guidelines follows closely on the Vatican’s authentication of a letter from Pope Francis to Argentine bishops affirming that the only valid interpretation of the exhortation is one that similarly liberalizes sacramental practice.
The vicar of the Diocese of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, publicized the official diocesan guidelines for the implementation of Amoris Laetitia last month. Pope Francis is the bishop of the Diocese of Rome. According to veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister, “it is unthinkable that the cardinal vicar…made these guidelines official without the supreme proprietor of the diocese having first read and approved them.”
The Diocese of Rome’s guidelines suggest that unmarried couples living together and engaging in a sexual relationship may receive the Sacraments without repenting if continence makes the “stability” of their relationship “difficult,” and after a period of discernment with their confessor. Such couples only may be admitted to the Sacraments if “there is the moral certainty that the first marriage [of one of the parties] was null but there are not the proofs to demonstrate this in a judicial setting.” However, they may not receive the Sacraments if their sinful relationship is "shown off as if it were part of the Christian ideal,” according to the guidelines.
The guidelines state:
This is not necessarily a matter of arriving at the sacraments, but of orienting them to live forms of integration in ecclesial life. But when the concrete circumstances of a couple make it feasible, meaning when their journey of faith has been long, sincere, and progressive, it is proposed that they live in continence; if this decision is difficult to practice for the stability of the couple, ‘Amoris Laetitia’ does not rule out the possibility of accessing penance and the Eucharist. This means a certain openness, as in the case in which there is the moral certainty that the first marriage was null but there are not the proofs to demonstrate this in a judicial setting; but not however in the case in which, for example, their condition is shown off as if it were part of the Christian ideal, etc.
The guidelines also state that the decision to permit a couple to the Sacraments should be taken by a confessor in the context of the "internal forum." Through discussions with a couple's confessor "over time ... it is possible to begin and develop with him an itinerary of long, patient conversion, made of small steps and of progressive verifications," read the guidelines.
“So it can be none other than the confessor, at a certain point, in his conscience, after much reflection and prayer, who must assume the responsibility before God and the penitent and ask that the access take place in a discreet manner.
It is possible to interpret Amoris Laetitia this way, explained Dr. Josef Seifert, an Austrian Catholic philosopher, member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and close friend of the late Pope St. John Paul II, in an in-depth analysis of the exhortation. However, Seifert said that such an interpretation goes against the Council of Trent, when the Church authoritatively taught that people cannot determine for themselves that their marriage is invalid.
“It must not be left to the conscience of the individual to judge whether or not his marriage was valid, and also not to the judgment of a single priest, because to judge … the existence of a Sacrament requires a careful investigation and that’s [exactly] the task of Church tribunals and therefore one simply cannot … in conscience say, I was not married and now I marry again,” said Seifert.
Father John Zuhlsdorf, who runs a popular Catholic blog, reacted to the Diocese of Rome’s new guidelines by writing that unless an unmarried, sexually active couple intends to live as brother and sister, then their reception of Holy Communion would be a mortal sin and sacrilege.
“That ‘this decision is difficult to practice’ means that the couple who are not married are still having adulterous sexual relations,” he wrote. “That ‘for the stability of the couple’ must mean that without sexual relations they are not a ‘couple’, and that it is, for one reason or another, important that they (who aren’t married) stay together and have sex together. No?”
“However….If they have entered into a process with a priest who has helped them to see what their situation is according to the teaching of Christ and His Church, then they know that what they are doing is wrong,” Zuhlsdorf continued. “They know that they have committed a mortal sin. They know that they are not properly disposed to receive. Wouldn’t that be part of what the priest must help them to understand?”
“I cannot see anyway around this,” wrote Zuhlsdorf. “It must be either one way or the other. It is either 1) that they say that they will not live in continence as brother and sister, or 2) they say that they will try to live in continence as brother and sister. If they say they won’t, and they don’t, they cannot be admitted to Communion. They must not approach to receive Communion. That would be a mortal sin and a sacrilege. If, on the other hand, they say that they will try, really try, if they confess their sins and really intend to live in continence, they probably can be admitted to Communion – remoto scandalo – provided that scandal is avoided.”
