[Catholic Caucus] Your Catholic Week in Review (Priestless Parish Edition!)

Lepanto Institute ^ | December 3, 2017 | Michael Hichborn

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Now that we are all sufficiently recovered from Thanksgiving (which we did indeed celebrate with our families) and avoided the consumerism of the three days that followed, it's time to get back down to brass tacks and talk about an organization of heterodox Catholics hiding inside an organization called the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests. 

AUSCP doesn't exactly hide the football when it comes to their goals and objectives.  In fact, they are quite open about their objectives -- women's ordination, the female diaconate, and the creation of functionary "priestless parishes" within the United States.

What is more alarming is that none other than Chicago Cardinal Blaise Cupich said Mass at the AUSCP's 2016 Assembly.  Or that Atlanta's Archbishop William Gregory served as the keynote speaker at the AUSCP's 2017 Assembly. Or that Archbishop Wester of Santa Fe was in attendance.  Or that Savannah Bishop Gregory Hartmeyer led a breakout session for AUSCP.  Or that San Diego's Bishop Robert McElroy is slated to give the next keynote address at the AUSCP's 2018 Assembly...   

Click Here To Read The Rest of Our AUSCP Report.  

This report will be the first of many installments on the activities of the AUSCP, including whether or not you can detect its infiltration into your own diocese and even your own parish.

An Address of the Holy Father dated 25 November 2017 seems to be causing a bit of a stir over at InfoVaticana, and though it will require a translation from Spanish to English (and Google Translate does a fair job of getting the gist of the article itself), it might require a canon lawyer to sort out the effects of this address as it pertains to two motu proprio concerning the nullification of a marriage.

In effect, the address instructs bishops to enact the nullification of a marriage within a single sitting, meaning that former due process conducted in accordance with canon law can be somewhat bypassed in what Pope Francis outlines as a "briefer process" -- in effect, when both parties are consented to dissolve the marriage, the bishop himself can bypass the "ordinary process" and simply pronounce the marriage a nullity. 

While this might seem like a non-event to some, consider it in light of the fact that just this morning, Pope Francis had the morally bankrupt guidelines on Amoris Laetitea of the Argentinian bishops published as a part of the "authentic magisterium."  This move, in effect, attempts to give magisterial weight to institutionalized sacrilege.  As Cardinal Burke so aptly opined this week, perhaps we could consider that we are in the end times.

It's probably no coincidence that this institutionalized sacrilege is being promulgated just after we celebrated the martyrdom of St. Edmund Campion, who denied himself the Eucharist for 12 years before he reconciled himself to the Catholic Faith.  When he did so, Campion returned to England to convert the people from an Anglicanism that -- ironically enough -- would have welcomed wholesale Pope Francis' reforms regarding the nullification of marriage by a bishop.

Campion's response upon the notification of his death sentence (and the death sentence of his fellow Jesuits) was simple and direct:

In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all our ancient bishops and kings, all that was once the glory of England — the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.

The point here isn't to draw one's attention to Campion's martyrdom in the face of struggle, but why Campion chose to expose himself to martyrdom.  So sacred was the Eucharist, so precious was the institution of the Church that preserved it, and so important it was for priests to exhort the people to the Eucharist's Real Presence that Campion was willing to die to give it to others -- provided the Eucharist was given in a spirit of truth.

Echoes of Cardinal Raymond Burke's dubia, no doubt. 
  Some other headlines you may have missed:

• 1P5: Papal Letter Appearing To Support Communion For Divorced & Remarried Catholics Emerges
• Fr. Z: CALL TO ACTION -- Help a TLM Booster Recover From Act of Vandalism
• The Catholic Thing: Pascal and the Jesuits
• First Things: Serve Somebody
• Standing On My Head: Matt Lauer and the Boundaries of Marriage
• First Things: What's Changed Since Humanae Vitae?
• First Things: In Defense of Regal Popes
• The Catholic Thing: The Continuing Vocations Crisis In The United States

As always, please pray for the Church, for our bishops and priests, and for Lepanto's mission as we continue to unearth the truth and "restore all things to Christ." (Col. 1:20)

Christus Vincit!

Michael Hichborn
President
Lepanto Insititute
 

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In effect, the address instructs bishops to enact the nullification of a marriage within a single sitting, meaning that former due process conducted in accordance with canon law can be somewhat bypassed in what Pope Francis outlines as a "briefer process" -- in effect, when both parties are consented to dissolve the marriage, the bishop himself can bypass the "ordinary process" and simply pronounce the marriage a nullity.

aka Catholic Divorce, Francis-style