POPE JOHN PAUL II'S HEAVIEST CROSS

"The "separation between faith and life" that Senator Kerry and others have shamefully tried to use for political advantage was condemned long ago by the Second Vatican Council: “This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age."

I marvel sometimes when I get a glimpse of how patient God is...

I'm not Catholic but I heartily agree with The Pope on his position that to be a Catholic means to follow the teachings of the church.

Or leave.

I suppose it's a tradition that dates back to at least the time of Martin Luther. :-)

It's not just the United States. The Church is healthier here than in many parts of Europe, Canada, Australia, and England. But the Church has gone through bad times before.

I'm not Catholic but I heartily agree with The Pope on his position that to be a Catholic means to follow the teachings of the church.

Or leave.

Or understand the teachings of the Church more fully.

I believe most American Catholics who disagree with the Church on certain stances do so out of ignorance or because the local Parish office takes a no discussion approach.

When I started reattending Mass I wanted to know the ins and outs of what all of the symbolism, prayers, origins and other aspects of the Mass were all about. I mean, If I was going to go to Mass on at least a weekly basis, I want to be able to participate and get the most out of it, not just go through the motions as many of our Protestant brothers charge (Rightly so, for some Catholic parishoners).

But the Church has gone through bad times before.

How about when Christ was crucified and everyone left and abandoned Him. There is no lower point...

If you want a perspective on God patience, read Exodus. Some like to say that "the God of the Old Testament" was just angry and jealous. As far as I can tell, the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. The "God of the Old Testament" was EXTREMELY patient and merciful to the Hebrews. All kinds of abominations were taking place, but He didn't obliterate them....

If you don't live by your faith, is it really faith?

And good for you. Your efforts make you a better Catholic than some Bishops and Cardinals, so it would seem.

And don't think I'm tweaking at Catholicism, I'm not.

Left-wing apostasy and heresies are creeping into Catholic diocese, Jewish temple congregations, and each and every mainstream Christian denomination.

The Liberal Left is infiltrating our churches and temples and poisoning people against God.

This is just a symptom of the real illness: liberalism.

Everyone except the Blessed Virgin Mary, her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene and the Apostle John.

Almost everyone.

Pope John Paul II'S Heaviest Cross:
The Disobedient Clerics of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States

Perhaps Pope John Paul II's greatest burden is the failure of so many Roman Catholic clerics in the United States, bishops and cardinals included, to accept fully and to obey and to implement faithfully some fundamental teachings of the Church that inconvenience some people.

The "separation between faith and life" that Senator Kerry and others have shamefully tried to use for political advantage was condemned long ago by the Second Vatican Council: “This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age."

It remains so.

The Catholic faith is supposed to inform a Catholic’s participation in every sphere of life, not just religious services.

Thus, the Second Vatican Council not only urged all Christians “to fulfill their duties faithfully in the spirit of the Gospel,” but warned them that “[i]t is a mistake to think that...we are entitled to shirk our earthly responsibilities; this is to forget that by our faith we are bound all the more to fulfill these responsibilities according to the vocation of each....”

The Council called upon Christians to cherish “the opportunity to carry out their earthly activity in such a way as to integrate human, domestic, professional, scientific and technical enterprises with religious values, under whose supreme direction all things are ordered to the glory of God.”

The Church is not to control the state, but the underlying fundamental values of each should be the same, not conflicting.

For example, The Ten Commandments prohibit murder and stealing.

State law should do the same, not because the state is subordinate to the Church, but because both are subordinate to God and bound by natural law.

The essence of the problem is that some people not only want to sin, but to have the state treat sinful behavior as acceptable, and the Church is not immune from this contamination.

The Church must resist this instead of ignore it or cover it up.

Pope John Paul II has tried constantly.

But, his exemplary efforts have been undermined by misbehavior and misinformation emanating from shameful clerics and shameless political opportunists with whom they ally themselves.

These five teachings of the Roman Catholic Church are simple to understand, but hard for some to accept and abide by:

Abortion is gravely sinful, not a licit choice.
Homosexual acts are sinful, not acceptable.
Sexual abuse by priests is especially abominable.
Natural law supersedes civil law and binds everyone, including "Catholic" politicians peddling a perverted notion of separation of church and state.
To receive Holy Communion, a Roman Catholic must be "in full communion" with the Church and therefore Communion must be denied to

"[t]hose...who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin...."

