Posted on 03/14/2018 5:02:35 PM PDT by ebb tide
Cardinal Walter Kasper, whose theology appears to be the chief inspiration for Pope Francis’ doctrine on giving Holy Communion to people living in states of adultery in second marriages, now appears to be claiming that homosexual unions contain “elements” of Christian marriage and are even “analogous” to it in a way that is similar to the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Catholic Christian communities.
Moreover, the cardinal is attributing his claims to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, despite the fact that the document explicitly contradicts him.
“The pope does not leave room for doubt over the fact that civil marriages, de facto unions, new marriages following a divorce (Amoris Laetitia 291) and unions between homosexual persons (Amoris Laetitia 250s.) do not correspond to the Christian conception of marriage,” writes Kasper in a recently-released book on Amoris Laetitia.
“He says, however, that some of these partners can realize in a partial and analogous way some elements in Christian marriage (Amoris Laetitia 292),” continues Kasper.
Kasper compares such relationships with the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Catholic Christian groups, whom Vatican II says contain “elements of sanctification and truth” of the Church.
“Just as outside the Catholic Church there are elements of the true Church, in the above-mentioned unions there can be elements present of Christian marriage, although they do not completely fulfill, or do not yet completely fulfill, the ideal,” adds Kasper.
The statements appear in Kasper’s new booklet, "The Message of Amoris Laetitia: A Fraternal Discussion," which was recently published simultaneously in German and Italian.
In the same work, Kasper also insinuates that Amoris Laetitia opens the way to permit the use of contraception, a practice that is universally condemned in the Scriptures, Church Fathers, and the Papal Magisterium, most recently by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II.
Kasper notes that in Amoris Laetitia, the Pope only “encourages the use of the method of observing the cycles of natural fertility,” and “does not say anything about other methods of family planning and avoids all casuistic definitions.” In the context with the book’s passages on communion for those who commit adultery in second “marriages,” which use similar language, Kasper appears to be claiming that the pope is allowing for exceptions to the Church’s condemnation of artificial birth control.
Kasper’s words regarding homosexual unions appear to directly contradict not only the doctrines of John Paul II but even Amoris Laetitia, the document he purports to explain.
Under the papacy of John Paul II and the administration of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), the Holy See’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressly repudiated the idea that homosexual unions can be “analogous” to marriage. The document was issued in 2003 and received the approval of John Paul II.
“There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family,” the Congregation declared. “Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts close the sexual act to the gift of life.’ They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
The paragraphs in Amoris Laetitia cited by Kasper to justify treating homosexual unions as “analogous” to marriage contain no clear reference to homosexual unions but simply refer to the “constructive elements in those situations which do not yet or no longer correspond to her teaching on marriage.”
However, Amoris Laetitia states in paragraph 251, “In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, ‘as for proposals to place unions between homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’” Francis and the Synod Fathers are quoting the same 2003 document of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith mentioned above.
Cardinal Kasper’s apparent desire to legitimize homosexual unions reflects the thinking of several influential bishops in the German hierarchy.
The Vice President of the German Episcopal Conference, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, recently has said homosexual unions include “positive and good” aspects and has proposed blessings for them. He made similar comments in 2015.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a member of the Pope’s Council of Cardinal Advisers, apparently endorsed the possibility of blessing homosexual unions earlier this year, and then appeared to backtrack after heavy criticism, claiming that he only wanted to give such couples “spiritual encouragement.”
In June 2015, Bishop Heiner Koch of Dresden-Meissen (now Archbishop of Berlin), was quoted by the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost as saying, “Any bond that strengthens and holds people is in my eyes good; that applies also to same-sex relationships.”
The German bishops’ website, Katholisch.de, published an article in 2015 defending the notion of blessing homosexual unions, and blasting German Bishop Stefan Oster, who oversees the diocese of Passau, for defending the traditional moral teaching of the Church on sexuality.
Cardinal Kasper himself publicly endorsed Ireland’s creation of the institution of homosexual “marriage” in 2015, saying: “A democratic state has the duty to respect the will of the people; and it seems clear that, if the majority of the people wants such homosexual unions, the state has a duty to recognize such rights.”
However, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a German and former prefect of the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, condemned such blessings in February, as have some other German and Austrian bishops.
“If a priest blesses a homosexual couple, then this is an atrocity at a holy site, namely, to approve of something that God does not approve of,” said Müller.
