Amoris Laetitia 'Trojan Horse', Exposes Rise of Anti-Church

Discussion in 'Church Critique' started by BrianK, May 19, 2017.

  1. BrianK

    BrianK Guest

    http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php

    BOMBSHELL IN ROME: Priest Calls Amoris Laetitia 'Trojan Horse', Exposes Rise of Anti-Church
    Michael Matt | Editor
    This just in from LifeSiteNews: -- St. John Paul II’s 1976 prophetic warning about the rise of an “anti-Church” that would preach an “anti-Gospel” is being fulfilled today by leaders within the Catholic Church, even at the highest levels, said a priest in a talk given at a Catholic conference today in Rome. Fr. Linus Clovis of Family Life International said in his talk at the Rome Life Forum, organized by Voice of the Family, that the anti-Gospel of the anti-Church is often “indistinguishable from secular ideology, which has overturned both the natural law and the Ten Commandments.”

    “This anti-Gospel, which seeks to elevate the individual’s will to consume, to pleasure and to power over the will of God, was rejected by Christ when tempted in the wilderness. Disguised as ‘human rights,’ it has reappeared, in all its luciferian hubris, to promulgate a narcissistic, hedonistic attitude that rejects any constraint except that imposed by man-made laws,” he said. READ MORE HERE

    REMNANT COMMENT: God bless and keep Father Clovis! This is one of the most revealing, explicit and truthful speeches given in the Eternal City in the post-conciliar era. He ties in Fatima, Amoris Laetitia and then courageously explains the role of Pope Francis in the rise of the Anti-Church. Here, for example, is Fathers' take on AL:

    “As a Trojan horse, Amoris Laetitia spells spiritual ruin for the entire Church. As a gauntlet thrown down it calls for courage in overcoming fear. In either case, it is now poised to separate the anti-Church of which St. John Paul II spoke from the Church that Christ founded. As the separation begins to take place, each one of us, like the angels, will have to decide for himself whether he would rather be wrong with Lucifer than right without him."

    This LifeSiteNews article should be sent to every priest and bishop in America.
     
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  2. BrianK

    BrianK Guest

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/w...hn-paul-iis-prophesy-of-an-anti-church-cathol

    We are witnessing St. John Paul II’s prophesy of an ‘anti-Church’: Catholic priest


    Pete Baklinski Follow Pete
    ROME, May 18, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- St. John Paul II’s 1976 prophetic warning about the rise of an “anti-Church” that would preach an “anti-Gospel” is being fulfilled today by leaders within the Catholic Church, even at the highest levels, said a priest in a talk given at a Catholic conference today in Rome.

    Fr. Linus Clovis of Family Life International said in his talk at the Rome Life Forum, organized by Voice of the Family, that the anti-Gospel of the anti-Church is often “indistinguishable from secular ideology, which has overturned both the natural law and the Ten Commandments.”

    “This anti-Gospel, which seeks to elevate the individual’s will to consume, to pleasure and to power over the will of God, was rejected by Christ when tempted in the wilderness. Disguised as ‘human rights,’ it has reappeared, in all its luciferian hubris, to promulgate a narcissistic, hedonistic attitude that rejects any constraint except that imposed by man-made laws,” he said.

    During his visit to America 41 years ago, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Cracow who two years later would become Pope John Paul II, delivered his prophetic message in Philadelphia, on the occasion of the bicentennial anniversary of American Independence. Wojtyle said:

    We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.

    We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it. . . .How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time.

    Clovis said that while the rise of the anti-Church has been happening slowly but steadily over the past decades, it’s emergence has been especially noticeable in the last few years.

    “For the past half-century, there has been a growing crisis in the Church, arising as much from a lack of clear and unambiguous teaching, as from the climate of dissent among priests, religious and laity. Within the contemporary Church, the crisis has been brought to fever pitch, if not breaking point, by the rejection of Our Lord’s yes/no paradigm and the undermining of established doctrinal positions by protean pastoral practises,” he said.

    He noted that there is a sense among faithful Catholics that “things ecclesiastic and catholic are falling apart and a pastoral anarchy has been loosed upon the Church.” He said that a “hidden exercise of power” is currently at work within the Church that is fueling such anarchy.

    [It] can reform the marriage annulment process without the customary consultation of the appropriate Roman dicasteries; issue a broad and scathing rebuke of the Roman Curia in a Christmas address; purge a dicastery’s membership, which effectively vitiate the influence of its Prefect who had stood firmly against innovations injurious both to the teachings on marriage and to the tenets of the liturgy; cripple the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate; and shut down the Melbourne campus of the John Paul II Institute.

    Clovis said that accompanying the rise of the anti-Church is a direct assault on the very “pillar of creation” and foundation of the social order, namely, the truth of the relationship between man and woman as expressed in marriage and the family. He recalled how Sister Lucia, one of the Fatima visionaries, once said that “the final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family.”

    “It is well known that any tampering with a keystone risks the collapse of the entire building," he said. “The keystone, the basic cell of society is marriage and family.”

    And the anti-Church is working its hardest to undermine that keystone.

    “With the tacit acceptance of contraception and divorce, the recent ‘merciful’ embracing of remarried civil divorcees and the benign nod to same-sex ‘marriage,’ the keystone has been tampered with and the omega point has been reached,” Clovis said.

    He noted how atheistic secularism, which fuels the anti-Church, has been “working for the demise of the family, its driving spirit being the LGBT ideology; its public face, ‘political correctness;’ its Sunday dress, ‘inclusivity and non-judgmentalism.’
     