Instead of fully accepting and implementing these important teachings, many clerics have chosen cover up, heresy and schism in order to accommodate grave sin and grave sinners.

Section 2089 of The Cathecism of the Roman Catholic Church defines "heresy" as "the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or...an obstinate doubt concerning the same," and "schism" as "the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."

Virtually all, if not all, Catholic clerics do acknowledge that abortion is a sin, but many of them minimize the gravity of the sin and confuse well-meaning people by sacrilegiously and scandalously giving Communion to unrepentant, notoriously pro-abortion nominal Catholics, notwithstanding the express mandate of canon law.

And they fail to expose the egregious arrogance of nominally Catholic politicians criticizing the Pope for asserting that civil law violates natural law is invalid. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in its Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life: “[T]he lay Catholic's duty to be morally coherent…is one and indivisible. There cannot be two parallel lives…: on the one hand, the so-called 'spiritual life', with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called 'secular' life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social responsibilities, in the responsibilities of public life and in culture.”

The Doctrinal Note emphasized that lay Catholics, in fulfilling civic duties, are to be “‘guided by a Christian conscience,’ in conformity with its values,” and that “their proper task [is] infusing the temporal order with Christian values, all the while respecting the nature and rightful autonomy of that order, and cooperating with other citizens according to their particular competence and responsibility.^”

The Doctrinal Note distinguished legitimate and illegitimate freedom. It explicitly respected “the legitimate freedom of Catholic citizens to choose among the various political opinions that are compatible with faith and the natural moral law, and to select, according to their own criteria, what best corresponds to the needs of the common good.” (Emphasis added.)

“Political freedom is not – and cannot be – based upon the relativistic idea that all conceptions of the human person’s good have the same value and truth,” the Doctrinal Note proclaimed.

“Rather,” the Doctrinal Note continued, “it is based on the fact that politics are concerned with very concrete realizations of the true human and social good in given historical, geographic, economic, technological and cultural contexts. From the specificity of the task at hand and the variety of circumstances, a plurality of morally acceptable policies and solutions arises. It is not the Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions – and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one – to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church’s right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law.^” (Emphasis added.)

The Doctrinal Note rejected moral relativism and related the essential basis of democracy in the clearest terms: “If Christians must ‘recognize the legitimacy of differing points of view about the organization of worldly affairs,’ they are also called to reject, as injurious to democratic life, a conception of pluralism that reflects moral relativism. Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society.” (Emphasis added.)

As to abortion, the Doctrinal Note was categorical: “John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose’ any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.” (Emphasis added.)

There is no ambiguity: A faithful Catholic politician may not compromise on fundamental matters.

“When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia (not to be confused with the decision to forgo extraordinary treatments, which is morally legitimate). Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death.” The Roman Catholic Church in the United States for decades dealt with the horrific problem of sexual abuse by priests horrifically.

Instead of confronting the problem directly, it protected and transferred priests who never should have been ordained.

And, when it settled claims, it insisted on confidentiality agreements, trading money for the victims' silence.

Fortunately, the Church finally dealt effectively with the clerical sexual abuse problem, albeit only after the problem had become a great public scandal.

The same Roman Catholic Church in the United States that covered up the clerical sexual abuse problem and gave Holy Communion to notorious unrepentant sinners also has abused the annulment process for many years.

The Roman Catholic Church does not permit either "gay marriage" or divorce, but it does grant annulments, that is, declarations that an apparently valid marriage did not in fact exist.

The annulment process has been abused, particularly in the United States, by persons who do not fully accept the Church's teaching on marriage and Jesus' command that what God had joined together is not to be put asunder, to grant divorces disguised as annulments.

As a result of the abuse of the annulment process, much to Pope John Paul II's distress, the Vatican issued a new instruction about norms in marriage cases on February 8, 2005.

Bishop De Paolis sadly noted that cases of marriage nullity "have increased enormously in recent decades, especially in countries of long Christian tradition."

Among the causes cited by the Bishop: "widespread secularization which has an erroneous concept of marriage compared to the ideal proposed by the Church; a more precise knowledge of human psychology allowing for a better determination that matrimonial consent was not sufficient, and the fact that "many faithful, having obtained a civil divorce and the possibility to remarry according to civil law, ask for a declaration of nullity because they know that for a Catholic a valid marriage can only be that celebrated according to Church laws."

