https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2016/10/29/some-not-entirely-random-thoughts-on-amoris-laetitia/ Some (Not Entirely Random) Thoughts on “Amoris Laetitia” The following is excerpted and adapted from Robert Royal’s remarks at Assumption College’s panel discussion on “Amoris Laetitia” Thursday evening, along with USCCB President Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, Worcester Bishop Robert MacManus, Margaret McCarthy of the JPII Institute on Marriage and the Family, and EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo moderating. The entire exchange was videotaped and will be broadcast on EWTN at a later date. My natural tendency in dealing with a document like Amoris Laetitia (AL) is that we ought to stick to the words of the text. Everything else is speculation – the Spirit of this, the implication of that, claims that we need to read between the lines. If so, I would normally say, what’s the point of the lines? But we’re not in a normal situation. When I was writing daily reports on the Synod, I tried to convey to people back home: don’t listen to every odd idea picked up by the media on a given day, pay more attention to responsible efforts by many bishops – usually ones not getting air time – to grapple with the problems facing the family in the modern world. But the whole process of producing and presenting AL has made it impossible to take a solely textual approach. I have called the process and the substance “bizarre.” I meant this as no disrespect to the Holy Father or anyone, but as a description. How do you spend two years on something, and find yourself uncertain about what it means until a papal letter to some Argentinean bishops is – not published – but leaked, and only confirmed when it was impossible to deny? Bizarre. A strong word, I know, but apt. I’m going to put on a William Jamesian/American Pragmatist’s hat and argue that we can partly know what something is by what it does. And AL has done many things beyond its confusing text. Consider: When Paul VI issued Humane Vitae in 1968, which reaffirmed the Church’s ban on artificial contraception, there was no doubt what he meant. It was unpopular in some quarters, of course, but the pope made a responsible decision, and that responsibility entailed making clear exactly what the decision was. Can anyone say with certainty what, precisely, Amoris Laetitia teaches? This is where the “bizarre” makes its initial appearance. We seem to have a text that wishes to say, with Cardinal Kasper, that there are cases of divorced and remarried Catholics whose moral condition could allow them to receive Communion. A perfectly clear thesis, though highly debatable – not least since it has never been the practice in the Western Church. What’s clear is that it seeks to extend a kind of mercy amidst widespread confusion and social breakdown, which have obscured the bases and meaning of marriage. Pope Francis invited Kasper to make this case to bishops in Rome in February 2014, ahead of the first Synod. On the flight back from Greece this year, asked if AL has changed Catholic teaching, Francis answered, “Posso dire di si,” – “I can say yes, many things,” but then deferred to Cardinal Schoenborn’s interpretation, the day of AL’s release, in order not to give a “simplistic” answer. Cardinal Kasper with the pope I find this, too, bizarre. Even Cardinal Kasper has said Communion for divorced and remarried is nowhere in the document. Two ambiguous footnotes, vague suggestions in several passages? If that was what was intended, why not say so openly? Indeed, that is precisely why it took a “clarification” to a group of Argentine bishops to – apparently – have settled the matter. Bishops in Argentina and Canada and the USA immediately made clear – when the Argentinean letter was released – that this does not mean unqualified Communion for everyone divorced and remarried, but a question about special cases. We’ll see how long those qualifications will remain in our current cultural situation, when everyone thinks he’s a special case. Here’s where a William Jamesian/American pragmatist approach helps. Part of the meaning of this text emerges from what it does. Some of us predicted after the Synod that we could soon have a Catholic Church that was not universal. That what was a sacrilege in Poland – taking Communion while divorced and remarried – would, if you drove to Germany, become regarded as a new outpouring of mercy. No one predicted conflicts within countries, which we now have – Rome permitting, Florence not permitting Communion. Or between different parishes. And we’re also hearing that individual conscience is the ultimate arbiter. In Washington, we note that when a politician wrestles with his conscience, it’s remarkable how often he wins. And here we reach the heart of the bizarre. What was intended as a generous gesture within the troubled circumstance of modern marriage now threatens to become a practical schism. Cardinal Kasper just stated in an article that the scandal is not in the change; the scandal would be to deny the divorced and remarried Communion. With all due respect to the Cardinal: those twenty centuries when the Church forbade Communion to the divorced and remarried, were they a large public scandal? Have we blessed and enlightened ones living in 2016 – not only in hacked Democratic Party emails – achieved a mercy and truth hidden from the Church Fathers, doctors of the Church, mystics, and saints that preceded us? And poor Jesus Himself? Who made so shocking a statement about the indissolubility of marriage that his Jewish contemporaries mumbled, then, maybe better not to get married at all? Ahead of the first Synod, Cardinal Pell gave a lecture and said, if it were up to me, I’d probably want to be a bit more lenient than Jesus. But he wasn’t, “and I have to be with him.” By contrast, even though there’s no explicit statement changing who can receive Communion in AL, Cardinal Kasper has said to all who feel confused, “The alleged confusion comes from a third party, which has alienated itself from the faith and the life of the people of God.” It’s sad that a Prince of the Church would say to a large – and perhaps the most loyal and active part of Catholics worldwide – that they’ve separated themselves from God’s people. And this in the closing days of the Year of Mercy. Whether anyone feels or thinks better of marriage, inside or outside the Church, after all this, is, to say the least, in grave doubt.
