Posted on 11/15/2014 1:56:37 PM PST by NYer
VATICAN CITY — The secrecy of a confession is maintained so seriously and completely by the Catholic Church that a priest would be excommunicated for revealing the contents of a confession when ordered to testify by a court or even after the penitent dies, Vatican officials said.
“No confessor can be dispensed from it, even if he would want to reveal the contents of a confession in order to prevent a serious and imminent evil,” said Msgr. Krzysztof Nykiel, regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with matters of conscience.
The penitentiary sponsored a conference at the Vatican Nov. 12-13 on “the confessional seal and pastoral privacy.”
According to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, conference participants heard that since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 spelled out the penalties in church law for violating the secret of the confessional, “the discipline of the church in this matter has remained substantially the same,” with the exception of additional protections.
One of those additions, the newspaper said, was a 1988 church law explicitly stating that using an “electronic apparatus” to record, broadcast or otherwise share the contents of a confession also is an excommunicable offense.
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, told conference participants it is important “to remove any suspicion” that the church’s commitment to the confessional seal “is designed to cover intrigues, plots or mysteries as people sometimes naively believe or, more easily, are led to believe.”
The seal, he said, is intended to protect the most intimate part of the human person, “that is, to safeguard the presence of God within each man.” The effect of the secret, he said, is that it also protects a person’s reputation and right to privacy.
The confessional seal, Msgr. Nykiel said, “is binding not only on the confessor, but also on the interpreter, if present, and anyone who in any way, even casually, comes to know of the sins confessed.”
The church, he said, takes the seal so seriously that it forbids, on the pain of excommunication, a priest from testifying in court about what he heard in the confessional, “even if the penitent requests” he testify.
Not even the death of the penitent can absolve the confessor from the obligation to maintain the secret, Msgr. Nykiel said.
IF indeed!
Nice 'logic' statement!
You really must get better with your strawmen, IF you're going to prove anything.
The correction follows:
Mary IS the most venerated person in the early Church—more than any of the apostles.
Sorry. But rational discussion is impossible with you. You are too bigoted.
Principles are always “if-then” statements. A principle is stated, then the facts are plugged in.
You are obviously unfamiliar with how a deductive argument is constructed. You have never actually studied logic, have you?
You don’t even know the meaning of the term “straw man.”
I invite you to notice that you still haven’t answered my question: Given the known propensity of the earliest Christians to treasure physical relics of the saints, how do you explain the total absence from history of any corpse or any relics of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
OOOH!
I've been called ugly by a toad!
It seems that way; but I can always hope you'll improve.
Sure I answered your red herring; but you cannot abide it.
Given the known propensity of the earliest Christians to treasure physical relics of the saints, how do you explain the total absence from history of any corpse or any relics of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
John 21:25
Are not you Catholics the guys that just LOVE to toss this in PROTESTant faces?
What conceivable connection is there between John 21:25 and the question of Mary’s corpse?
You seem to have picked up that “red herring” and “straw man” are pejoratives, but haven’t taken the trouble to find out what they mean.
In the same sentence...
In the same sentence...
I haven't?
Who knew!
I’ll help you. All you need to do is complete the sentence:
Despite the early Church’s well-known practice of preserving, treasuring, and venerating relics of John the Baptist, the apostles, the martyrs, and other saints, and preserving their tombs, the early Church never did any of these things with respect to the body or tomb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, BECAUSE...
Despite the early Church’s well-known practice CLAIM of preserving, treasuring,
Okay. I’ll help you again:
Despite the early Church’s well-known CLAIM of preserving, treasuring, and venerating the bodies (or parts of bodies, i.e., relics) of John the Baptist, the apostles, martyrs, and other saints, there is a total absence of any CLAIMED relics of the Blessed Virgin Mary from history BECAUSE...
She was just the mother of the son of God at that time. No need for veneration or knowledge of her after the mention of her in Acts 1 where she is listed along with her other
sons, the brothers of our Lord, who became cousins to aline with the claim of her being a perpetual virgin.
It was 300 plus years later when she became the mother of God that all the special attributes and veneration became necessary. By then, nobody could remember where she ended her days and/or what happened to her remains.
All is not lost. With no relics, we can claim she was assumed into heaven. Our religion is not based on scripture alone as we proudly boast. Jesus is the head of our church but He gave Peter and his successors the right to be the teaching authority. We call that the magisterium. Anything they decide is as if God said it. For all practical purpose, it is our God.
Hope this is of help, BVB
**brothers of our Lord,**
The term “brothers of the Lord” was used for cousins. Mary had no other children.
‘cut to the chase’ comes to mind.
No one in the EARLY church considered her that important.
No one in the EARLY church considered her that important.
Riiiiight.
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