Breaking! Pope just declares interpertation...

Marykelly, I read the posts around your sharing with us about your concerns for your son; especially that you hold a fear his depression could be caused from an inner struggle with his sexuality.

Let me first say to you; I have always believed what we call 'homosexual tendency' is in reality a CROSS.

I do not criticise you in any way for your natural concerns and feelings about this.

We don't know if your son is struggling with this dreadful Cross or something else that you so desperately want to understand in order to find a way to help him. God love you and direct you through your difficulty, and may God enlighten your son as to how he can best get past this crisis; which he could have been dealing with even for a number of years before the symptoms became apparent.

I come from a large family and can tell you we have a couple of members who are 'gay.' Now in my view, when a person falls under the weight of the Cross of this temptation, we need to pray for them and their families. Our Lord Himself once said "The flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing," And boy don't we know how true Our Lords words are in all our lives.

Our Lord also did say it would go easier on Sodom and Gomorrah than on the hypocrites of His day, and no doubt the hypocrites of our own day. So don't ever feel intimidated by anyone. Trust in God to save your sons soul. Because at the end of the day and when all the chips are down, that is all any Catholic mother wants for her child. God bless you Mary, and God bless and heal your son, whatever is ailing him.

 

David, just a reminder that the Bishops of Buenos Aires guidelines are in diametrical opposition to the doctrine and practice of the Church coming from both Scripture and Tradition:

"The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried." Pope Saint John Paul II - Familiaris Consortio 84

One can go on and on saying the sky is yellow - but the fact is that it is blue. Meaning one can say again and again that AL is not in contradiction with the doctrine of the Church when the fact is that it is.

 

Mary Kelly,
A lot of people have already given great advice so I won't simply repeat what they have said, but I just wanted to mention that a parent's prayers for their child have a special power that other's prayers don't because you have authority over that child. So if you truly love your son (and I know you do) the best thing you can do is pray and offer Masses for him. Also if he is willing to then have him wear the Miraculous Medal and have him enroll in the Brown Scapular.

Though I do not suffer from same sex attraction, I was in a very sinful state for many years as an adult and left the Church. The things I have mentioned above granted me a huge amount of grace, none of which I merited on my own. Eventually after 20 years I returned to the faith through a miraculous outpouring of that grace. If you haven't read Michael Voris' account he had a similar experience of living a worldly life and the prayers of his mother saved him.

Don't give up hope. God loves you and your son as if each of you were the only child he ever had. Pray, pray, pray!
Put him under Our Lady's Mantle.
She will take care of him.
May God be with you and him.

 

There's a difference between judging an act and judging a person's soul. The Church judges all the time. We all judge all the time, including you unless you believe that nobody has the right to say whether acts like theft or murder are wrong and sinful. Priests can't absolve from sin a bank robber who is sorry he robbed the bank last week but has no intention of returning the money and makes no secret of his plan to rob the bank again next week. The priests are making a judgement and they have no authority to give the bank robber absolution if he doesn't intend returning the money he robbed last week and has every intention of robbing the bank again the following week because he wants to give his wife and kids all the comforts his conscience tells him they deserve.

In fairness, you can't blame people for reaching the conclusion that you suspected your son had acted on homosexual inclinations when you asked about him being turned away from Holy Communion. It's basic Catholicism that temptation is not a sin. Even Jesus was tempted. The sin is in acting on the temptation. I'm curious, Mary, why you raised the matter of your son's sexuality on a thread about adultery which is not a matter of same sex attraction. Do you believe that Amoris Laetitia is opening the door to permitting people living openly in same sex unions to receive Communion and, perhaps, eventually to be permitted some kind of wedding ceremony in the Church? Did the priest you spoke to give you the impression that the Church is headed towards changing the teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil? A lot of people have that impression, including some clergy, because adultery has always been considered to be an act of intrinsic evil and now it isn't thanks to Amoris Laetitia.

