A long time ago I decided it prudent to insert the word “good” when praying for the intentions of the Holy Father. It was awkward at first but it just rolls off my tongue now.
Well, he never said clergy can bless homosexual unions. This is an interpretation, not his actual words. I really detest his speaking obscurely so the press and heterodox Bishops interpret in a way contrary to the consistent teaching of the Church. But to say his words can not be interpreted differently is not true. He says blessing individuals or more than one....NOT the union. I know in practice the Heterodox Bishops will take it as an approval to bless unions. I know the press will as well. But we must not devate from the exact truth and ascribe to the Pope words he did not say. When we deviate from the truth we abandon Christ.
I do appreciate your level-headed and careful thinking here. You're right about clarity being needed. I am deeply saddened by Pope Francis, as I see how he allows his answers to be super vague and confusing. My favorite pope of all time is Pope Leo XIII, who stated truths so clearly that there was no room for erroneous interpretation. That is how the Truth is! It doesn't tie the brain in knots or give fodder to the enemies of the Church who want to change everything to be like the world. Truth doesn't take a long time and many words to say... It can be clear and precise and to the point. And the love of a father for his children prompts him to speak truth to his children, not confusion. I do not feel loved by my own Holy Father, and it truly hurts, for myself and for all others I want so badly to stay on the straight and narrow path to Heaven. But I believe our duty in this situation is to trust our Heavenly Father, Who knows all and allows only what is ultimately for our good. I don't think we need to change the words when we pray for the intentions of the holy father, because God knows what we mean, and He knows how to answer our prayers in the way He sees best. We must have confidence in Him! The fact is, we don't know enough or have the authority to say Pope Francis isn't the pope. So that is not our duty and it is best left alone. How do we help our brothers and sisters not be led astray by the pope's ambiguity? Simple. First, we pray and make sacrifices. Fast regularly. Second, we know our Faith in and out, so that we can share it with others when we see them in confusion. If they counter with what Pope Francis "said," we tell them honestly that for whatever reason, this pope is breaking with his predecessors and saying or insinuating things the Church does not believe/condone/teach. Then we point them to the Catechism of Trent. We invite them to a Mass that has good and faithful priests who will teach them truth. We give them books that will be truthful and helpful in the situation they're confused about. Then we go back to praying and trusting that God is God and we are not. HE will sort this out. We need not, and should not lose our peace. NOTHING should make us lose our peace. And if you're concerned about your own soul, just ignore whatever the pope says that you know is not true. If he says the divorced and remarried can receive Communion, well then don't get divorced and remarried and receive Communion! If he says left is right, well just carry on knowing right is right. This will not last forever, and God already knows the outcome of everything. Trust, pray, and don't worry.
God is Almighty. He is above all. He knows what is in our hearts when we pray for the Pope. He will answer by giving us a loaf of bread and not a scorpion.
What a nice picture (with the downward thumb thing) of the pope and the outspokenly pro-LGBTQ priest he's likely to soon make bishop.
It's so coincidental that October was Pachamama, What is scarey is when every relative u have loves what Francis says. I put it in God's hands but I must speak up through heresy. We have dealing for years with this These are the people he loves. He surrounds himself with them while good people suffer. I know what Francis's words meant. I would have to be dead to not know.
The fact that he responds ambiguously to a document that aims to clarify doubts with doctrinal clarity says it all.
There was another dubia submitted this summer that we have overlooked. Czech Cardinal Duka submitted dubia this summer about Amoris Laetitia and the DDF said that priests may use their discretion to give Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics with no annulment who have not committed to complete continence (i.e., are still committing adultery). So that’s two major public heretical dubia answers - 1) priests may indeed administer Communion to non repentant public grave sinners (remarried Catholics living in adultery) and, 2) priests may bless homosexual unions.
