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CRISIS IN THE CHURCH (60:00) Monday April 29- 8:00 pm ET LIVE
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Posted on 04/27/2002 9:42:33 AM PDT by Torie
Purge the priesthood and the seminaries of homosexuals/ pedofiles simultaneously.
Voila! Problem solved.
I am not Catholic, nor do I agree with the Church's position on this issue.
However, it seems to me that the divorced Catholic who remarries indicates his intention to continue to praqctice the sin. Thus his "confession" would be equivalent to that of the murderer who confesses that he intends to walk out of the confessional and immediately kill again. I doubt such a "confession" would qualify for absolution.
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CRISIS IN THE CHURCH (60:00) Monday April 29- 8:00 pm ET LIVE
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I agree. The New Republic took about 7 pages to avoid that.
As I understand it, a divorced Catholic who remarries is involved in an ongoing sin. The fact that this sin cannot be absolved has nothing to do with the relative severity of the sin. It has everything to do with the fact that continuing to practice the sin is indisputable evidence that the sinner has not indeed repented and "turned around," as is required for absolution.
In a murder case, the equivalent would be the murderer who announced in the confessional his intention to continue to kill. Such a person is by definition not truly penitent and thus cannot be absolved of sin.
The priest must believe that the sinner is penitent before absolving him.
Presumably the sin could also be absolved by abandoning the second wife. Although I personally find it difficult to see how two divorces are more moral than one.
I thought it was interesting how the author beat around the bush as to what the answer to the problem he addresses really is. Reading between the lines, he is advocating the abandonment of all Church teaching as to the sinfulness of sex outside of marriage. I'm not sure why he didn't just say so.
There will be no witch hunt to root out homosexual priests. It would be a futile exercise, since, as you surmise, most of them are celibate, and congregations would raise holy hell over such an inquisition.
This article is outstanding. And this is one of the more insightful quotes:
. There is a pervasive sense within the Church that no one really believes its teachings on sexuality anymore--not the laity, not even the clergy. In a strict hierarchy, no one wants to say the emperor has no clothes. When discussion is not permitted, and honest questions avoided, the Church must assert its teachings on the basis of "authority" alone; and if those teachings do not cohere with the people's lived experience, a regime of hypocrisy and indifference arises that does more to undermine "authority" than any honest discussion possibly could.
Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, which was supposed to settle the contraception issue once and for all. As is clear for all to see, it settled nothing, and the Church's teaching on artficial birth control is largely ignored by most Catholics. When a Catholic family has five children and some cleric tells them that each and every act of sexual intercourse must be open to children or they are sinning through selfishness, they look at him as if he's from another planet.
John Paul II took optional celibacy for priests off the table at the cardinals' meeting this week, which guarantees that it will continue to be discussed within the Church and without, whether the Pope likes it or not.
If anything, the present crisis has revealed that those in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who covered for pederasts and are amazed at the reaction of the faithful are still just as out of touch with their people as they've ever been.
I don't look for that to change in my lifetime.
I reject his "auto-da-fe" and raise him one Romans Chapter 1, versus 21 - 27.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. 26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
I have been dismayed by the Catholic bashing that sometimes goes on here, (I was a Catholic during my childhood, but no longer. I left that faith for different reasons).
To blame the flock for the bad behavior of SOME of the shepherds is as wrong as blaming me for my fathers sins....JMHO
FMCDH
If the new "spouse" dies or the first spouse (the true spouse) dies, then the condition of sinfulness ends because the adultery no longer exists. But the person must repent and receive sacramental absolution.
If the first spouse dies, the second marriage would need to be sacramentalized in some way (marriage vows officiated by a priest) because it is an adulterous cohabitation until the Church recognizes its sacramental nature.
Where did you get that idea? He said, as I read him, that the Church has to be willing to engage in a discussion of WHY every sexual act not oriented to the conception of a child is mortally sinful and not simply appeal to authority. External authority is the weakest rationale behind any action; it may work, for a while, but people have to be able to reconcile morality with their own experience or they'll never ultimately adopt the morality.
"Do this because I say so" may have worked and may still work with uneducated peasants, but people who can think on their own will simply walk away from that kind of argument (which really isn't an argument at all).
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