Church teaching on intrinsic evil is not just for now. It's for all time. Intrinsic evil means that an act can never be good no matter the circumstances. True compassion would make a person aware that committing an intrinsic evil act will endanger their immortal soul and that they should stop engaging in the act. Jesus told the Apostles to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. He didn't tell them to conceal the truth or play it down out of a false sense of compassion in the hope that people would eventually discover the truth for themselves. Hiding or obfuscating the truth is not from God and anything not from God can only have one other source. Giving a person the nod to go on committing an intrinsic evil act in the hope that they will give up eventually is not compassion. Rather, it is enabling intrinsic evil just as buying heroin for an addict feeds the addiction rather than helping the addict kick the habit.

These are hard teachings of the Church but they come from Jesus who picked up his own cross for our sake and told us that to follow Him we must pick up our cross. None of us is given a cross too heavy to bear. Absolution is available to us when we stumble and God's grace both from the Sacrament and from prayer is always sufficient to help us get back up and carry our cross. There's an excellent sermon from Fulton Sheen on sin. I'll post it on this thread if I can find it on Youtube.

My heart goes out to mothers in these troubled times. I will offer a prayer for you and your son.

 

I guess I don't quite understand why now this would have such an impact now. I read a while back that Pope Francis had made these remarks in a letter. This was also written about at the time.
I think what concerns me about it is that South America has such a problem with Masons infiltrating the institutions there but the same can be said for the US. I had someone give me the "secret" masonic hand shake the other day at Mass which was a bit of a surprise. You really can't miss it when it happens and it isn't something that one would consider an accident. Although at mass of all places certainly seems a display of sorts. He went right on up and received Our Lord afterward. Of course.

 

Hi Mary,
I am sorry you feel under attack and more sorry still if you feel under attack by myself. Perhaps on reflection a public forum like this not the very best place to discuss such sensitive, personal issues. It is probably best for you to discuss them with a priest in private. The only problem being with that, with things being the way they are today I am not at all sure the advice you might get from the priest you go to would be good or wise advice.

But I must say the advice given by the poster Jarg seems at least to be good, wise and prudent.

I think what the Church has always said is to judge the sin , not the sinner. We can know from the Church herself when some is an objective wrong, but that is not the same thing as judging the sinner themselves. God will do this.

To be honest all parents seem to be under such huge strains these days. Society itself has turned so far from God. I have been thinking of the lady in Church last night who said her six sons no longer go to mass anymore. I feel so helpless in the face of such huge concerns, so great a Cross. All I can say is pray, pray, pray.

 

PS .

If you want you can send private messages to me or any other member you like. For me that poster Jarg seems something of a golden find.

 

In the matter of AL, it’s impossible to dissent because it’s not clear what is being taught or not taught!

 

This is the nub of the matter. This is , I believe, the work of the devil. It is so clever, it could only be him.

 

Machiavellian.

 

These are I am afraid the very worst times for the Church since it founded, 2,000 years ago. I am afraid things are so bad, so bleak that only the Direct Intervention of God can save us.

But I am suddenly beginning to realise that this is what all the Marian apparitions of the last century were all about. Leading up to this moment.

A great Sign of Hope.

 

You know under ordinary circumstances my hopes in this gravest of crisis would be in our Bishops and Cardinals. But I have to say that generally their behaviour has been total waste of space. (with some honourable exceptions of course, the Polish Hierarchy have been a model, the African Bishops often good and the American Bishops show sings of waking up from slumber) .

But on the whole it has fallen to hands of ordinary Catholic lay folk to sound the alarm and they have often been quite magnificent.

But at the end of the day it is up to the shepherds to guard the sheepfold and I have to say I do not entertain any great hope from that quarter. Action would require risk and I have to say I would have more hope for back bone from a jelly fish.

Some of them , like the Germans, Maltese and the Argentinians have , I suspect, gone over to the Dark Side. There are not too many Irish Bishops I would like to bet money on either.

