Posted on 12/14/2014 5:26:28 PM PST by ebb tide
I have been assured, over and over again, sometimes condescendingly and sometimes not, that the Kasper Proposal is a dead letter.
First it was Cardinal Muller's letter in L'Osservatore Romano. Then it was some random papal comment affirming marital indissolubility (which ignored the fact Cardinal Kasper swearsies he's all about keeping marriages intact). Then, most recently, it was the supposed door-slamming vote at the end of the Synod, which asserted that the matter was--this time for sure, how could you ever doubt it?--done. Over. Locked into a safe, wrapped in chains and dumped square in into Challenger Deep, where it could never be seen again, thanks to our Papal Guarantee of Unassailable Orthodoxy. Take that, Huns!
Well, I was skeptical about that. Very much so.
And it appears my skepticism was warranted. Like the villain in a bad horror movie, the damned thing keeps rising from assured death to menace the protagonists again. Behold Question 38, straight from the Pope's handpicked secretary at the Vatican:
38. With regard to the divorced and remarried, pastoral practice concerning the sacraments needs to be further studied, including assessment of the Orthodox practice and taking into account “the distinction between an objective sinful situation and extenuating circumstances” (n. 52). What are the prospects in such a case? What is possible? What suggestions can be offered to resolve forms of undue or unnecessary impediments?
So much for the matter being closed, shut, finito. There's a wake-up call, for those so inclined to grab the receiver.
And then there's the Pope's words, just this week, offered in the Time-Honored Magisterium of Newspaper Interviews:
[Q:] In the case of divorcees who have remarried, we posed the question, what do we do with them? What door can we allow them to open? This was a pastoral concern: will we allow them to go to Communion?
[A:] Communion alone is no solution. The solution is integration. They have not been excommunicated, true. But they cannot be godfathers to any child being baptized, mass readings are not for divorcees, they cannot give communion, they cannot teach Sunday school, there are about seven things that they cannot do, I have the list over there. Come on! If I disclose any of this it will seem that they have been excommunicated in fact!
Thus, let us open the doors a bit more. Why cant they be godfathers and godmothers? "No, no, no, what testimony will they be giving their godson?" The testimony of a man and a woman saying "my dear, I made a mistake, I was wrong here, but I believe our Lord loves me, I want to follow God, I was not defeated by sin, I want to move on."
Anything more Christian than that? And what if one of the political crooks among us, corrupt people, ate chosen to be somebody´s godfather. If they are properly wedded by the Church, would we accept them? What kind of testimony will they give to their godson? A testimony of corruption?
Things need to change, our standards need to change.
"Communion alone is no solution." That's an...interesting formulation. There are other problems with the interview, too, as someone less biased on the topic than I am has noted. This one is particularly insightful, and warrants a careful read.
Those of you who are Anglicans will have seen this movie before: dialogue does not end until the proper result is reached. Then it becomes the Laws of the Medes and Persians, hater.
Given what the Vatican just issued, the most recent interview shows the Pontiff's mind quite clearly (not that it was particularly opaque before). Throw that in with the papal power-invoking rhetoric in the wildly-overpraised speech he gave at the conclusion of the 2014 Synod (reinforced by more explicit authority to depose), and I think it's more likely than not that he forces through some variation on the Kasper proposal in 2015.
Welcome to horribly interesting times.
[Q:] In the case of divorcees who have remarried, we posed the question, what do we do with them? What door can we allow them to open? This was a pastoral concern: will we allow them to go to Communion?
Ping
The way many states in the US have written their divorce laws one spouse can file for divorce and the other spouse can not stop it.
Assuming there was no sin, as the church sees it, attached to them, would the reluctant spouse still be denied the sacrament of marriage and other duties within the Roman Catholic church? Why?
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
This, too, shall pass.
Divorce alone isn't the issue.
I find it interesting that the Catholic church claims that taking communion is essential for salvation and yet denies divorced and remarried people to take communion.
That is essentially and effectively damning them.
So then what does the church propose they do? Add another divorce to the situation? Force them to remain single?
And if the divorce was against their will (because of no fault) are they forced into a single existence for the rest of their lives?
Whatever happened to forgiveness?
Jesus was the only one eligible to cast the first stone at the woman caught in adultery and what did HE do?
I find it interesting that you take so much interest in a religion that you have left.
Guilty feelings?
Incorrect
Nope. Not a bit.
Grateful to be free in Christ.
OK, so nobody has to take communion to be saved.
Then how does Jesus enter a person’s life according to Catholicism, if not by eating Him?
Free? Really? How free are you without Sacraments?
Leads one to wonder, then, about all the hit pieces against Protestantism, especially by former Prots.
Must be a guilty conscience.
Otherwise, why would they bother with a religion they have left?
Show me where Jesus taught that being subject to sacraments or any other religious duty was *freedom*.
I am free because I am in Christ and all HIS righteousness has been credited to my account, so I am not obligated to obey a Law that nobody can obey anyway and cannot save even if they could.
First of all, what sacraments do you acknowledge?
No debits in that "account "of yours that could outweigh the credit?
What is this "Law" that nobody can obey? Marital fidelity?
Think nothing of it...I’d never been stopped until my late 30’s! A cop was behind me with falshing lights that I thought was trying to get by me but I couldn’t pull off as there was a revine there....so I just kept driving until in a clearing and expected him to then pass me by....he didn’t... so I finally pulled off having no idea what was happening or why.
Apparently there was a school zone aways back in a little village I was going 40 in a 35 mile area. You’re thru that village in one blink!
Given that Our Lord said that divorce and remarriage was adultery, and that St. Paul says that he who partakes of the Eucharist unworthily does so to his condemnation, I simply don’t understand how it is possible logically to say that communion for divorced and remarried is solely disciplinary. It seems rather obvious to me that it is mixed disciplinary and doctrinal issue. Am I just being obtuse, or are the Kasperites simply playing Marxist/Alinskyite word games to confuse the faithful?
I pray that Mr. Dyspeptic is wrong — I don’t think we can know what will happen until we have the final resulting Apostolic Exhortation based on next year’s Synod final report. Hopefully, the Pope will in the end support moral orthodoxy like Bl. Paul VI did with Humanae Vitae.
In any event, I honestly don’t see this as a big issue. If you are in this situation, then either take to heart the words of Christ and live like brother and sister and take communion, or else don’t take communion and wait until old age when you can live like brother and sister anyway, and seek the graces available through spiritual communion and the like. And the pooh poohing of spiritual communion is ridiculous. Obviously it is not the same thing as physical communion, so it is not as full a channel of grace as the latter, but it should impart some measure of grace into the soul that seeks it. It’s going to be a long and nerve-wracking year coming up.
Sacraments are channels of grace and glorious gifts from Our Lord. It is not a question of being “subject to” them.
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