In announcing the publication of the book, Kasper complained that people are using the word “heresy” to describe the teaching that Holy Communion can be given to people in habitual states of adultery, which seems to be taught by Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
“There is a very bitter debate (about the Pope’s teaching), way too strong, with accusations of heresy,” Kasper said in a recent interview with Vatican News, the Holy See’s official news service, regarding "The Message of Amoris Laetitia."
In his book, Kasper protests against those theologians who have accused Francis of heresy, writing in a footnote, “Who, other than the Magisterium has the right to make an accusation of that type? Doesn’t the principle still hold that until one is legitimately condemned he must be considered to be within the orthodox church?”
He also claimed in interviews that Amoris Laetitia is easy to understand.
“This document’s language is so clear that any Christian can understand it. It is not high theology incomprehensible to people,” Kasper said. “The People of God are very content and happy with this document because it gives space to freedom, but it also interprets the substance of the Christian message in an understandable language. So, the People of God understand! The Pope has an optimal connection with the People of God.”
And Jesus had no problem STATING it!
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[c]”
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
And a normal thinking person has all the evidence that he/she needs that Mary has the POWER to influence Jesus!!
When therefore we read in the writings of Saint Bernard, Saint Bernardine, Saint Bonaventure, and others that all in heaven and on earth, even God himself, is subject to the Blessed Virgin, they mean that the authority which God was pleased to give her is so great that she seems to have the same power as God. Her prayers and requests are so powerful with him that he accepts them as commands in the sense that he never resists his dear mother’s prayer because it is always humble and conformed to his will.... St. Louis de Montfort, in Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, #27, 246.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/Montfort/TRUEDEVO.HTM
...Peter denied Christ three times on Holy Thursday.
The following 'statement' is shear arrogance!
"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours."
--Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)
John 6:53-55
53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
And yet the ones just 18-20 verses earlier are not!
John 6:35
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Very rarely do any of the other Romams come to his defense. Must be a delight to sit by in church.
et: Then why did Peter deny Christ three times on Holy Thursday?
Um, cause Peter is not the Holy Spirit.
For the life of me, I will never understand the thought processes that get you from Point A to Point B.
It just looks like you are trying to start a new argument because hose two thoughts aren't even remotely connected.
And since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, of course there can be no contradiction in Scripture between the words of Jesus and the writings of the apostles.
Any apparent contradiction if an error in interpretation, which is why Jesus could not have given His disciples His actual flesh and blood to eat and drink nor that He meant that people had to literally eat his flesh in John 6.
Scripture clearly and explicitly forbids the consumption of blood and anyone who teaches that we eat or drink it has a contradiction they need to explain away.
I will quite happily engage with you in a discussion about why I believe in the Real Presence of the Eucharist.
...at another time. Not on this thread, not with this company.
And thank God for Swan’s forensic work.
Did you walk to school, or carry your lunch?
Then why did Peter deny Christ three times on Holy Thursday?
Just saw this: How can you even equate the two? "The Holy Spirit who inspired ALL the writers of holy Scripture" obviously refers to inspiring them in writing holy Scripture, not everything else they wrote or said. Including papal promulgations
Thus Catholicism labors to explain how they consume "the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,"(CCC 1365) with His human body and human soul, with His bodily organs and limbs and with His human mind, will and feelings. (John A. Hardon, S.J., Part I: Eucharistic Doctrine on the Real Presence) Thus the statement, "Consequently, eating and drinking are to be understood of the actual partaking of Christ in person, hence literally.” (Catholic Encyclopedia>The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist) the same body that was crucified, which was manifestly physical, that looked, smelled, and would taste and test as being physical;
Yet not as a body "sensible, visible, tangible, or extended, although it is such in heaven," but under a "new mode of being,"(John A. Hardon, S.J., Doctrine of the Real Presence in the Encyclical "Mediator Dei") so that the Eucharist being "the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ," "the very body which he gave up for us on the cross," etc. does not mean the bread and wine are literally transformed into actual literal human flesh, thus "If you took the consecrated host to a laboratory it would be chemically shown to be bread, not human flesh." (Dwight Longenecker, "Explaining Transubstantiation")
For it is imagined that at the words by the priest of the “consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood,” thus becoming the “true Body of Christ and his true Blood,” (CCC 1376; 1381) having been “substantially changed into the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord,” being corporeally present whole and entire in His physical "reality.” (Mysterium Fidei, Encyclical of Pope Paul VI, 1965)