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  3. BrianK

    BrianK Guest

    Con't

    He warned Catholics how the anti-Church will try to deceive the faithful by passing itself off as the true Church.

    It is self-evident that the Catholic Church and the anti-Church currently co-exist in the same sacramental, liturgical and juridical space. The latter, having grown stronger, is now attempting to pass itself off as the true Church, all the better to induct, or coerce, the faithful into becoming adherents, promoters and defenders of a secular ideology.

    Should the anti-Church succeed in commandeering all the space of the true Church, the rights of man will supplant the rights of God through the desecration of the sacraments, the sacrilege of the sanctuary, and the abuse of apostolic power.

    Thus, politicians who vote for abortion and same-sex “marriage” will be welcome at the Communion rails; husbands and wives who have abandoned their spouses and children and entered into adulterous relationships will be admitted to the sacraments; priests and theologians who publicly reject Catholic doctrines and morals will be at liberty to exercise ministry and to spread dissent, while faithful Catholics will be marginalised, maligned and discredited at every turn. Thus, the anti-Church would succeed in achieving its goal of dethroning God as Creator, Saviour and Sanctifier and replacing Him with man the self-creator, the self-saviour and the self-sanctifier.

    Clovis said that the anti-Church works to achieve its goal of overcoming the true Church by intimidating the faithful, including the laity, priests, and bishops, into submission.

    To achieve its objectives, the anti-Church, in collaboration with the secular powers, uses the law and media to browbeat the true Church into submission. By adroit use of the media, the activists of the anti-Church have managed to intimidate bishops, clergy and most of the Catholic press into silence. Equally, the lay faithful are terrorised by fear of the hostility, ridicule and hate that would be visited upon them should they object to the imposition of LGBT ideology.

    For example, in 2015, the congregation of St Nicholas of Myra in the Archdiocese of Dublin gave a standing ovation to their parish priest when he declared from the pulpit that he was gay and urged them to support same-sex ‘marriage’ in the Irish referendum. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of treatment that an objector would have received. Thus, the oppressive influence of the anti-Church is most clearly seen at work when a person is fearful to openly uphold God’s revelation about homosexuality, abortion or contraception in their parish community.

    Adherents to the anti-Church especially target priests and bishops to tow the line of the anti-Gospel, knowing that once they are brought into submission they can influence countless souls away from the true Church.

    Priests and bishops are the immediate and more natural leaders of the laity and they, above all, are caught in the broadening spectrum of fear generated by the anti-Church. Additionally, because of the clerical vow of obedience and respect, their fear, being reverential, is greatly aggravated, especially when they find their ranks divided; their unity split; long standing sacramental disciplines violated; canon law ignored; their evangelising spirit dismissed as proselytism and solemn nonsense.

    In regard to their persons, they are labelled as little monsters throwing stones at poor sinners, or who reduce the sacrament of reconciliation to a torture chamber or, hide behind the Church’s teachings, sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality.

    As clerical sons, they see themselves as less deserving of a papal embrace than Italy’s arch-abortionist Emma Bonino and even less worthy of rehabilitation than renowned false prophet and global population and abortion advocate, Paul Ehrlich.

    As priests, they are told they owe an apology to gays and that the ‘great majority’ of Catholic marriages they would have blessed are invalid; in addition, they are called sayers of prayers and, for considering Mass attendance and frequent confession as important, are branded Pelagians.

    As Catholics, knowing that the Five First Saturdays were requested in reparation for blasphemy against our most Blessed Lady, they are personally affronted by the scurrilous musings that, on Calvary, where She became the Mother of all those redeemed by Christ, the Holy Virgin of Fatima perhaps, desired in Her heart to say to the Lord “Lies! Lies! I was deceived.” As ‘trees of the forest shake before the wind,’ so clerical hearts quake with fear at the possibility that they could actually be more Catholic than the Pope!

    Clovis called Pope Francis’ influence within the Church a “great and true blessing” since the Pope’s ambiguous teaching have prompted the anti-Church to emerge from the shadows in clear view of all the faithful. This now gives the faithful a clear choice regarding which master they will follow.

    “A hidden conflict has been raging in the Church for over one hundred years: a conflict explicitly revealed to Pope Leo XIII, partially contained by St. Pius X, unleashed at Vatican II. Under Francis, the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Americas and the first pope whose priestly ordination was in the New Rite, it is now full blown, with the potential of rendering the Church smaller but more faithful,” he said.

    He said that Francis’ most recent Exhortation Amoris Laetitia is an example of a force at work within the Church today that helps establish the dividing line between the anti-Church and the true Church of Jesus Christ.

    “The Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia is the catalyst that has divided not only bishops and Episcopal Conferences from each other but, priests from their bishops and from each other, and the laity, anxious and confused,” he said.

    “As a Trojan horse, Amoris Laetitia spells spiritual ruin for the entire Church. As a gauntlet thrown down it calls for courage in overcoming fear. In either case, it is now poised to separate the anti-Church of which St. John Paul II spoke from the Church that Christ founded. As the separation begins to take place, each one of us, like the angels, will have to decide for himself whether he would rather be wrong with Lucifer than right without him,” he added.

    Clovis tied his main points to the 100th anniversary of Our Lady appearing in Fatima. He said that she “proposed a strategy which, if adopted would secure the salvation of a great number of souls.”