This is my situation as well. A couple of weeks ago, my husband’s brother married his live-in girlfriend (both are divorced with no annulment). Myself and two daughters did not attend, but the rest of the family did. After the ceremony (which was performed by their neighbor) a Catholic priest came and gave them a blessing. I was shocked when I heard this. I thought, he must have just been blessing them as individuals, not their “marriage”, but now I wonder.
Yes we do have to wonder. I just started the St Michael Chaplet since His feastday, putting all my relatives in His care. Prayers for you and your family.
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/vatican-responds-to-cardinal-duka-s-dubia-on-divorced-and-remarried-catholics Vatican Responds to Cardinal Duka’s ‘Dubia’ on Divorced-and-Remarried Catholics Originally submitted by the archbishop emeritus of Prague on July 13 on behalf of the Czech Bishops’ Conference, the response — signed both by Pope Francis and new doctrine prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández — had been issued to the Czech cardinal on Sept. 25. Jonathan LiedlOctober 2, 2023 Czech Cardinal Dominik Duka speaks at the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, Hungary, Sept. 10, 2021. (photo: Daniel Ibáñez / CNA) On a day dominated by news of five cardinals publishing a set of dubia to Pope Francis and the Vatican in turn releasing the Pope’s responses, another significant set of responsa (“responses”) to a leading prelate’s request for clarification on a controversial moral doctrine was also published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Vatican on Monday publicly released responses to 10 dubia submitted by Czech Cardinal Dominik Duka regarding “the administration of the Eucharist to divorced couples living in a new union.” Originally submitted by the archbishop emeritus of Prague on July 13 on behalf of the Czech Bishops’ Conference, the DDF’s response — signed both by Pope Francis and new prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández — had been issued to the Czech cardinal on Sept. 25. At the heart of Cardinal Duka’s dubia and the Vatican’s response was the practical application of Amoris Laetitia(The Joy of Love), Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation issued after the 2015 Synod on the Family, and in particular, its pastoral guidance for the reception of Communion by those sacramentally married but “divorced and remarried” to another person other than their spouse. The presumptive ghostwriter of the Pope’s 2015 exhortation and now head of Francis’ doctrine office, Cardinal Fernández did not hesitate from weighing in authoritatively on the questions posed to him by the Czech prelate — a noticeable shift from the DDF’s previous engagement with questions on Amoris Laetitia, which included not answering previously submitted dubia. On the question of admittance to the Eucharist for a Catholic divorced from his/her sacramentally married spouse but civilly remarried to another, Cardinal Fernández wrote that while priests should provide pastoral accompaniment to the individual, “it is each person, individually, who is called to put himself before God and expose his conscience to him, with both its possibilities and its limits,” and evaluate their disposition to receive. “This conscience, accompanied by a priest and enlightened by the guidelines of the Church, is called to be formed to evaluate and give a sufficient judgment to discern the possibility of accessing the sacraments.” Amoris Laetitia’s guidance on this subject caused controversy upon its promulgation. Five dubia submitted in 2016 by four cardinals — including two of the five cardinals who sent the Pope dubia earlier this summer, the American Cardinal Raymond Burke and the German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller — asked the Pope to clarify if St. John Paul II’s teaching in Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) “on the existence of absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions” was still valid in the wake of Amoris Laetitia and other related questions on conscience and circumstances. Pope Francis never responded. Now in the present, Cardinal Fernández wrote that, as the Pope’s response to back-to-back synods on the family in 2014 and 2015, Amoris Laetitia “was the result of the work and prayer of the whole Church.” Its guidance on Communion for the divorced and remarried was also based on the magisterium of Pope Francis’ two predecessors, the DDF prefect wrote, though whereas those two popes recognized that divorced-and-remarried Catholics could partake in the Eucharist if they were “committed … to abstain from the acts proper to spouses” (St. John Paul II) or if they were “to commit [themselves] to living their relationship … as friends” (Benedict XVI), Francis “admits that there may be difficulties in practicing [continence] and therefore allows in certain cases, after adequate discernment, the administration of the