Posted on 11/07/2014 1:18:02 PM PST by ebb tide
In the Daily Telegraph of November 4 this year appeared a very jolly story about an Austrian woman who had incurred excommunication for purporting to have been ordained to the Priesthood (God bless her, she has retaliated by now claiming the Episcopate!!). The journalist began his story thus: "Excommunication is traditionally reserved by Catholicism for the very worst of sinners and is a sanction rarely invoked today".
Well, the dear old Torygraph has failed to keep herself up-to-date on that subject. Excommunication is, for some bishops, the Fashionable Fad in today's caring, compassionate Catholic Church of Pope Francis! Excommunication, even, just for going to Church!!! But enough of my vulgar slapstick. Let me get serious and simply remind you that only a few days ago an Italian bishop seemed to suggest, uncanonically, that lay people, even minors, attending SSPX chapels were excommunicated latae sententiae. Now an Argentine bishop, perhaps with a tadge more respect for the CIC, has threatened such "very worst of sinners" with penalties ferendae sententiae.
As a recent 'convert' without much experience of the Catholic Church and with very little theological training or understanding, I have to say that her current practical* ecumenical policy seems to me to be ... er ... magnificently inexplicable. Unity, we all agree, is a Good Thing, but SSPXers (even children!!) are to be threatened with bell, book, and candle. Popes and Bishops are elaborately kind to schismatics who are doctrinally distant from the Church, but they are distantly pedantic (at best) towards the SSPX, which accepts every single dogmatic definition and anathema ever published by a lawful Ecumenical Council or by a Roman Pontiff. The SSPX is required to make the most precise submission to Conciliar and Papal Magisteria, while 'our ecumenical partners in dialogue' are invited to sit down at a table and work out together verbal doctrinal fudges which are then declared to be acceptable by Roman dicasteries (e.g. ARCIC). Have Roman ecumenists ever explained frankly to Orthodox and Anglicans that they also will, ultimately, have to accept every syllable of 'the Conciliar and post-Conciliar Magisterium' before Unity is consummated? If not, why not? I do not mean those as rhetorical questions.
IF Catholic ecumenists cannot even manage a settlement with a group as close to them as is the SSPX, THEN it will be obvious that 'Ecumenism' with communities separated from Rome for centuries by serious formal dogmatic disagreements as well as by deep-rooted cultural rancour, is nothing more than the pursuit of a pie-in-the-sky; a fine-sounding but meaningless Game. Remember the
PARABLE OF THE FINANCIER AND THE TWO BEGGARS. The Ecumenical Policy* of the Catholic Church is like unto a Financier, who went down the street one morning with his pen, his cheque book, and a 50 pence coin. At the first corner, he met a Beggar who humbly knelt and called out to him "For the love God, guv'ner, give us 50p for a cup of tea". But the Financier passed by on the other side, offering him only some wise advice about how much more profound his self-abasement would need to become. At the next corner he met a Second Beggar, who did not kneel, but greeted the Financier with the easy familiarity of an equal. This man the Financier warmly embraced and kissed, and then gave him a post-dated dud cheque for £2,500,000; which the Beggar received with exclamations of great delight. And the Financier praised the Second Beggar, because he understood the Game.
________________________________________________________________________________ *This article does not question any Magisterial pronouncement, and its author ex animo accepts the teaching of Unitatis Redintegratio, Ut unum sint, Communionis notio, and Dominus Iesus.
A little over the top.
If someone is a regular attendee at a schismatic church, they wouldn’t care about a Roman ex-communication anyway.
I used to participate in a student Baptist prayer meeting, but continued to go the Mass and receive communion (I eventually quit when the anti-Catholic rants turned into angry misunderstandings and flat out lies)
Ergotism?
Please forgive my rye humor.
Because the Modernist church really doesn't believe they need to do so. On the other hand, the Modernist church demands that the non-Modernist church (aka SSPX and others) believe in the religion of ecumenism.
PFL
I don’t think it’s over the top.
The SSPX, who teach nothing heretical that I know of, are treated like pariahs and meanwhile the most unrepentant heretics are not only not punished they are rewarded with high positions. I just read a story about some Vatican consultant “absolutely” in favor of priestesses.
Fr John Hunwicke gives the most hilarious presentations. He’s very smart, very quick and has a great sense of humor. I had the pleasure of meeting him several years ago.
“The SSPX...are treated like pariahs...”
Have you ever seen how the SSPX treat the Church? Their priests have valid (but illicit) orders, but they do not have the faculties granted by diocesan bishops to either hear confessions or to perform weddings. Have they stopped doing so? Of course not! Canon Law be damned apparently.
Of course I have seen it! I find fault with their attitude too.
But how come they bear the brunt of this talk of “excommunication” when there are people out there at liturgies *celebrating* sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance?
I’m sorry, on the scale of errors to be corrected, their schismatic mentality is WAY down the list from those buffoons in the halls of the Vatican spouting rank heresy or making mincemeat out of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.
He is all that and more. Must’ve been great to meet him!
Canon law says unrepentant pro-abort politicians are to be refused Holy Communion. Also damned apparently.
“I’m sorry, on the scale of errors to be corrected, their schismatic mentality is WAY down the list from those buffoons in the halls of the Vatican spouting rank heresy or making mincemeat out of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.”
A schismatic mentality is not going to keep anyone from getting excommunicated.
He was a true gentleman too. I’m so glad he’s a priest in the Church now.
“Canon law says unrepentant pro-abort politicians are to be refused Holy Communion.”
I think you mean canon 915. It actually says “persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.” It never mentions “pro-abort politicians” no matter how much they really are “persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.”
“Also damned apparently.”
Probably, but that’s no reason to say the Code says something it doesn’t. What it says is enough. There’s no reason for you to make things up.
“Grow up. I’m not making anything up.”
I think you are. I’ll show you in a second.
“Aiding in the murder of babies is a mortal sin. Always has been, always will be.”
Yes.
Now, here is what you said that I think is made up: “Canon law says unrepentant pro-abort politicians are to be refused Holy Communion.”
Okay, show us where in the Code you find “pro-abort politicians” mentioned as “to be refused Holy Communion”. Show where are they named at all.
Once again, grow up. Is canon law supposed to personally single out Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, etc as being forbidden from Holy Communion?
But who the hell cares about canon law, Vlad? Francis certainly doesn’t; washing women’s feet on Holy Thursday, calling an adulteress and telling her to sneak to another church to receive Holy Communion while in a state of mortal sin.
To hell with canon law!
Well, Vlad, according to the latest SinNod and the majority of the bishops' votes, not much is a mortal sin anymore.
“Once again, grow up.”
Keep that thought in mind.
“Is canon law supposed to personally single out Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, etc as being forbidden from Holy Communion?”
No. Did anyone suggest it should? I pointed out that the Code does not say what you claimed it did. I was undeniably right. Why are you now suggesting an entirely different idea rather than just admitting that the Code never once mentions ‘pro-abortion politicians’?
“But who the hell cares about canon law, Vlad?”
Well, certainly people who make things up as if they are in canon law when they are not probably don’t care about canon law, right?
“Francis certainly doesn’t; washing women’s feet on Holy Thursday, calling an adulteress and telling her to sneak to another church to receive Holy Communion while in a state of mortal sin.”
And any of that makes it okay for you to make things up about what the Code actually says? I don’t see the connection. Explain to me how the pope getting things wrong in your view means you can make things up out of thin air.
“To hell with canon law!”
That may express your real thoughts and feeling on the issue.
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