Which is more and more why I think only God can save us, by direct action.

 

I suggest that you also send a letter to the Pope so he can answer you.

 

Waiting for an answer....

 

many a true word spoken in jest, and that considering two of the four Cardinals have indeed passed on.

 

Elisa, are you, like davidtlig, saying that this is something the Church has always taught?

Then why do you think the Polish Bishops issued the following statement:
Polish bishops: Amoris Laetitia does not allow Communion for the divorced and remarried.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/new...low-communion-for-the-divorced-and-remarried/

Amoris Laetitia has not changed Church doctrine on Holy Communion for divorced and remarried people, the Polish Bishops’ Conference has said.
In a statement issued after last week’s plenary meeting in the town of Zankopane, the bishops said Catholics in non-sacramental relationships should be led to “true repentance and sacramental reconciliation” with their spouse and children born in this union.
Amoris Laetitia must be read as a continuity of Church teaching, especially in relation to Pope John Paul II’s exhortation Familiaris Consortio, which reiterated the Church’s ban on divorced and remarried couples from receiving Communion.
“Familiaris Consortio and Amoris Laetitia are in the same line, with this linear understanding of these documents” the bishops said.
Fr Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, spokesman for the bishops’ conference, said the bishops call for “a new approach to [divorced and remarried] people to try to include them into the life of the Church, in the light of Amoris Laetitia and in the light of Familiaris Consortio 84.”
However, they cannot be readmitted to Holy Communion.
Although the Polish bishops have yet to publish official guidelines on applying Amoris Laetitia, Fr Rytel-Andrianik said they were in the final stage of revision.

 

I read that link and to be honest all it seems to indicate is if people are not perfect parents, then they could be the cause of children turning gay or what ever you like to call it.

I don't think that is a healthy way to approach the problem to be honest. All it seems to do is give confused people a scapegoat or a crutch (someone else to blame) for their inner struggles, and having a scapegoat means not taking personal responsibility; therefore not needing to face up to the situation and deal with it.
IMHO the physical problem is the end result of a spiritual battle that has already been lost.

There could be chemical reasons we have so much of this nowadays, and let's face it our diets and health is affected by the manipulation of chemicals in food production. Who knows. If healthy, organic, natural is more beneficial for us generally, maybe organic, natural is more beneficial for the reproduction area of our lives too. After all, the incidence of STD's has soared in recent years, and that too is indicative of unhealthy sexual behaviours, not just same sex either.

Keeping the Sixth Commandment would seem to be the best solution to all our reproductive department problems these days.

 

To what end? He has not replied to the Cardinal's Dubia for nearly two years now! He doesn't respond to anyone who has serious questions in regards to salvation. He rather spends his time appeasing those who teach half truths, tickling their ears, apart from what has always been taught. No, in regards to divorce and remarriage and Sodomy, we already have our answer within the 10 commandments, with Jesus' own words, throughout sacred scripture and sacred tradition. "He who has ears let him hear". No one who professes to be Christian will be able to say on judgement day they did not know truth. Truth cannot change, as Jesus said he is Truth and scripture further attests to, "I am the same yesterday, today and always".

 

I do understand you, but I do not YET judge. I have to little knowledge about what is going on in the Vatican and the real motivation/reasons of the Pope. I WAIT. Only when the Pope replaces the Holy Mess by something else, then we know ..... I also wonder WHO is that Pope that dies in the 3rd secret of Fatima....walking on the dead bodies of priests... During CONFUSION we better wait and pray.

 

Interesting point about that.....in other parts of what was told to the children during Fatima experience there was a Pope mentioned by name with connection to what was predicted to happen at that time but the children only assumed that it was the "pope" in the portion about him being killed, etc. What they saw was "a bishop dressed in white". Perhaps that not as explicit portion itself has a meaning as to just who could be that character of the future prophecy! Why the description of "a bishop"....and not directly told that another "pope" would be THE player then as before???