Make sure you read to the end, which is hard hitting: And here we reach the heart of the bizarre ... Cardinal Kasper just stated in an article that the scandal is not in the change; the scandal would be to deny the divorced and remarried Communion. With all due respect to the Cardinal: those twenty centuries when the Church forbade Communion to the divorced and remarried, were they a large public scandal? Have we blessed and enlightened ones living in 2016 – not only in hacked Democratic Party emails – achieved a mercy and truth hidden from the Church Fathers, doctors of the Church, mystics, and saints that preceded us? And poor Jesus Himself? Who made so shocking a statement about the indissolubility of marriage that his Jewish contemporaries mumbled, then, maybe better not to get married at all? Ahead of the first Synod, Cardinal Pell gave a lecture and said, if it were up to me, I’d probably want to be a bit more lenient than Jesus. But he wasn’t, “and I have to be with him.” By contrast, even though there’s no explicit statement changing who can receive Communion in AL, Cardinal Kasper has said to all who feel confused, “The alleged confusion comes from a third party, which has alienated itself from the faith and the life of the people of God.” It’s sad that a Prince of the Church would say to a large – and perhaps the most loyal and active part of Catholics worldwide – that they’ve separated themselves from God’s people. And this in the closing days of the Year of Mercy. Kasper clearly speaks for the pope. It's been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, And anyone denying this is simply a fool. How do you like being told you're no longer with the Church if you still oppose this? In what exactly are you bound in "obedience" to believe and obey the pope, and what can he say that would wake you from your stupor?
Well, I for one don't give a crap if the pope says I'm separated from the Church for holding to Christ's teachings. We ARE at a point where francis' teachings are opposed to Christ's. Francis vs. Jesus. Do NOT delude yourself into thinking that these opposing teachings are compatible. Some may ask "well how can this be??" Think about it, you'll figure it out.
Brian, I have to admit my heart is heavy and my head is spinning. Here is the last line of my post # 27 in the Catholic-Lutheran Dialogue thread: So then, it clearly follows: Lutherans teach inputed justification and similarly consubstantiation. Catholics teach infused justification and similarly transubstantiation. There is a fundamental difference. Yes, it is wonderful that the recent efforts of ecumenism have helped eradicate prejudice and misunderstanding, but if intercommunion is allowed under the current doctrinal positions, I will be personally devastated! Safe in the Barque of Peter!
Schönborn: I Would Have Understood it if My Divorced Mother Had “Remarried” onepeterfive.com/schonborn-i-would-have-understood-it-if-my-divorced-mother-had-remarried/ Maike Hickson October 29, 2016 Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the bishop of Vienna, Austria, and one of the closest collaborators of Pope Francis with regard to the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia, has recently made new morally troubling statements with regard to marriage and the family. In a recent talk, he gave the appearance that he publicly condones the idea of “remarriage” after the divorce (but not the annulment) of a Catholic couple who were validly and sacramentally married, using his own mother’s case as an example. According to the Austrian website Kath.net Cardinal Schönborn gave the address in question in Vienna on 19 October 2016 for the initiative Theologische Kurse, where he spoke once more about Amoris Laetitia and again stressed that Pope Francis’s document “is firmly rooted in the Church’s tradition.” He explained: “The Church’s teaching is developing, but it is developing organically. One continues to write it.” The Austrian cardinal also added: “The Faith does not change, but the form, the presentation of the Faith and the experiences which are being made within the Faith are changing,” because the times and life situations of the people are likewise changing. Cardinal Schönborn stressed that Pope Francis has not given in Amoris Laetitia‘s Eighth Chapter “a solution for all” with regard to the matter of access for “remarried” divorcees to the sacraments, but that a responsible dealing with each individual case is necessary. The important point, according to the prelate, “is to look a little bit more closely” into each case. According to Kath.net, Schönborn then said the following with regard to his own mother who was abandoned by her husband and who at the time was raising four children: If his mother had remarried, his siblings and he would have understood it, even if it would have been difficult for them, according to the cardinal. “It is something else when someone is ready to walk a path together with this woman with four children, but it is different when someone willfully leaves an intact family and thus breaks the relationship. [my emphasis] Coming from a cardinal – the highest office in the Catholic Church after the pope – this statement is quite scandalous, inasmuch as he proposes the idea that a “remarriage” might even sometimes be something good. He publicly states here that it would have been acceptable, even if his own mother would have “remarried” thereby putting her own soul – and the soul of her new partner – at risk of eternal loss of the beatific vision. He also uses positive words (“walking a path together with this woman with four children”) in order to describe a relationship which violates the indissolubility of marriage and thus is an objective offense to God. It seems that certain prelates are now more and more losing their reluctance to make public statements that are unmistakably contrary to the teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ and who thus put in jeopardy before God the faithful who are entrusted to their own accountable care.
It's almost as if the sacrament of marriage no longer exists. It seems as if they are always talking about 'natural marriage' that is non-sacramental marriage. No mention of the supernatural power of the sacrament at all nor the acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is the author of the nuptial sacrament! THE GREATNESS and sublimity of marriage, the closest and most ultimate of unions, raised by Christ to the dignity of a Sacrament, is revealed at one stroke in the exhortation of St. Paul wherein he compares married love to the love of Christ, the Word made Flesh, for His Holy Church. No natural human good has been exalted so high in the New Testament. No other good has been chosen to become one of the seven Sacraments. No other has been endowed with the honour of participating directly in the Kingdom of God. This in itself suggests the infinitely precious value already attached to marriage in the realm of nature, the richness and grandeur it unfolds. Only in this way can we understand what was so gloriously exalted by Jesus Christ and thus dispel the misinterpretations of the nature of marriage so frequently encountered.
It's no coincidence that this earthquake struck this morning as the pope leaves for his "ecumenical" meeting with the Lutherans: View attachment 5531
