Yeah a little off indeed.
I heard something interesting about this topic from Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers a few weeks ago. Basically he said that if any priest or bishop interprets the controversial portions of AL in the more “liberal” way, even if they do that in their parish/diocese, that still wouldn’t necessarily be teaching/promoting heresy on their part of the Pope’s.
Why? Well because even if one believes the Pope was saying, in AL, that divorced and civilly remarried should be permittted to Communion, which is itself still debatable (but let’s say he did indeed say that and not just in a footnote but that was his intention). If that is the thrust of the portion of AL, then it’s still not heresy (according to Akin). According to him, it’s not because no where in AL does it ENCOURAGE anyone in that state to receive, the most it says (again arguably) is that such be “permitted” to receive. And indeed in other places AL reaffirms previous teachings that such relationships are irregular and not the desired final outcocme.
So in other words, AL, at most, puts the onus on the communicant to discenrn when (or if) he is in a state of mortal sin, and not on the priest distributing communion. And this, Akin said, is not a heresy. It’s at most a disciplinary matter, which are addressed by the Code of Canon Law. And that Law can be changed (since again it’s a disciplinary measure)
He (Akin) then gave this example to illustrate: if a person went to Confessjon yet in the confessional made it clear to the priest he had no intention of really stopping his sin, the priest could then withhold absolution and then of course the person would still be in mortal sin (and thus not be able to receive).
However if that same person then after that (fake) confession presented himself for Communion, then the priest wouldn’t be able to deny that person communion even though he (the priest) would obviously KNOW that person was in mortal sin. Why?
Because while Canon 915 permits (and even mandates) priests to withhold communion from those they reasonably can know are in mortal sin, another Code (I believe it’s 911 but I’m not sure) prohibits priests from divulging what was said in Confession. And by withholding Communion in this case, the priest would actually be divulging what was said under the Seal (divulging it by his withholding, because otherwise he wouldn’t have known the one in mortal sin was in sin if it weren’t for the failed confession)
So, reasoned Akin, the same reasoning applies here to even the most “liberal” interpretation of AL. Even if the Pope is saying in AL that those in civil remarriage shoujd be permistted to the Eucharist, that isn’t heretical since again it’s shifting the responsibility to the communicant to know when (or when not) to present himself for communion.
Now all that said I (and Akin) certainly don’t believe that would be a “good” thing for any priest or bishop to do in such a situation but it wouldn’t technically be “heresy” on the part of the Pope. It’s not “good” at all, for the Church as a whole or any memeber to take such a hands off approach to One’s flock. But it’s not technically “heresey”.
So before anyone says I’m some fan of Francis, stop before you make a fool of yourself. I’m only saying this isn’t the disaster so many Chicken Littles on the Internet would have us believe.
The Church survived much worse than this. She will continue on to face, and triumph over, the next scandal the Devil will invent.
Perhaps the answer is found in the very name of the organization Staples represents. Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, no association of the faithful may “claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.” (Cf. CIC, Can. 216). The competent ecclesiastical authority in this case would be Bishop Robert McElroy, local ordinary of the Diocese of San Diego, where Catholic Answers is headquartered. It was Francis who elevated McElroy to his episcopal see in furtherance of the Bergoglian master plan, which requires seeding the hierarchy with loyal ultra-progressives.In a statement issued to parishes in San Diego, McElroy has since dutifully proclaimed precisely the Bergoglian novelty Staples defends: that priests shall now “assist those who are divorced and remarried and cannot receive an annulment to utilize the internal forum of conscience in order to discern if God is calling them to return to the Eucharist.” In other words, any public adulterer may receive Holy Communion while continuing his adultery if he thinks he is without sin. Following the Bergoglian line to its logical terminus, McElroy also calls for an “embrace” of “LGBT families,” doubtless to include Holy Communion for “homosexual couples,” employing the handy-dandy “internal forum” to “integrate” sodomy into “pastoral life.”
In fact, as Father Brian Harrison has observed, citing a discussion of McElroy’s implementation of AL by Ross Douthat in The New York Times, “if Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on marital love comes to be generally interpreted and applied as liberally as it has been in the Diocese of San Diego, California, it will in effect mean the death of this sacrament as the Gospel of Christ and the Catholic Church have always presented it: a sacred covenant whose indissoluble character means that remarriage after divorce constitutes adultery—a violation of the Sixth Commandment that excludes one from sacramental absolution and Eucharistic communion.” Fr. Harrison notes that this fear has been confirmed by the Maltese debacle.
So this is the bishop in whose diocese Catholic Answers must operate. Now, what if Staples and the other directors of Catholic Answers were to defy this wayward prelate by joining their fellow Catholics in admitting the existence of the moral catastrophe Francis has unleashed upon the Church? What if they were to say, with Cardinal Brandmuller, “whoever thinks that persistent adultery and the reception of Holy Communion are compatible is a heretic and promotes schism”? What if they were to agree with Father Harrison that Bishop McElroy’s interpretation of AL—which, let us face it, is Francis’ interpretation—would “mean the death of this sacrament as the Gospel of Christ and the Catholic Church have always presented it”?
If they did that, I think it is a very safe bet that Bishop McElroy would threaten Catholic Answers with the same episcopal action that forced a certain organization, now operating out of a certain warehouse in Detroit, to change its name from “Real Catholic TV” to “Church Militant.TV.” That is,McElroy would decree that Catholic Answers may no longer call itself Catholic Answers.
Come to think of it, the way things are going with that organization such a directive could, with supreme irony, produce a just result.
http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/2994-stan-gets-stapled-is-catholic-answers-becoming-protestant-answers