Posted on 10/12/2015 6:39:34 PM PDT by markomalley
In the case of “remarried” people, they are living in a constant state of sin (because it’s assumed they aren’t “living as brother and sister”). So to put it in terms of the murderer, it’s as if an un-repentant murderer presented himself for Communion. Such a person isn’t allowed so neither are “remarried”. Both circumstances are, again, examples of people who haven’t really repented of their sin.
Thanks, Mark, for your brilliant clarifications and excellent Doctrinal examples.
Catholic DIVORCED DO RECEIVE the Sacrament of Holy Communion, with Christ our Lord.
It is only the REMARRIED WITHOUT ANNULMENT who obstinately continue to defy Sacred Scripture, the magisterium and Sacred Tradition and who remain in an illicit condition.
Baptism is certainly the issue with the Woman at the Well, and a point I failed to expand into the necessity of absolution by Jesus with the woman. absolution. Absolution was withheld. Forgiveness comes with contrition and firm resolution to go and sin no more.
The woman’s story was left quite unfinished on these sacramental counts.
Also, murder is not a sacrament. Holy Matrimony is.
Murder is a sin for which the perpetrator can be forgiven and restored to Holy Communion, under the usual precise conditions.
To remarry without annulment and then knowingly continue in the illicit second union not only dashes the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, but also compounds the original mortal sin by one’s continuing obstinant defiance of Holy Mother Church, who stands on Sacred Scripture, the Magisterium and Sacred Tradition, as the Mystical Body of Christ on earth.
I understand that the one holy catholic apostolic church binds the rules.
That Cardinal “Adam and Eve are poetry” Pell is considered a “conservative” cardinal shows all one needs to know about how messed up the Catholic Church is.
Why the obsession with attacking the Catholic Church ? Are you still a Christian Fundamentalist at heart ?
That Cardinal “Adam and Eve are poetry” Pell is considered a “conservative” cardinal shows all one needs to know about how messed up the Catholic Church is.
Why the obsession with attacking the Catholic Church ? Are you still a Christian Fundamentalist at heart ?
Why the obsession with Genesis as allegory/myth? Is the Catholic Church a disciple of Voltaire at heart? Though at least Voltaire had the decency to reject all miracles together and not to pick and choose, especially rejecting the one supernatural act that logically cannot have a natural explanation.
As to being a "chrstian Fundamentalist" (which I assume you consider a slur, as in "all converts to Catholicism must take an oath to never be a 'fundamentalist' or interpret Genesis 'literally'"):
Do chrstian Fundamentalists believe the Holy Torah was written, not by men under Divine inspiration, but by G-d Himself? Before the universe was even created? That the created universe is in fact purely derivative of the Torah?
Do "chrstian Fundamentalists" believe that the written (kosher) Torah Scrolls in all the synagogues of the world are an exact reproduction of the first Torah written by Moses at G-d's dictation, and even of the Great Torah Scroll written on a scroll of white fire in letters of black fire? Do they believe that the laws of writing Torah Scrolls (not actually recorded in the written Torah) were instituted so that this would happen without fail for all time?
Do "chrstian Fundamentalists" believe that there were ten generations from Adam to Noah, ten generations from Noah to Abraham, and six generations from Abraham to Moses? That all human history falls within the lifetimes of seven men? That we have just entered the year 5776 from creation?
Do "chrstian Fundamentalists" believe that the Torah contains encoded within it all the details of all the lives of every human being who will ever live, and even that of "all that grows or is inert" (Vilna Gaon)?
Well I do. So that's what I am. And the fact that your allegedly "holy," "reverent," and "unchanging" Church opposes each and every one of those things (to the point where you yourself imply that fundamentalists must first become liberals before joining the Catholic Church) shows that the Catholic Church is the greatest lie in history.
Perhaps the Catholic Church should transfer its headquarters from Rome to the Galapagos Islands.
No, I do not use Christian Fundamentalist as a slur. It is silly for a former fundamentalist Christian, who is not a Jew at all, but a Gentile, to purposefully misspell "Christian" while attacking the Catholic Church.
I'm glad to hear it. Now you can work on the illogic of accepting miracles while insisting that the creation came into existence through purely natural means (which didn't even exist prior to creation).
It is silly for a former fundamentalist Christian, who is not a Jew at all, but a Gentile, to purposefully misspell "Christian" while attacking the Catholic Church.
Maybe it is. But it's a personal moral scruple on my part.
This is not a Creation thread; it is about divorce and remarriage in the context of the one holy catholic apostolic church.
We can all agree the woman at the well was “changed” following the Divine encounter just as it occurred in an instant with the thief on the right. Her current state of adultery posed no barrier to this change which is what Communion with the Christ does.
Adultery is not simply a reference to an objective state of matrimony or being a divorced Catholic. It is state of heart. For he who will “look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
If then it is a state of the heart, and the marital bonds have been irreparably broken, are we to preserve the shell, bereft of substance, with appeals to sacramental formalities that define the indissolubility of marriage? Is this not elevating form over substance? Is this not the so-called “letter” of the law that Christ Himself warned against.
The contextual reference to John 8:3-11, to “go and sin no more,” may well mean to refrain from further prostitution. To the already divorced and re-married Catholics (especially to those with children from a second or third marriage) this could well mean to divorce no more. Otherwise, the first sin controls like a tap to the faucet. But we all know that Christ’s forgiveness is not a controlled flow.