Many other Catholic intellectuals and even prelates have echoed Seifert’s concerns about the exhortation.
Professor Robert Spaemann, a German philosopher and close friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, called Amoris Laetitia a clear “breach” with Catholic tradition.
Forty-five scholars sent each member of the College of Cardinals a letter asking them to ask Pope Francis to condemn heretical interpretations of the exhortation. In their letter to cardinals, they outlined the document’s seeming contradictions with Catholic teaching on morality, sin, hell, and other matters related to theology.
The scholars wrote that two heretical interpretations of Amoris Laetitia are:
Our Lord Jesus Christ wills that the Church abandon her perennial discipline of refusing the Eucharist to the divorced and remarried and of refusing absolution to the divorced and remarried who do not express contrition for their state of life and a firm purpose of amendment with regard to it.
Absence of grave fault due to diminished responsibility can permit admission to the Eucharist in the cases of divorced and civilly remarried persons who do not separate, nor undertake to live in perfect continence, but remain in an objective state of adultery and bigamy.
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, archbishop emeritus of Bologna and a former member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that bishops’ varying interpretations of Amoris Laetitia demonstrate that it is “objectively unclear.” He also told Catholics to always follow what the Catechism says about marriage - that it is an indissoluble, lifelong bond - even if a cardinal tells them otherwise.
In 1981, Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his exhortation Familiaris Consortio:
…the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children's upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they ‘take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.’
Pope Francis “is not saying that [the divorced and remarried] must be admitted to the sacraments, although he does not exclude this in some cases and under some conditions,” according to Vallini. The guidelines call for “discernment that would distinguish adequately case by case. Who can decide? From the tenor of the text and from the ‘mens’ of its Author it does not seem to me that there could be any solution other than that of the internal forum.”
Magister labeled this notion – that an unmarried, sexually active couple can under limited circumstances receive the Sacraments if abstinence is too “difficult” for them – an “innovation introduced by Pope Francis.”
According to Magister, “some priests of the diocese of Rome have complained that [the new guidelines] are ‘too restrictive.’”
He noted that although Pope Francis apparently approved the “limited” Rome guidelines, the pontiff also wrote to the bishops of Buenos Aires that there “no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia than one that allows remarried divorcees to receive Communion in some cases. The Vatican subsequently confirmed the letter as authentic.
This means “that for Pope Francis, the interpretation of ‘Amoris Laetitia’ presented by Cardinal Vallini with all the trappings of official status is the minimum threshold below which one cannot descend without betraying his intentions,” Magister argued.
Magister argues that in the mind of Pope Francis, the only acceptable interpretation of Amoris Laetitia that is close to - but not in line with - what the Church has always taught is Vallini’s. But, he says, Pope Francis intends for the normal interpretation to be the much more liberal one of the Buenos Aires archdiocese, which contradicts the Church’s divinely received tradition.
I hated moynahan except for his brilliant “deviancy down” speech.
If we START with only allowing married folk to get communion, then MAYBE some will avoid the other types of relationships because of that.
If we START with gays and unmarried folk getting communion, where is the next level in the deviancy down?
F the Vatican and the demonic leadership of MY Church.
A Catholic traditionalist retro revolution is due razing every Satanist thing they’ve done since 1960.
The devil is truly in control over there.
We, the believers, are the Church. Your church organization has failed you, as have many other church organizations failed their members. The Bride of Christ, however, is not a building that Jesus is coming for, He’s coming again for us, praise be to Him!
It is disheartening to see such corruption in our church homes, whether Catholic or Protestant. It’s not something I expected to see in my lifetime, not on this scale.
The Diocese of Rome has left the Catholic Church.
My thoughts exactly. Thank-you.
I’m seeing some pushback with the rank-and-file and the Priests themselves. The majority being passive-aggressive in nature.
Vatican II was a mistake.