    “The strategy required that, in order to ‘appease God, who was already so deeply offended,’ three major conditions should be satisfied, namely, a reform of morals with full adherence to natural and divine laws, the Five First Saturdays devotion and the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” he said.

    “Then to further emphasise how perilous the approaching times would be, the Virgin, with motherly concern, warned of the consequences of ignoring Her message: wars, Russia spreading her errors, the persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father. She, nonetheless, concluded Her message with a vestige of hope: ‘in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph and a period of peace will be given to the world,’” he added.

    Clovis said that Catholics seeking to be faithful to Christ and the Church he founded need not be afraid of the present turmoil they are witnessing.

    “At Baptism, we became members of the Church Militant and, at Confirmation, soldiers of Christ; we, therefore, have been recruited and armed for deadly combat against the three implacable enemies of our souls: the world, the flesh and the devil,” he said.

    “Recognising that ‘we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,’ we fight, like the Apostles, taking the martyrs for our models and Christ Jesus, Himself as our reward,” he added.
     
  4. AED

    AED Powers

    Thanks for this Brian. What a clear diagnosis of the malignancy metastasizing in our holy Church. Fr Clovis may your tribe increase!!
     
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  5. BrianK

    BrianK Guest

    Fr. Clovis' entire talk can be read at:

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-anti-church-has-arrived-and-it

    The anti-Church has come. Why faithful Catholics should not be afraid


    Editor's Note: Fr. Clovis gave this talk at the Rome Life Forum on May 18, 2017. Read LifeSiteNews' article about the talk here.

    [​IMG]
    Fr. Linus Clovis at the 2017 Rome Life Forum. Claire Chretien / LifeSiteNews
    Excerpt:

    ROME, May 18, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- Pope St John Paul II’s first words, on appearing on the loggia of St Peter’s Basilica, on 16th October, 1978, the day of his election, were “Be not afraid”. Now, thirty-nine years later, in light of the events that have overtaken contemporary Catholicism, his first words seem to be, not only prophetic but more, a clarion call in preparation for battle (1).

    Whenever the pendulum of human and salvation history swings through a period of encroaching darkness and turmoil, God often inspires prophets to speak so that some light may be cast to dispel the darkness and, that the turmoil may be assuaged with hope. These prophets appealed for more trust in God’s active and caring concern for His people (2). Thus, for example, with entreaties to have faith in God’s loving providence, Isaiah (3) begged King Ahaz to ask God for a sign before he acted and, Jeremiah (4) warned that God would save Jerusalem from total destruction only if the city surrenders to the Babylonians. The Church herself, has not been deprived of the blessings of the prophetic grace as is amply demonstrated by God raising up saints such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Margaret Mary Alacoque and, in more recent times, by sending His Blessed Mother to Lourdes, La Salette and Fatima.

    A century ago, God sent the Queen of Prophets to the Cova da Iria in Fatima, Portugal with a double pronged message for our contemporary world. First, She warned that the world was already facing a peril far more destructive than that which faced Jerusalem and, secondly, She presented a heavenly solution, wiser and more prudent than that offered to Ahaz who had refused to ask God for a sign either as “deep as Sheol or high as heaven” (5). The Virgin, however, from maternal solicitude, established the gravity and veracity of Her twin message with a vision and a sign. On 13th July, 1917 ‘deep as Sheol’ was illustrated by a disturbing vision of hell. Four months later, on 13th October, ‘high as heaven’ was confirmed with a sign, the awe-inspiring miracle of the “dance of the sun” which was witnessed by more than seventy thousand people.

    On October 13, 1884, exactly 33 years before Our Lady’s appearance at Fatima, Pope Leo XIII, had an extraordinary spiritual experience. He overheard a conversation between God and Satan in which Satan challenged God, boasting that, given greater power over priests (6), he could destroy the Church within 100 years. God granted him that time to test the Church - ultimately for His own honour and glory (7) and also, to confirm that His Church was indeed built on rock and able to sustain the attacks of hell (8) with as much fortitude as the Patriarch Job. In preparation for this trial, Pope Leo immediately composed the Leonine prayers, with a particular invocation of St Michael, for the defence and protection of the clergy and he ordered their recital after every Mass.
     
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  6. padraig

    padraig Powers

     
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  7. BrianK

    BrianK Guest

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/a...nal-battle-between-god-and-satan-has-come-car

    Abortion, homosexuality show ‘final battle’ between God and Satan has come: Cardinal
    [​IMG]
    Cardinal Caffarra at the 2017 Rome Life Forum. Claire Chretien / LifeSiteNews
    ROME, May 19, 2017, (LifeSiteNews) -- The prophecy of the Fatima visionary Sister Lucia that the final battle between God and Satan will be about marriage and the family is being fulfilled today, said a cardinal speaking at a Catholic conference in Rome.

    "What Sister Lucia said in those days is being fulfilled in these days of ours," said Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the dubia signers who is the archbishop emeritus of Bologna and a former member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, in a Q&A after his presentation.

    Caffarra made his comments at the fourth annual Rome Life Forum. After his presentation, Cardinal Raymond Burke, another dubia signer, called for the Catholic faithful to “work for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

    MUST READ: Cardinal Burke calls for Consecration of Russia to Immaculate Heart of Mary

    Cardinal Caffarra, who is the founding president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, made his comments on the “final battle” in reference to a letter he wrote to Sister Lucia back in the early 1980s to ask for her prayers as he began his new undertaking of founding the institute. He never expected a reply.