sacrament of reconciliation even when it is not possible in being faithful to the continence proposed by the Church.” Amoris Laetitia also “opens the possibility of accessing the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist when, in a particular case, there are limitations that attenuate responsibility and culpability (guilt)” — though Cardinal Fernández notes that “this process of accompaniment does not necessarily end with the sacraments” but could point to other, nonsacramental forms of communion and inclusion. Drawing directly from Amoris Laetitia, the DDF’s response states that in the necessary process of discernment, “remarried divorcees should ask themselves how they behaved towards their children when the marital union entered into crisis; whether there have been attempts at reconciliation; how the partner’s situation is abandoned; what consequences the new relationship has on the rest of the family and the community of the faithful; what example it offers to young people who must prepare for marriage. A sincere reflection can strengthen trust in the mercy of God, which is not denied to anyone." “A sincere reflection can strengthen trust in the mercy of God, which is not denied anyone,” reads that Vatican response, quoting Amoris Laetitia. The responsa also affirmed that bishops should develop Amoris Laetitia-based criteria in their dioceses that “can help priests in the accompaniment and discernment of divorced people living in a new union” and that bishops of the Buenos Aires’ pastoral region’s application of Amoris, which Francis called “the only interpretation,” should be taken as “authentic magisterium” and that no other comprehensive explanation would be forthcoming. The responses avoided responding directly to whether acts committed in the sexual life of the couple consisting of at least one divorced-and-remarried Catholic should “be mentioned in the sacrament of reconciliation,” but the DDF prefect wrote that the couple’s sexual life should be “subject to an examination of conscience to confirm that it is a true expression of love and that it helps growth in love.” “All aspects of life must be placed before God,” it stated. Finally, in response to Cardinal Duka’s question of how the Czech bishops could “proceed to establish internal unity” on the issue of pastoral guidance for the divorced and remarried, “but also to avoid disturbing the ordinary magisterium of the Church,” Cardinal Fernández wrote that the bishops’ conference should “agree on some minimum criteria to implement the proposals of Amoris Laetitia” to help priests “in the process of accompaniment and discernment regarding the possible access to the sacraments of divorces in a new union, without prejudice to the legitimate authority that each bishop has in his own diocese.”
I was going to post something and Purple Flower stepped in and did it far better! There is nothing we can do but pray. We aren't bishops, we have little or no influence in the worldly sense. A long time ago I saw a fellow Catholic on Facebook say of this pontificate "I'm sitting this one out". This seemed to me the best way of putting it and I've just gone along with my Catholic life and ignored all the rumours from Rome. I haven't read any of Francis' documents. If I want clarity, there's always Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II, among others. Like PF, my favourite pope is Leo XIII. My expectations of the man sitting on Peter's throne are so low that nothing he does will shock me much. I've had a series of desperate emails from a close friend in the US. She's extremely distressed about all the Goings On. She knows Strickland a little. She wrote to her own bishop who replied carefully (but as he didn't use any of the buzz words like 'journeying' etc I think he is probably sympathetic to her). She talked of going over to the Orthodox. I've talked her out of that, I doubt she was serious anyway, but it is vital that real Catholics keep in close contact in these awful times to encourage each other. I have another friend that I rarely see and don't count among my closest friends but we have been emailing a lot about the current crisis and our spiritual response. My private feeling is that in future times this pontificate will be judged to have been invalid, but I have no authority to pronounce on it for now. I did however smile at Padraig's comments and would love a ringside seat to watch him 'explain the matter' to JB. Taylor Marshall says that the five cardinals are treading carefully but following Bellarmine's playbook which echoes Scripture. Reprimand three times and then a trial. But who can try a pope? Mark Mallett has an excellent blog posted yesterday - a repost from 2015 but so relevant. We have to remain in Christ, actively, continually. Fr Charles Murr in an interview on YouTube says that every 500 years we get a 'great' pope who won't tolerate wishy washy shepherds or anything else. We need one now, and I can't see one coming from anywhere but Africa.
