Posted on 04/09/2013 8:03:56 PM PDT by Morgana
DETROIT, April 9, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Allen Vigneron on Sunday told the Detroit Free Press that Catholic supporters of same-sex ‘marriage’ should not present themselves to receive Communion.
“For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: ‘I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches,’” said the archbishop. “In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one's integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.”
In an email to CNN, Archdiocese spokesman Joe Kohn elaborated on Vigneron’s remarks: “The archbishop's focal point here is not ‘gay marriage’; it is a Catholic’s reception of Holy Communion,” he explained. “If a Catholic publicly opposes the church on a serious matter of the church’s teaching, any serious matter – for example, whether it be a rejection of the divinity of Christ, racist beliefs, support for abortion or support for redefining marriage – that would contradict the public affirmation they would make of the church's beliefs by receiving Communion.”
Both the archbishop and his spokesman said the Church and its pastors stand ready to help Catholics understand and avoid this crisis of faith.
Archbishop Vigneron’s comments followed a blog post by Edward Peters, professor of canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and adviser to the Vatican, who wrote March 27, “Catholics who promote ‘same-sex marriage’ act contrary to [church law] and should not approach for holy Communion … they also risk having holy Communion withheld from them … being rebuked … and/or being sanctioned under [church law] for gravely injuring good morals.”
The two church leaders’ comments show a remarkable shift toward orthodoxy for the Detroit Archdiocese, which hadhomosexual activist Thomas Gumbleton as its auxiliary bishop until he was forced by the Vatican to retire in 2006. Gumbleton, who has said he was sexually abused by a Catholic priest in his youth, once famously said of homosexuals, “homosexual people are not disordered people. They are psychologically healthy people. ... Homosexuals are as healthy as anyone else.”
Gumbleton was affiliated with numerous gay activist organizations such as the Triangle Foundation, the Rainbow Sash Movement, and New Ways Ministry, SHARE, and Call to Action. In 1995 he received the Call to Action leadership award.
In contrast, Archbishop Vigneron told a news conference last month that if Catholic leaders were to abandon their teaching against homosexuality, “we would be like physicians who didn’t tell their patients that certain forms of behavior are not really in their best interest.”
It is unclear whether the archbishop intends to deny communion to public proponents of same-sex “marriage,” or whether he will rely on offenders to stay out of the Communion line of their own accord. Calls to the archdiocese seeking clarification were not immediately returned.
Catholic teaching says that those who receive Communion while in serious conflict with the Church are guilty of mortal sin.
I truely wasn’t trying to be a smart ass. If you reread my post at #60 I was simply trying to honestly address your question. However I don’t really know how asking about how many people haven’t heard about Jesus relates to the topic of refusing communion.
(Hidden—or revealed).
Like all good Germans know-—he who controls the language, controls the perceptions. I’ve studied Wittgenstein and the irrational, godless Postmodernists who were out to kill God (Christianity).
Your “logic” is inconsistent-—your premise is “faulty”——I can’t “argue” with a Sophist-—as Socrates knew.
Yes, I read your post.....it is irrational. Study St. Thomas-—so you understand logic and reason and can put out a coherent thought.
BTW, “....and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Like I say-—the Catholic Church REASONED from the very WORDS of Jesus Christ——all of what he said-—not just a few verses YOU (the theologian, I am sure—ha ha) picked out.
Do you know anything about the Passover meal of the Jews (seder)? This meal was done “in rememberance” of God saving Israel from the slavery of Egypt. Each part of the meal had a significant meaning which helped remind the people of the event.
Jesus’s last supper with the Disciples was a seder meal (being that it was the right time of year for that...Passover).
In the seder meal there was a male lamb without defect. The lamb was killed but it’s bones were not to be broken. Before Jesus this was a rememberance of the lamb that was slaughtered and it’s blood put on the door posts which the angel of Death would see and passover.
Palm Sunday is 5 days before the death of Jesus. The lamb which was to be sacrificed in the Temple was selected 5 days before it was sacrificed in the Temple.