    But, to his surprise, Caffarra received a lengthy letter signed by Sister Lucia in which she spoke of the “final battle” that would come at the end of time.

    The Fatima visionary wrote that the “final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Do not be afraid, (she added), because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.” She then concluded: “However, Our Lady has already crushed his head.”

    The letter is now in the archives of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family.

    The battle
    Caffarra said in his presentation that there are two forces opposing one another in the battle. One is the “wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One” who calls all men to himself. The other is the “power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.”

    Read Cardinal Caffarra's full talk here.

    The Cardinal said that the area in which this battle takes place is the human heart.

    “Jesus, the Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works against this, to neutralise the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One. The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us,” he said.

    The two forces of attraction give rise to two cultures, he said, a “culture of the truth and the culture of the lie.”

    “There is a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph which comes after lengthy combat. The first fruits of the victory are the martyrs,” he said.

    Caffarra said that legalized abortion comes from the “culture of the lie” where the “crime” of murdering a human being is seen as a “good.”

    Abortion is a “sacrilegious act,” he said, adding that it is the “profoundest negation of the truth of man.”.

    “The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an ‘anti-creation.’ By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his ‘creation’: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein,” he said.

    The Cardinal said Homosexual “marriage” also comes from the “culture of the lie” since it “denies entirely the truth of marriage” as it comes from the “mind of God the Creator.”

    “The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other,” he said.

    “The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God,” he added.

    Satan, in pushing the lies of abortion and homosexuality, is attempting to destroy the two most important pillars of creation, the “human person” created in the image of God and the “conjugal union” between a man and woman.

    “The axiological elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage, is the destruction of the second pillar,” Caffarra said.

    Satan’s ultimate goal is to “build an actual anti-creation,” an “alternative creation,” where God and every sign of his beauty and goodness have been erased.

    “This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God,” the Cardinal said.

    To be a faithful follower of Christ in these times means to “testify...openly and publicly” to the truth of God’s creation with regard to the dignity of the human person and marriage.

    “Someone who does not testify in this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly,” he said.

    Caffarra praised the pro-life March for Life events that happen around the world a “great testimony” to the truth of the worth of every person.

    He likened Christians confronting sin to doctors combatting disease, telling his audience that just as with disease there can be no peace terms, the same follows for sin.

    “It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an irenical (aimed at peace) attitude towards the disease,” he said. The meaning of Augustine’s dictum ‘Love the sinner, persecute the sin,’ he added, means to “hunt down the sin. Track it down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its insubstantiality.”



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  8. Praetorian

    Praetorian Powers

    God is the master of history!
    It is amazing how He can work everything out in the long term so that it fits like a perfect puzzle. I wonder if, when Sister Lucy penned that letter to Cardinal Caffarra over 30 years ago, it was to give him the insight and fortitude to be one of the signers of the dubia...
     
  9. BrianK

    BrianK Guest


    http://www.marcotosatti.com/2017/05...-de-fiori-a-qualcuno-stanno-saltando-i-nervi/


    FUMAN RATZINGER. BURKE AT FIELD FIELD. ANYTHING IS HAVING THE NERVES.
    Autore wp_7512482


    Marco Tosatti
    The reading of three news yesterday showed me that someone is jumping from the nerves. And that we are entering a dangerous phase of involution of this kind: who does not agree with the head of the head. An unpublished populist degeneration in the life of the modern Church. I sincerely hope to be wrong; It's not a way to say. I really hope so. But there are signs that nothing but calming down.

    The knot seems to me to be understood, once again, in the answer not given - a year away - from the five questions addressed to the Pontiff by four cardinals on the controversial points of his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.Questions addressed in the spirit of obedience, following a classical procedure in the Church, that is, asking the Pontiff to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to clarify. Two months after the questions had been asked, when the cardinals learned that the Pontiff did not intend to respond, they made the issues public. Which concern everyone, and that in essence can be reduced to one: is it permissible, in mortal sin and without changing one's behavior, communion?

    Because the Pope does not want to answer we do not know. We seem to remember that a Jesuit near him said that the reason was that the questions were ideological. Sorry, but it sounds a bit weak. The task of authority is to clarify their thinking: and thus making it evident if a matter is useless or centered. In the Church, in particular, an unresponsive authority fulfills its duty?

    Instead of a response, unleashed attacks did not end against the four cardinals, and against anyone who shared their perplexities. We do not want to believe, as we have been told, that the Pontiff has encouraged or given the free way for his faithful in this regard. But there is no doubt that the only one of the four who still recharged a charge - Raymond Leo Burke, Patron of the Order of Malta - has entered and is still in the shooting field.As for Malta, you can read here, a reconstruction . And maybe it's just Burke's parishion that annoyed me.

    And so we come to the first of three episodes of yesterday: the baffling personal attack of Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, an unprecedented behavior. Maradiaga in the interviews written with the Salesian brother Antonio Carriero entitled "Only the Gospel is revolutionary," Burke writes in the preface, in relation to the Dubis: "That cardinal who claims this is a disappointed man, because he wanted power and he lost. He believed he was the highest authority in the United States. " And he adds: "He is not the magisterium: the Holy Father is the magisterium, and he teaches the whole Church. The other says only his thought, no further comments.They are the words of a poor man. " The point is precisely this: a clarification is asked about the Magisterium, which is not given. But for Maradiaga, the great sponsor of the pontiff, this is an insignificant detail.What if she also takes it with a better-defined "Catholic right" that would "power and not the truth. If they say to find some heresy, in quotation marks, in Francesco's words, they are wrong, because they only think of men and not as the Lord wants. "

    It strikes the virulence of words. But dialogue and mercy, where did they end?