There is nothing to suggest that the woman at the well with five prior husbands could not marry the one she now lives with or that they both cannot marry and share the communion with Christ. The Johnian narrative leaves out whether or not the woman had any children either with the man she lives or her prior husbands. But are we to leave out whole families of remarried Catholics?
The lesson of the woman at the well is no allusion to Baptism. This involves a “drink” (as opposed to the “pouring”) of water that in the hands of the Christ becomes Living Water. If one looks at the purpose and effect of Eucharistic communion, then encouraging the Divine encounter, as Christ Himself practiced at the well, cannot be seen as undermining the sacrament of marriage properly understood as combining both form (ritual) and substance (heart.
With that said we now have a NJ Archbishop proclaiming that no more communion is to be extended to divorced Catholics even while the Synod is still in progress attempting to resolve the pastoral implications of the prohibition.
See link below
Nor is it an allusion to Holy Communion as you propose.
The well was filled with water, not wine.
Well I think problem number two is you’re linking huffpo articles on Freep.
An article “favoring” your point of view.
If the Church is going to water down Her teachings so as to be more compliant with society in regards to divorce and "remarriage", where else should the Church be updated? Infanticide? Sodomy? Those are, after all, a couple of the other modern pressures on the Church.
But the real danger has always been strategic ambiguity, plus pastoral jellyfishosity with no doctrinal rigor, which always works so well in partibus infidelium.
This is not about updating Church teaching to fit societal modes. The reference to extending the teaching of the narrative involving the much-married woman at the well to infanticide and sodomy is beyond absurd.
Christ communed with the woman at the well. He did not instruct her to first leave the man she was shacking up with nor did He impose upon her a condition that she not re-marry as a condition of her communion with Him. The experienced changed her and the whole town in which she lived.
Your solution acts more as a death penalty: depriving a re-married coupled from life-giving water. What point does it serve for a such a couple to celebrate the Eucharist and told to stand apart from receiving the Living Bread only because of a later act (second marriage) that cannot be undone.
My reading of the woman at the well has Christ reaching to the periphery and bringing them to Him, not isolating them because of prior marriages. It would be quite stretch to say that if she were now married for the sixth time, Christ would require that she divorce her sixth husband as a precondition to the encounter.
That is one of the most idiotic arguments I have seen. How can the second "marriage" not be undone when the first marriage couldn't be undone?
What is it about then? It seems that you want to throw away 2,000 years of Church Magisterium for some novel interpretation of Sacred Scripture. I suggest you review Pius XI, Casti Connubii, and Leo XIII, Arcanum, as a couple of more recent examples.
The reference to extending the teaching of the narrative involving the much-married woman at the well to infanticide and sodomy is beyond absurd.
What I actually said was, If the Church is going to water down Her teachings so as to be more compliant with society in regards to divorce and "remarriage", where else should the Church be updated? There was no discussion of the example here.
I am actually asking if your apparent desire to change doctrine in this one instance should be extended to the desire to change doctrine in other instances that are also very current and being discussed.
Your solution acts more as a death penalty: depriving a re-married coupled from life-giving water
First, they are not re-married (unless they rejoined themselves after a separation). They are living in an adulterous relationship (one which possibly is given State sanction as a civil union).
Next, for a person to receive absolution from a sin, the person must be contrite. As is stated in Canon Law (Can. 987), To receive the salvific remedy of the sacrament of penance, a member of the Christian faithful must be disposed in such a way that, rejecting sins committed and having a purpose of amendment, the person is turned back to God.
If a person is in an adulterous relationship and that person continues to have conjugal relations with his/her partner, how in the world can anybody claim that that person has rejected sins committed and has a purpose of amendment?
If the Church allows that person to continue to receive Holy Communion, the Church is essentially condemning that person to eternal perdition! On top of the consequence of adultery, add on the consequence of sacrilegious receipt of Holy Communion. How can that possibly be seen as merciful?
My reading of the woman at the well has Christ reaching to the periphery and bringing them to Him, not isolating them because of prior marriages. It would be quite stretch to say that if she were now married for the sixth time, Christ would require that she divorce her sixth husband as a precondition to the encounter.
By all means reach out to people who are in adulterous relationships outside of their valid marriages. By all means try to help them ascertain whether their marriage was valid or if it should be declared null. But you don't do an active sodomite any good by saying that it's OK for him to continue practicing sodomy. You don't do a woman who's had an abortion any good by saying "it's your body, your choice" (much less the abortionist). Similarly, you don't do an adulterer any good by saying that a so-called second "marriage" is perfectly OK. If any of these people are allowed to approach Holy Communion, no favor is done to them.
It would help if you read more carefully. The first marriage is already “done.” Or shall we say “kaput.”
The prohibition on receiving communion to the second marriage would then require that second marriage be undone although in form and substance it is a working marriage. Thus the prohibition is absurd if it demands the destruction of a second marriage. Given the woman at the well narrative, it is impossible to conceive that Christ would deprive the woman of the one-on-one encounter with Him if she was married for a sixth time. After all, at the time of the encounter she was already living with a man, not her husband.
Elevating form over substance is a theologically losing proposition. You don’t drive to the periphery of a second married man/woman with young kids in tow who attend the celebration of the Eucharist but deprive them of its essence.
It’s like saying to them, its ok to come for the banquet but no food for you. The woman at the well narrative counsels against this harsh exclusionary treatment based on failed first marriage and a successful new marriage.
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