Posted on 01/04/2017 7:48:01 PM PST by ebb tide
An Austrian bishop has given a sweeping interview claiming that "remarried" Catholics now have the "blessing of the Pope" to receive Communion, the use of contraception is "a decision of conscience" for couples, and homosexuals can constitute a "family."
Bishop Benno Elbs, who heads the Feldkirch diocese in west Austria, made the comments in an interview with Die Presse on December 23.
Regarding the admission of “remarried” divorced Catholics to Communion, he said, “The teaching [of the Church] has changed insofar as she has opened the door. People have made decisions of conscience in the past, but now they can do it – so to say – with the blessing of the Pope. That is an essential progress.”
Asked about the strongest tensions during the Synod for the Family in 2015 that presaged the release of the Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, Elbs responded that it involved remarried and divorced Catholics. “Another point of strong tension was how to deal with people of homosexual orientation,” he said.
During the Synod, the Church leaders in the German language circle had a huge influence on the discussion, Elbs said. While the group included Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it also included Cardinal Walter Kasper and was led by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the latter two being strong proponents of the “Kasper proposal” to admit divorced and remarried to Communion.
“We had unanimity in everything, and the Pope has taken up a lot,” Elbs said. “Thus the German language group has had a great influence.”
For Elbs, the entirety of Amoris Laetitia is about the decision of conscience: “If that is written in a footnote or not is not important. The whole paper breathes the spirit that the individual person can find a way in his conscience to deal with situations of life.”
He added that the admission to Communion of those in question is irreversible. “That has been in the pastoral praxis for quite some time. Even theologically. Now we should not make the mistake of inventing new rules. The progress is an attitude that surpasses norms.”
As to why the Synod did not allow artificial contraception, the bishop answered: “The Synod paper recommends natural methods of regulating conception. Recommends. The regulation of conception is a decision of conscience of the couple.”
With regard to homosexuals, Elbs was asked how he defined family. “Family is a place where people are raised, grow up, become strong, where they learn, what they need for life.” The reporter then asked: “Is this also true for homosexuals?” And the bishop responded: “Yes.”
Elbs authored the book in German, Where the Soul Learns to Breathe: A New Vision of Marriage and Family with Pope Francis, published in 2016.
The interview brings to light what many fear: that due to the obscurity and ambiguity in which Amoris Laetitia speaks of “borderline cases,” what will be set in place as normative for a moral choice is the conscience of the individual alone. Elbs leaves aside the Church's teaching, elaborated in Pope St. John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor, that the conscience can be malformed or ignorant and that the Church’s teaching is precisely the “compass” that guides the conscience in decision making.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in No. 1777: “Moral conscience present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.”
Maybe this is why the Lord has visited a plague of muzzies on the krauts.
anyone is welcome to say whatever they may wish about the last 3 popes but they never taught or permitted garbage like THIS!
As I expected, the idea that this would only be in individual circumstances after long reflection with a confessor rapidly goes out the window, and pretty soon the exception swallows up the rule, and any and all divorced and remarried adulterers will freely partake of communion, as was likely intended. This Pope and his synods are a disaster.
** ‘Remarried’ Catholics now have ‘blessing of the Pope’ to receive Communion**
Nope!!!!
If they want to receive the Holy Eucharist while they are in sin — thus committing another sin. This is leading more people into sin.
You good with this, Benny? This what you had in mind when you threw in the towel?
The word “conscience” was never needed, and should be abolished. It is nothing but the intellect. It is not some special, magical, mystical voice of God. I am afraid that even the Catechism lapses into some woo-woo mystical sentimentality.
There is truth. And then there is the intellect. Sometimes the intellect judges correctly, and sometimes incorrectly.
When a person judges that the teaching of the Catholic Church is untruthful, he ceases to be a Catholic. The notion that a person can decide that the Catholic Church is wrong about what is a mortal sin, and remain a Catholic, is absolute nonsense.
Remember the pro-abortion propaganda of the 1960’s? Always showed a dignified lady of about 35, in a hat, with a purse, sitting and talking to her doctor, in a white coat. Seriously, soberly discussing the possibility of an abortion. It was always “a woman and HER DOCTOR.”
Of course, women NEVER go to their regular doctor for an abortion, because real doctors refuse to do abortions. Even if they have no moral objection, they know that, after an abortion, they will likely never see that patient again. Women go to abortion mills, often after having been threatened and beat up by their “boyfriend.” They are herded in like cattle.
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/belbs.html
Appointed by Bergoglio—although Popes have been appointing abortions like this for more than fifty years.
Elbs was appointed to be Bishop of Feldkirch, Austria on May 8, 2013 and ordained as the same on June 30, 2013.
Bergoglio was installed as Pope on March 19, 2013.
“He added that the admission to Communion of those in question is irreversible.”
Interesting that any liberal innovation or overthrow of tradition is immediately declared “irreversible.”
“The teaching [of the Church] has changed.” No, it has not changed.
Bishop Elbs, please focus less on money and focus more on attracting solid vocations.
“Irreversible”, he says.
“How laughable”, sayeth the Lord, is more certain.
If true, we are witnessing schism - it is happening.
Pray for the Church!
My head spins with all this evidence of a cunning, but schismatic pope.
It is surreal standing around and watching them defy the Church, all that is holy, and no one but four, pushes back.
Now that’s a Remnant if there ever was one. Four.
Four is a fine number. :)
Four Evangelists
Foursquare city of God ("And the city lieth in a foursquare, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth: and he measured the city with the golden reed for twelve thousand furlongs, and the length and the height and the breadth thereof are equal." (Rev 21:16)
After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that they should not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor on any tree. (Rev 7:1)
Then both of you are heretics. Thanks for clearing that up.
This is the talk of a protestant denomination of Christianity. It is NOT the talk of a rational Catholic clergy.
There are plenty of churches outside of the Roman Catholic church who already support the formerly Catholic Austrian bishop's positions on divorce, contraception, and homosexuals.
That is true...they were just old school Modernists. Francis is the new and improved version.
I fail to see how they are truly upholding the Catholic Faith. Granted, this is something if it leads to full conversion, but it is not enough. As it stands right now four modernists taking on one modernist means squat if all of them consider Vatican II "Catholic".
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