The festival of unleavened bread began Friday evening (at sunset). As part of the festival, the Jews would take some of the grain - the “first fruits” of their harvest - to the Temple to offer as a sacrifice. In so doing, they were offering God all they had and trusting Him to proved the rest of the harvest. It was at this point that Jesus was buried - planted in the ground - as He said right before His death. Paul refers to Jesus as the first fruits of those raised from the dead in 1 Corinthians.
Christian symbolism in the Passover occurs early in the Seder (the Passover dinner). Three matzahs are put together (representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The middle matzah is broken, wrapped in a white cloth, and hidden, representing the death and burial of Jesus. The matzah itself is designed to represent Jesus, since it is striped and pierced, which was prophesized by Isaiah, David, and Zechariah. Following the Seder meal, the “buried” matzah is “resurrected,” which was foretold in the prophecies of David.
It was during a Passover seder that Jesus proclaimed that the meal represented Himself and that He was instituting the New Covenant, which was foretold by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The celebration of this covenant has become the ordinance of communion in the Christian Church. At the end of the meal, Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said that it represented His body. Then He took the cup of wine, which would have been the third cup of the Seder - the cup of redemption. He said that it was the new covenant in His blood “poured out for you.”
(borrowed from http://www.sonserver.com/passover-seder.htm)
So as you can see when Jesus was saying “this is my body” he wasn’t talking about a physical eating of his flesh but a ceremony of REMEMBERANCE of his sacrifice for our freedom from sin and death.
If you go to John 6 and read the whole chapter you can also see where Jesus explains that he wasn’t talking about a physical eating (like their ancestors did with manna and died) but he was talking about a spiritual “eating” (faith) where we can live forever. (John 6:47-51,58 specifically)
It is not me who takes a few verses out of context and builds whole doctrines that contradict the whole of Scripture. That is the Catholic Church which has done that.
oh I’m too busy and cranky right now to get into a debate - not my intention.
I was just showing how there is more than one way to view the request to refrain from communion than the desire to deny salvation to anyone.
It is more from a desire to refrain from sacrilege.
Whether you agree disagree with that is up to you - it’s just the position the Church takes.
51 I myself am the living bread that has come down from heaven. 52 If anyone eats of this bread, he shall live for ever. And now, what is this bread which I am to give? It is my flesh, given for the life of the world.
54 Whereupon Jesus said to them, Believe me when I tell you this; you can have no life in yourselves, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood. 55 The man who eats my flesh and drinks my blood enjoys eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 56 My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink. 57 He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, lives continually in me, and I in him. 58 As I live because of the Father, the living Father who has sent me, so he who eats me will live, in his turn, because of me.
You need to read the whole chapter to get the whole context of what Jesus is talking about. Yes, that little section does look like Jesus is talking about a physical “eating” of his flesh, but you only get that by ignoring earlier verses, later verses and the fact that Jesus was foreshadowing communion, which is patterned after the Passover/Seder meal (which is also a REMEMBERANCE).
As a side note, this event is taking place around the Passover, so those following him understood more of what he was proclaiming because the bread in the Passover meal symbolized God.
Earlier in John 6, you read where Jesus references a number of times that those who BELIEVE on Him will have everlasting life. (29,35,40,47) However those who were questioning Jesus were seeking more physical miracles (like what he had done earlier in the chapter) so that their bellies could be filled. He keeps telling them that a physical bread, like manna that their ancestors had eaten, was a miracle like they were seeking, but that physical bread doesn’t save. He points that out that their ancestors ate manna and are dead (6:49).
Jesus wraps up the discussion with those who kept wanting a physical meal, by telling them that he was speaking of something spiritual.
John 6:63 “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life.”
So, you see, when you look at the WHOLE chapter and the context and what the seder meal was (a rememberance of God saving Israel from the slavery of Egypt) you can see that what Jesus wants is for us to believe in Him (which requires faith and is “spirit”). He most certainly wasn’t telling these people that they needed to physically eat Jesus’s flesh and physically drink his blood.
Like I responded to someone else, the Catholic church builds doctrines off of a few verses taken out of context with the whole of scripture. This is wrong and it misleads millions of people.
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