    We come to the second episode, which is also significant. One of the protagonists is a certain Andrea Grillo, layman, theologian professor at Sant'Anselmo.Grillo would be - as we are told - in the commission, officially announced, and officially unknown to the Prefect of Divine Worship (ie the authority that should deal with) to study whether and how to create a mass to which Catholics and Protestants can participate together. It is not a problem, since the meaning of the Eucharist is totally different.

    The Prefect of Worship is the African Cardinal Robert Sarah, appointed by the Pontiff, when he was for reasons of various reforms to move him from where he was, that is Cor Unum. In posting to a forthcoming book, Benedict XVI said that with Sarah the liturgy is in good hands. It does not seem to us to be scandalous, if not for anyone who hates Sarah.

    This Andrea Grillo, who does not have the burden of knowing personally, has unleashed himself. "The singularity of the situation must be considered. A pope renounces the exercise of his Petrine ministry. The succession procedure opens and the successor is elected.Normally this happens "mortis causa". When reason is not the death of the predecessor, but the "discharge", this fact opens up for the establishment a delicate case of possible conflict of authority. That should be overcome by the predecessor's "silence" delivery. In the preface that exalts the qualities of Prefect Sarah, he quotes an Ignatius text from Antioch saying, "It is best to remain silent ...". If he not only speaks, but even exalts a Prefect who has created constant embarrassments to the Church and his successor, a dangerous conflict opens up, which would require more cautious behaviors and more responsible words. Provisions will be foreseen in future to better and more secure the "institutional death" of the predecessor and the full authority of the successor in case of resignation. "

    In addition to other unpleasant and unresponsive things, Grillo also said: "There can be no coexistence. This is now quite obvious. As it is evident that the white dress and loquacity, in addition to the residence, must be detailed in norms. The Emeritus Bishop must move away from the Vatican and remain silent forever. Only under these conditions can you set up a real "succession" ... The intentions of discretion and humility are clearly violated, so almost scandalous. And I find it really disconcerting that the Bishop emeritus of Rome praises Francesco for a nomination that knows he has contributed heavily to the determination. This seems to me the most serious figure, a sign of clericalism and I would also say a certain hypocrisy. "

    The solution we can suggest is that of Fumone, the castle in Ciociaria where Celestino da Morrone ended his days. We know at least one of the owners, if you want we can act as mediators. Seriously, it is outrageous for this groundbreaking climate shown by the advocates of the new course. A lot of such a livelihood perhaps somebody in Santa Marta should worry.

    And finally we come to the third episode. The words of the Pontiff to Santa Marta. There was talk of the problem of pagans who want to become Christians, and of discussions about this problem among the apostles. The Pope thus describes the situation: "The group of apostles who want to discuss the problem and others who go and create problems, divide, divide the Church, say that what the apostles preach is not what Jesus said, which is not the truth".

    In the end we reach a concord, and pagans can enter without physical circumcision. The Pontiff states that "it is a duty of the Church to clarify the doctrine" (ahi! Ahi !, and the Dubia? NDR) so that "it is well understood what Jesus said in the Gospels, which is the Spirit of the Gospels":

    "But there have always been those people who, without any commission, go to disturb the Christian community with discourses that upset souls: 'Eh, no. What he said is heretic, that can not be said, that no, the doctrine of the Church is this ... '. And they are fanatics of things that are not clear, like these fanatics who went there sneering to divide the Christian community. And this is the problem: when the doctrine of the Church, the one that comes from the Gospel, the one who inspires the Holy Spirit - because Jesus said: 'He will teach us and make you remember what I taught' - that doctrine becomes an ideology .And this is the great mistake of these people. "

    Giochino: Which of the two groups quoted by the Pontiff will you place Maradiaga and Grillo? And if fanatics speculate on unclear things, why not clarify, when asked, and cut ambiguity in the root?


     
  10. Jarg

    Jarg Archangels

    The Anglican Church approved something very similar to Amores Laetitiae in their decennial Conference of 1930: it accepted the 'innocent' (less subjectively culpable) remarried divorcees to go to Communion for pastoral reasons while upholding the doctrine of indissolubility. However over time the Anglican Church, due to 'pastoral' pressure, began to bless second marriages and finally to even allow divorcees to remarry in the Church.

    When doctrine crumbles, practice usually catches up in a few decades
    Fr. Alexander Lucie Smith

    We have all become familiar of late with the term dubium (plural dubia). It literally means doubt, but it is really a question seeking clarification on a point of doctrine or practice, and usually addressed to the competent ecclesiastical authority in Rome.

    I have a dubium, which I may well send to the correct dicastery in Rome, in hope of an answer. It is this.

    If a couple, who are living in a second union – that is to say, one of the parties has been sacramentally married before, divorced, and then married again civilly, with no canonical annulment of the ‘first’ marriage – if this couple, having approached a priest for the necessary accompaniment (as laid down in Amoris Laetitia chapter 8, and as interpreted, for example by the Maltese Bishops’ conference), and having decided that they may in conscience approach the sacrament of Holy Communion, if this couple then ask to have their civil marriage convalidated by their parish priest, what is the parish priest to do?