The Bishop gave some statistics for the year 2002 showing that the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has been granting annulments at a grossly disproportionate rate: of the 56,236 ordinary hearings for a declaration of nullity, 46,092 received an affirmative sentence. Of these, 343 were handed out in Africa, 676 in Oceania, 1,562 in Asia, 8,855 in Europe and 36,656 in America, of which 30,968 in North America and 5,688 in Central and South America.

In the prayerful hope that it would be followed, a new Instruction--entitled "'Dignitas connubii' (Dignity of Marriage), Instruction to be Observed by Diocesan and Interdiocesan Tribunals in Handling Causes of the Nullity of Marriage"--was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, with the collaboration of other dicasteries.

Cardinal Julian Herranz explained that the Instruction is intended to be "a practical document...to use as a ready guide for carrying out their duties in canonical hearings on the nullity of marriage."

The new Instruction, Cardinal Herranz said, seeks to facilitate the consultation and application of the 1983 edition of the Code of Canon Law, bringing together all norms referring to the canonical process for nullity of marriage and includes the juridical developments that have arisen since the publication of the Code: authentic interpretations of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, answers of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, jurisprudence of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota.

He added that the Instruction "does not limit itself to repeating the text of the Canons, but contains interpretations, clarifications on the provisions of law, and further provisions on procedures for its implementation."

Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz explained the standard in deciding whether or not to grant an annulment, "It is not a question of absolute certainty, ... or purely subjective certainty, ... but of moral objective certainty, based objectively on the acts and the results of the proofs. In fact, according to the new norm, 'In order to declare the nullity of marriage there is required in the mind of the judge moral certainty of its nullity (art 247, para 1)'."

If the Instruction is not followed by faithless persons in power, it will not be for lack of clarity.

The Instruction confirms the need to submit the question of the validity or nullity of the marriage of the faithful to a truly judicial process.

Not a politically tainted one.

Instead of abdicating responsibility, the Instruction reiterates the Church's competency to concern herself with these causes, because on them depend the existence of the marriage" of her faithful, "above all considering that marriage is one of the seven Sacraments instituted by Christ Himself."

To ignore this problem would in practice "be tantamount to casting a shadow over the sacramental nature of marriage itself. This would be even more incomprehensible in the current circumstances of confusion on the natural identity of marriage and of the family in certain forms of civil legislation that not only welcome and facilitate divorce but even, in some cases, cast doubt on heterosexuality as an essential aspect of marriage."

Cardinal Herranz explained that in the context of a "divorcist" mentality, "even canonical nullity hearings can easily be misinterpreted, as if they were nothing more than ways to obtain a divorce with the apparent approval of the Church." The difference between annulment and divorce would thus be "purely nominal, and by the skillful manipulation of causes of nullity, all failed marriages would be nullified."

Popes consistently "have often expressed the true sense of nullity of marriage, inseparable from the search for truth because the declaration of nullity does not mean dissolving an existing bond, but rather the recognition, in the name of the Church, of the nonexistence of a true marriage right from the beginning."

Pope John Paul II himself eloquently explained that the Church favors validating marriage: 'The spouses themselves must be the first to realize that only in the loyal quest for the truth can they find their true good, without excluding a priori the possible validation of a union that, although it is not yet a sacramental marriage, contains elements of good, for themselves and their children, that should be carefully evaluated in conscience before reaching a different decision'." (Address to the Roman Rota, January 28, 2002).

As to the search for truth in hearings on the nullity of marriage, Archbishop Angelo Amato emphasized that the Instruction states that the judge must urge the parties to a sincere search for the truth: If the judge does not manage to bring the spouses to validate their marriage and re-establish conjugal life "the judge is to urge the spouses to work together sincerely, putting aside any personal desire and living the truth in charity, in order to arrive at the objective truth, as the very nature of a marriage cause demands."

The Instruction is sound.

Whether or not it will apply properly depends upon the willingness of the people entrusted with applying it.

In a country in which unrepentant, notorious pro-abortion politicians use Holy Communion as a photo opportunity with complicit clergy and a few bishops and a Cardinal welcome unrepentant homosexual activists to Communion, the first step is for the complicit clergy to repent.