No offense intended to anybody, I'm bi-confessional and tend to look for the good, and ignore the bad, in both traditions.
And, even after Vatican II, Catholics still can't sing.
The sheep have been more than happy to have lax shepherds and unwilling to challenge them if they were unhappy. They just melted away leaving the Church of Nice full of heretics.
Even the shock and awe over heresy is often the loudest from those who no longer attend Church anyway but do love being shocked and awed.
JMHo
“And, even after Vatican II, Catholics still can’t sing.”
Ha! I know I can’t.
Francis is the anti-pope.
So, (1) Catholics can blaspheme and commit sacrilege as long as they are hush-hush about it; and (2) anyone who merely focuses blame on the Diocese of Rome here is willfully blind. The so-called Catholic hierarchy there are merely following the Magisterium of their so-called pope.
What do you think Archbishop Lefebrve, SSPXer's and sedevacantists have been trying to do all these years? Novus Ordo Catholics are too busy calling them schismatics and non-Catholic....right here on this board (and I know you are not one of those people but I never see you defend them either).
And if you really think the so-called "trads" of the Novus Ordo/modernists like Cardinal Burke and Bishop Athanasius are actually going to do anything against their fellow Modernists, you're fooling yourself.
Really now? Tell me, where did the Catholic laity cause Vatican II? No, this was 100% the hierarchy's fault. The only blame the laity has is that they went along with it (even though so many knew something was terribly wrong with the new religion). Having said that, I understand why they did what they did 50 years ago. Now? Not so much.
If, in your opinion, it was a minority of liberal agitators who were arguing for that increased involvement, fine, then where was the counter balance to that at the Parish level? Silent, at the very least, is where.
Whether the calling of the council was a bolt from the blue or not, changing what came out of the council into into what they wanted it to be rather than what it was intended to be was backed and funded by the same people who backed Murry and Hesburgh to the hilt after Vatican I and who met next to no resistance from any other group of lay people.
Understand what you like and have any opinion you like but the fact remains that the vast majority of the same generation that didn't lift a finger to resist Murry and company didn't pass the faith on to their own children in a meaningful way or the Church in this country couldn't have collapsed in such short order.
That sums up where the problem lies and it's mostly not at the feet of those attending Vatican I who behaved like whipped dogs when what they thought they had done was twisted into what it became and those are two different things without a doubt.
Vague statements some say were deliberately vague can just as easily be read and interpreted and publicly taught in light of Tradition and the words of Christ as they can be turned into an invitation to heresy but which reading received the cheers of the laity?
Nostalgia is all well and good, but tell me, who was the Papal encyclical Testem benevolentiae nostrae addressed to were they then as well as now looked upon as being a solid Catholic?
Did the laity's continued blindness and lack of resistance help lead us to where we are now? ABSOLUTELY. We still have most Catholics blindly defending teachings that are just not Catholic. But the fault comes initially and squarely from the hierarchy.
She faithfully attended Mass and...managed to get to Holy Communion. I didn't even think of it until now. The first wife finally died and they had a Catholic wedding ceremony as well. This was DECADES ago.
I still miss my Aunt Nora. She was a PEACH.
I am sorry I didn't answer this, but I'm not sure what you are getting at here.
Your POV boils down to one of two possible arguments.
1) the "a fish rots from it's head" theory when in reality that only applies to a dead or nearly dead fish because a healthy fish produces massive amounts of antibodies and fights of the infection well before it beomes rot. Horribly wounded fish continue to swim the sea for years without rotting.
or
2) the same insanity the Big Bang people who don't believe their is a Creator make when they say, "absolutely nothing existed, then one day it blew up".
As I said, you're welcome to any opinion that suits your personal comfort zone. That in no way implies I believe your comfort zone is in sync with reality.
Most nostalgic Catholics say yes due to his involvement with the Baltimore Catechism but but a study of his work and where he wanted the Church in America to go says he was an Americanist in order to avoid being labeled a Modernist which is why the Pope wrote an encyclical reprimanding those who agreed with that watering down of the Faith.
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