    As with so many dubia, I think we know the answer. The priest cannot possibly convalidate the marriage, because the ‘first’ marriage is still in existence, indeed that ‘first’ marriage is the only marriage. However, this reply will surely only confuse and sadden the couple, who have been told that they may receive Holy Communion and are thus not in a subjective state of sin. They may also feel that their civil union is what they would term a real marriage.

    But the question is surely worth asking as it is surely only a matter of time before such requests are made.

    Back in 1930, the Lambeth Conference made several resolutions, one of which, Resolution 11, allowed the innocent parties of divorce who had remarried to approach Holy Communion, while at the same time upholding the principle of the indissolubility of marriage. The same resolution also forbids the remarriage of divorced people in Church. Indeed, reading those resolutions from so long ago, most of them strike me as admirable, and they serve as a sad reminder of the way things have changed since then, not only in the Anglican Communion, but in the Catholic Church too, and also in the wider world.

    The pressure to marry divorced persons (with their spouse still living) in Church (which any Catholic will hold to be impossible), rejected at Lambeth in 1930, did not go away. Various compromises were made along the way, but today a couple who wish to marry in and Anglican church “second time around” will usually not find it hard to do so. When doctrine crumbles, practice usually catches up in a few decades. Lambeth 1930 is a deeply conservative document, but it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

    So where does this leave my dubium? To be perfectly honest my dubium serves to highlight the inconsistency in Amoris Laetitia (as interpreted by the Maltese bishops). I would add another dubium to the first one. If a couple in a second non-canonical union, who in conscience decide they can receive Holy Communion, then decide to part, does their civil union, which ends in divorce, then have any continuing validity? If one decides that the ‘second’ marriage is the ‘real’ marriage, and that breaks up, does its ‘real’ nature survive divorce? This might be an important question, if it also happens that the spouse of the first marriage should then die, leaving the person free to marry canonically.

    I don’t like casuistry at all, but sometimes it makes us contemplate the consequences of our beliefs and practices!
     
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  11. davidtlig

    davidtlig Guest

    I am surprised by one statement here by Fr Alexander considering that he is arguing a 'legal' point. He states, "the couple, who have been told that they may receive Holy Communion and are thus not in a subjective state of sin"

    Apart from the situation being phrased the wrong way round, the statement is obviously false as the couple would only be told they may receive Holy Communion because they are not in a state of mortal sin. This is not semantics because this is at the heart of the new possibilities that the Holy Father has introduced in Amoris Laetitiae.
     
    gracia likes this.
  12. Jarg

    Jarg Archangels

    What he is saying is simply that precisely the 'new possibilities' of Amores Laetitia will normalize divorce within the Catholic Church, just like they normalized divorce within the Anglican Church. Because it is in practice impossible to tell for instance sexually active remarried divorcees with kids that it is ok to receive communion (Argentinean, Maltese, and German guidelines) and then tell others that it is not ok for them. It won't happened because in fact, AL does not request remarried divorcees permission from a priest, it only recommends accompaniment from the priest. So overall the Church will ultimately accept divorce in the Church, just like the Anglican, the Protestant and the Orthodox churches do. The indissolubility of marriage becomes just an ideal, and the lesser subjective culpability of the spouses can override it. But the Church has always taught the opposite - that precisely in the sacrament of marriage, the subjective culpability of the spouses who commit adultery does not and cannot override God's command of indissolubility. Therefore even in the remote case where one had no clue of what it was doing when committing adultery and starting a new family (absence of subjective culpability), the sacramental bound remains and the person is in a state of mortal sin.

    So AL is in practice just allowing divorce in the Church, with maybe few extreme exceptions. Voila!

    I speak from experience. My cousin civilly married a divorcee four years ago. Her fiancé went to a franciscan priest in southern italy and ask him "can I remarry"? and he said "no way", wait til you know the result of the nullity process. But they married civilly anyway. They are both catholic and live in Milan. Then AL came to pass. Now they are about to have a kid. What happened? Their priest, based in Madrid, told them they are fine, not to worry about the nullity process any more. He assures them they are married before God, and that is all that matters. They go to communion and have not done confession in years, but she tells me the priest says it is ok because God does not care about those things, God is happy they are nice people and are about to form a family and that is what matters to God.

    So what is the sacrament of marriage? An ideal I guess, which is what AL explicitly says. Folks, this is the new reality of the Church, and not only in Germany, Malta or Argentina.
     
  13. davidtlig

    davidtlig Guest

    I'm a bit doubtful the priest will have told them that!
     
  14. Jarg

    Jarg Archangels

    It is a reality, I know who the priest is, he has been the chaplain of Race country club in Madrid for many years. He is a well known theologian in Spain, he loves Pope Francis because he has validated what he has written about for many years now. He says AL is an anti Veritatis Splendor (more and more priests in Madrid are saying it -see here-, and they are very happy about it). He considers the Pope has changed the rules of game, so he tells people don't be afraid to come to communion, all are welcomed to communion. Mortal sin and state of sin are no longer in the vocabulary. We are all in a state of grace in a very loose way, so long as we are 'good' 'nice' people. He says Confession is a beautiful 'option'. This is happening, this is real.