Thus for all their talk about actual partaking of Christ in person, hence literally, they do not literally consume the actual bloody flesh as manifest in the incarnation, which manifest physicality John emphasizes in contrast to a docetist or gnostic Christ who appears to be something he is not, as is the case with the wafer and wine christ, in contrast to the Christ of the incarnation, "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; For the life was manifested, and we have seen " (1 John 1:1,2 ) And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (1 John 5:8)
While within Docetism and or Gnosticism it seems they had the belief that what Christ looked and behaved like, as manifestly being incarnated with a tangible real body of flesh and blood, was not real (Christ being a sort of phantom but looking human), in Catholicism you have the belief that (in transubstantiation) what Christ looks, feels, tastes and would test as (bread and wine), is not the reality (Christ's corporeal body and blood only looking like and otherwise materially evidencing themselves to be bread and wine). And conversely, that the bread and wine is no longer real but only looks, feels, tastes, etc. like the real thing. A Knights of Columbus article asserts (in its sophistry), "the Most Holy Eucharist not only looks like something it isn’t (that is, bread and wine), but also tastes, smells, feels, and in all ways appears to be what it isn’t." (The Holy Eucharist BY Bernard Mulcahy, O.P., p. 22) "Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, must firmly maintain that in objective reality, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus from that moment on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine." - Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 2003
Which hosts looks smells, and taste and would test as being bread and wine, yet which actually has ceased to actually exist at that point, being transubstantiated by the real body and blood of Christ, fully in both, even to subatomic particles ("the substance of the bread cannot remain after the consecration: "Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ Article 2 "On the altar are the body and blood of Christ; the bread and wine no longer exist but have been totally changed into the body and blood of the Saviour... - https://www.ewtn.com/library/Doctrine/EUCHCHNG.HTM), Until the non-existent host shows decay. (CCC 1377: "The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist." "...that is, until the Eucharist is digested, physically destroyed, or decays by some natural process." ibid, Mulcahy, p. 32) At which point it seems that neither the decaying bread or wine nor the body and blood of Christ really exist in that time and place. (Summa Theologiae, Question 77)
Which is the "literal" understanding of the Lord's supper. More by God's grace.
They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth.
It is and it isn’t at the same time and the reason we don’t understand it is because it’s a *mystery* of the faith, which is the excuse they use for everything that contradicts Scripture and common sense.
It's a trip, isn't it MM? I will tell you what a trip is. Two of my best friends, among others, are catholics. They know where I stand, and I know where they stand, but we stay friends, by not talking about it. If they want to know the truth, they can get it from Martin Luther (joke) or from me.
:-)
The only Christ is the one who has come in the flesh, (1 John 4:2) and yet has a body of flesh and bones, (Luke 24:39) and appears thusly (John 20:27), and i believe His resurrected body that He presented to Thomas for examination as proof would would taste and test as being physical, outside of visions and His Spirit.
Thus to claim to consume Christ, the "actual partaking of Christ" "with His bodily organs and limbs," "the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ," but who is not manifest as come in the flesh, as the incarnated Christ, but who appears to be something he is not, that "in all ways appears to be what it isn’t," that being inanimate objects, is essentially "another Jesus" in contrast to how He is defined in Scripture.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. (2 Corinthians 11:3-4)
Moreover, in every other miracle which the Lord did that changed something material then there was a actual and often obvious change. Water really become wine (which only existed in that location), versus a change of substance while the appearances remained the same, and so the body of Christ could be sitting at a table before them while being in the stomachs of the disciples.
The closest thing to a tangible manifestation of Christ is His born again church, the household of faith, into which the Spirit baptizes every convert, (1Co. 12:13) thus Saul persecuted Christ by persecuting the church, which is the only material entity called the "body of Christ" in the church epistles,(1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 4:12) which reveal how they understood the gospels, and only describe the Lord's supper in tow of them (1 Corinthians 10,11; Jude 1:12)
And which body is what the Corinthians were charged with not discerning in 1 Corinthians 11, by selfishly eating independently, even to the full (for in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken), while ignoring other blood-bought saints who thus went hungry, and which thus was to "shame them that have not." (1Cor. 11:20-22,26)
But like as God had mercy on Saul who was highly committed to God but did not recognize Christ "come in the flesh" (1Jn. 4:2) as being God manifest in the flesh, and thus in "good" but misinformed conscience thought he was obeying God by vigorously persecuting the "sect of the Nazarene," then God can have mercy on devout Catholics who in misinformed conscience imagine they are honoring God by consuming a wafer and wine as being "the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ" in a supernatural mode. Or even if they do not comprehend or believe that, but think they are .honoring God by taking part in this ceremony.
However, the larger problem is that many see this as salvific, and thus some invoke John 6:53 to use, though they are stymied when shown the logical conclusion of their argument is contrary to modern Catholic theology.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.