    "...We say with St Augustine: 'In an authority so high, admit but one officious lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult to practise or to believe, which on the same most pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author wilfully and to serve a purpose'. (Epist. 28). And thus it will come about, the holy Doctor continues, that 'everybody will believe and refuse to believe what he likes or dislikes'. But the Modernists pursue their way gaily. They grant also that certain arguments adduced in the Sacred Books, like those, for example, which are based on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest on. But they will defend even these as artifices of preaching, which are justified by life. Do they stop here? No, indeed, for they are ready to admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ Himself manifestly erred in determining the time when the coming of the Kingdom of God was to take place, and they tell us that we must not be surprised at this since even Christ was subject to the laws of life! After this what is to become of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas brim over with flagrant contradictions, but what matter that since, apart from the fact that vital logic accepts them, they are not repugnant to symbolical truth. Are we not dealing with the infinite, and has not the infinite an infinite variety of aspects? In short, to maintain and defend these theories they do not hesitate to declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to the Infinite is to make it the object of contradictory propositions! But when they justify even contradiction, what is it that they will refuse to justify?" St. Piuos X
     
  15. Bella

    Bella Guest

    Don_D likes this.
  16. Don_D

    Don_D ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

    Yes, very interesting indeed. Reading this as well as the article from yesterday speaking about a formal correction rather than exciting me has brought sadness. I completely understand the need for it because we can see the fruits of it and what they have brought.

    Sad because I see a huge potential here in this action of further eroding the Faith to a world which is in so much need of it. Also, specifically undermining the seat of Peter very badly.

    I then begin to wonder if this has not been the intention all along.
     
    Bella likes this.
  17. Mary's child

    Mary's child Powers

    Don_D, I admire your fortitude coming into the Catholic faith when it is in crisis. As a cradle Catholic it is heart warming to see someone entering the fray as a true fighter for the faith and the church. Thank you for your clear insightful posts.
     
  18. Don_D

    Don_D ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

    The scales were removed from my eye's. We all will have to fight it seems to preserve and endure what is happening in the Church. This is the way though. The Church has always been the object of attack and I had to ask myself why was I too one of these who attacked it. God save me from myself and preserve us all.
     
    Mary's child likes this.
  19. davidtlig

    davidtlig Guest

    Papal confidante says ‘Amoris’ critics locked in ‘death-trap’ logic
    [​IMG]
    Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández and then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, now Pope Francis, appear together in this 2010 photo.

    Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, rector of the Catholic University in Buenos Aires and sometimes described as the pope’s amanuensis, has issued a systematic defense of "Amoris Laetitia," Francis's controversial document on the family, saying its critics are locked in a "death-trap" logic and their approach risks “a betrayal of the heart of the Gospel.”

    Although Pope Francis has been criticized for creating ambiguity and confusion by doing so, his closest theological adviser said the pontiff sought to move the Church forward on the question of Communion for some remarried divorcés “in a discreet way” because he wanted the chapters in Amoris Laetitia on love to be central.

    That is why, says Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, the rector of the Catholic University in Buenos Aires, the pope dealt with the concrete application of the new policy in footnotes rather than in the body of the text - although he accepts that the “furor” over the issue meant the pope was ultimately unsuccessful in keeping it “discreet”.

    The remarks come towards the end of an article in Spanish in a special edition of Medellín, the theology journal of the Latin-American bishops’ umbrella body, CELAM, dedicated to Pope Francis. Entitled “Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia: What Remains After the Storm,” it gives Fernández’s most systematic defense of the document to date.

    In it he argues that some of those critics deploy a kind of logic that amounts to a “death trap,” making the Gospels and papal teaching subject to a kind of “intellectual Pelagianism … administered by an oligarchic group of ethicists,” in an approach that risks “a betrayal of the heart of the Gospel.”

    Fernández, who is sometimes described as the pope’s amanuensis, is widely considered to have helped draft Amoris, and is therefore in a unique position to comment on it after what he calls months of “intense activity” by a “small but hyperactive” group of critics.

    He begins by asserting the pope himself gave an authoritative interpretation of chapter eight of Amoris, where the footnote on Communion is found, in a letter to the bishops of Buenos Aires on Sept 9, 2016.

    In the letter, Francis thanked the bishops for guidelines they had drafted allowing for discernment leading in some cases to the sacraments, and said there was “no other interpretation” of Amoris than the one they had given.

    Responding to critics that the pope cannot make an authoritative statement in such a format, Fernández cites past instances of papal correspondence to bishops being quoted in teaching documents (for example, in a note by Pope Pius IX cited in Lumen Gentium, a document of the Second Vatican Council).

    Those precedents prove the “hermeneutical authority” of his letter to the Buenos Aires bishops, Fernández said.

    He goes on to note that St. John Paul II’s own opening to Communion to remarried divorcés in his 1980 exhortation Familiaris Consortio was “already an important novelty.” (Familiaris allowed remarried divorces, previously barred from the sacraments, to be admitted if they assumed a commitment to live chastely.)

    “Many resisted that step,” and still do, Fernández said, because of a fear it would give rise to relativism.

    Fernández then turned to moral norms and their application in Amoris, where the pope’s critics have accused him of encouraging relativism and subjectivism.

    Francis never claims general moral laws are incapable of covering every situation, nor that they are incapable of determining a decision in conscience, but that in their formulation they are incapable of addressing each and every situation, the archbishop said.

    “It is the formulation of the norm that cannot cover everything, not the norm in itself,” Fernández said.

    In the case of norms forbidding killing and stealing, for example, the norms are absolute, admitting of no exceptions; yet it is questionable, he said, whether taking life in self-defense is killing, or taking food to feed a hungry child is stealing.

    In the same way, Fernández goes on,

    “… It is also licit to ask if acts of living together more uxorio [i.e. having sexual relations] should always fall, in its integral meaning, within the negative precept of “fornication”. I say, ‘in its integral meaning,’ because one cannot maintain those acts in each and every case are gravely dishonest in a subjective sense. In the complexity of particular situations is where, according to St. Thomas [Aquinas], ‘the indetermination increases.’ Indeed, it is not easy to describe as an ‘adulterer’ a woman who has been beaten and treated with contempt by her Catholic husband, and who received shelter, economic and psychological help from another man who helped her raise the children of the previous union, and with whom she has lived and had new children for many years.”

    Francis is not primarily concerned here with the woman’s awareness of the gap between her state of life and the objective moral norm, nor with the use of offensive language such as “adulterer” or “fornicator” to describe people in such situations, but with the deeper issue of responsibility and culpability, Fernández argued.

    The pope’s point, he said, is that particular circumstances can diminish or even eliminate responsibility and culpability, even in the case of negative precepts and absolute moral norms, such as the “in a more uxoriocohabitation.”

    “The life of sanctifying grace is not always lost,” Fernández said, pointing to similar points made by both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

    Such cases, Fernández said, become even more complex where one member of the couple is not a practicing Catholic, and typically involve serious moral consequences (such as depriving children of a stable upbringing) . Therefore, they “demand a lot of care when it comes to issuing judgements solely on the basis of the moral norm.”

    Fernández said this is especially true, as Amoris notes, of families in fragile or economically deprived situations whose freedom of movement may be severely curtailed.

    continued.....
     
  20. davidtlig

    davidtlig Guest

    continued...

    He said Pope Francis has resisted proposals of progressive moral theologians to drop altogether a distinction between objective sin and subjective guilt, and has maintained that sexual relations by divorced people in a new union always “constitute an objective situation of habitual grave sin,” even if culpability might not exist in a subjective sense in some cases.

    Even in these cases, however, “for Francis it is not the concrete circumstances that determine the objective morality,” said Fernández, adding: “The fact that conditions might diminish culpability does not mean that what is objectively bad thereby becomes objectively good.”

    Rather, the objectively sinful situation persists “because there remains the clear Gospel proposal for marriage, and this concrete situation does not objectively reflect that.”

    Turning to the process of discernment outlined in Amoris, Fernández said Francis nowhere claimed that someone can receive Communion if they are not in a state of grace, only that an objectively grave fault is not sufficient to deprive a person of sanctifying grace.

    Therefore, “there can be a path of discernment open to the possibility of receiving the food of the Eucharist.”

    Discernment in such cases, he said, involves a person using his or her conscience to examine before God their real situation, together with its limits and practical possibilities, in the company of a pastor and enlightened by the Church’s teaching.

    Such discernment, he went on, is not about the moral absolute of the norm, but about its disciplinary consequences. The norm remains universal, but its consequences or effects can vary. By making clear that this can be discerned by means of a “pastoral dialogue,” said Fernández, “this is what opens the way to a change in [sacramental] discipline.”

    “Francis’s great innovation,” he wrote, “is to allow for a pastoral discernment in the realm of the internal forum to have practical consequences in the manner of applying the discipline [his italics].” The general canonical norm remains, but “may not be applied in certain cases as a consequence of a path of discernment.”

    This, said Fernández, is where Francis “is bringing in a change with respect to the previous praxis.”

    That change is legitimate, said Fernández, who cites examples from history of the Church evolving, both in the understanding of her doctrine and of the disciplinary consequences that flow from it - over slaveholding, for example, or the question of the salvation of non-Catholics. Doctrine has remained constant but there have been at times clear shifts in the understanding and application of that doctrine, he added.

    Over the past century alone, Fernández went on, there have been important changes even in the area of the discipline concerning the divorced and remarried. He cites the example of their being denied a church burial, which was one of the effects of excommunication of the divorced and remarried that was possible under the 1917 Code.

    The lifting of that ban was opposed, said Fernández, with the same arguments against their receiving Communion now. Yet the change introduced by Amoris “does not imply a contradiction with the previous teaching” but is “a harmonious development and a creative continuity,” he wrote.

    Fernández strongly critiques those who claimed that Amoris allows people to use their consciences to determine what is right or wrong. (Although Fernández does not explicitly mention it, the “dubia” letter by four cardinals, for example, appears to make that claim.)

    “By deploying that argument, opponents of Francis seek to force others to assume a particular logic from which there is no way out,” he said. “Once this mental structure is adopted, there is no other option than to accept the whole logic and consequences of using this way of reasoning.”

    “It is a death trap,” Fernández wrote.

    He went on to accuse the pope’s critics of a kind of “intellectual Pelagianism,” in which a particular form of reasoning becomes the yardstick for judging the Gospel as well as the Petrine ministry. In this way, he said, “the Scriptures are only there to illustrate the logic of ‘that’ reasoning, administered by an oligarchic group of ethicists.”

    In any case, he said, Francis’s brand of discernment is not designed to foster “a conscience that claims to create the truth as it pleases, or adapt it to his desires,” and on the part of the pastor, “it never implies concealing the full light of truth.”

    What Francis calls for in Amoris “is very demanding,” concludes Fernández. It is far easier to apply black-and-white norms, without taking into account complex realities and concrete lives, but “that comfortable rigidity can be a betrayal of the heart of the Gospel.”

    https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/08/21/papal-confidante-says-amoris-critics-locked-death-trap-logic/
     

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