I couldn't be happier to begin 2018 with this post...
Five bishops reaffirm
traditional teaching on Communion
by Dan Hitchens
January 3, 2018
Five bishops have reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teaching on Communion for the divorced and remarried, in an apparent response to recent statements from Pope Francis.
The statement was originally issued by three Kazakhstan bishops – Tomash Peta, Archbishop of Saint Mary in Astana, Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop-Bishop of Karaganda, and Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Mary in Astana – on December 31, which, they observed, was the Feast of the Holy Family in the centenary year of Fatima.
Yesterday two Italian prelates – Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the former papal nuncio to the United States, and Archbishop Emeritus Luigi Negri – added their signatures, according to the website Corrispondenza Romana.
[Now what is to stop as many cardinals and bishops who believe in the intrinsic truths of the statement from coming forth and adding their signatures ASAP? Cardinals Burke and Brandmueller, to begin with, and then Cardinals Sarah and Mueller, who head and headed, respectively, the two Vatican dicasteries whose functions have been most transgressed by AL and its Bergoglian initiatives.
I must say that Mons. Vigano's quick adhesion to the Kazakhstan bishops' initiative surprised me, but then, he did make a number of emphatically orthodox statements and actions while he was the Apostolic Nuncio to the USA that I chose to consider as his 'mea culpa' for the selfish excesses that led to his 'exile' from the Roman Curia and away from his ambition at the time to be named a cardinal. So, let other bishops and cardinals follow his lead and that of the estimable Mons. Negri, late of the Archdiocese of Ferrara, too early retired by this pope from the active episcopate.]
The statement, which has been published on several websites, notes that some bishops’ conferences have said divorced-and-remarried Catholics may receive Communion, even if still living in a sexual relationship with their new partner.
The traditional teaching of the Church, reaffirmed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, is that the remarried can only receive Communion if they resolve to refrain from sexual relations.
While some bishops have recently upheld this teaching, others, such as the two bishops of Malta, have contradicted it.
The bishops claimed that avoiding sex may be impossible, and that those who decided they were “at peace with God” could receive Communion. The Pope has reportedly praised this statement.
An ambiguous document from the Buenos Aires bishops has been interpreted by some commentators as contradicting the traditional teaching, although others disagree. Pope Francis has given this document public approval.
In the new statement, the five bishops said that some episcopal statements supporting Communion for the remarried had “received approval even from the supreme authority of the Church”, presumably a reference to the Pope’s statements.
In response, the five bishops reiterate traditional teaching, placing in bold type the words:
It is not licit (non licet) to justify, approve, or legitimize either directly or indirectly divorce and a non-conjugal stable sexual relationship through the sacramental discipline of the admission of so-called “divorced and remarried” to Holy Communion, in this case a discipline alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith.
The bishops argue that the tradition of the Church on Communion for the remarried is binding, because it follows Jesus’ teaching on marital indissolubility. There cannot be a contradiction, the bishops say, between “the discipline of the sacraments and and the faith of the Church in the absolute indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage.”
They quote the Second Vatican Council as teaching that “The sacraments not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it; that is why they are called ‘sacraments of faith’.”
Last year, the three Kazakh bishops urged Catholics to pray for Pope Francis, and in particular to pray that he rescind pastoral guidelines which contradict Church teaching. They said that the
sacramental discipline is a “proven custom, received and faithfully kept from the time of the Apostles and more recently confirmed in a sure manner by St John Paul II … and by Pope Benedict XVI.”
In their new document, the bishops look more closely at the theological foundations of the teaching. They refer to another document of St John Paul II’s,
Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, which, with reference to the remarried, says:
“The Church can only invite her children who find themselves in these painful situations to approach the divine mercy by other ways, not however through the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist until such time as they have attained the required dispositions.”
John Paul said that the Church was unable to alter this discipline because of two principles: first “compassion and mercy”, and second “truth and consistency, whereby the church does not agree to call good evil and evil good”.
The Italian politician and philosopher Rocco Buttiglione has argued that a priest could, instead of giving absolution, tell certain penitents that they are not in a state of mortal sin. The priest would encourage the penitent to receive the Eucharist even if they decide to carry on committing grave sins. But the Kazakh bishops cite the Council of Trent as teaching that
“The Church does not possess the infallible charism of judging the internal state of grace of a member of the faithful.”
As a consequence, they say, the “non-admission to Holy Communion of the so-called ‘divorced and remarried’ does not therefore mean a judgment on someone’s state of grace before God”. Rather, it is “a judgment on the visible, public, and objective character of their situation”. Because the sacraments and the Church are visible institutions, “the reception of the sacraments necessarily depends on the corresponding visible and objective situation of the faithful.”
The bishops make the statement “before our conscience and before God who will judge us”, and say they are convinced that their profession is a service to the Church and the Supreme Pontiff.
Kazakhstan bishops say communion for remarried divorcees is
'alien to the entire tradition of the Catholic and apostolic faith'
January 1, 2018
Almost exactly a year after they issued a call for prayer that the pope would uphold Catholic teaching on marriage, three bishops from Kazakhstan — Tomash Peta, Metropolitan Archbishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Karaganda, and Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana — have issued a new statement, saying that
any change in sacramental discipline that would allow Catholic divorcees living in new sexual unions to receive Holy Communion is “alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith”.
One year ago this month, these same bishops issued a joint statement urging the faithful to pray that Pope Francis would “confirm the unchanging praxis of the Church with regard to the truth of the indissolubility of marriage.”
As 1P5 reported last January:
The statement, issued on January 18th, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, is much more than a solicitation to storm heaven. The bishops document their concerns with “published norms” for the “application and interpretations” of Amoris Laetitia “whereby the divorced who have attempted civil marriage with a new partner, notwithstanding the sacramental bond by which they are joined to their legitimate spouse, are admitted to the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist without fulfilling the duty, established by God, of ceasing to violate the bond of their existing sacramental marriage.”
The bishops assert that “Pastors of the Church who tolerate or authorize, even in individual or exceptional cases, the reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist by the divorced and so-called “remarried,” without their being clothed in the ‘wedding garment,’… are complicit in this way with a continual offense against the sacramental bond of marriage, the nuptial bond between Christ and the Church and the nuptial bond between Christ and the individual soul who receives his Eucharistic Body.”
Making mention of particular churches that have issued pastoral guidelines for the implementation of Amoris Laetitia along such lines, the bishop say that such guidelines “contradict the universal tradition of the Catholic Church, which by means of an uninterrupted Petrine Ministry of the Sovereign Pontiffs has always been faithfully kept, without any shadow of doubt or of ambiguity, either in its doctrine or its praxis, in that which concerns the indissolubility of marriage.”
Pope Francis did not, however, respond to their insistence that
“only the voice of the Supreme Pastor of the Church can definitively impede a situation where in the future, the Church of our time is described with the following expression: ‘all the world groaned and noticed with amazement that it has in practice accepted divorce'”.
Instead, he chose to add his confirmation of the permissive interpretation in the guidelines of the bishops of Buenos Aires to the official acts of the Holy See — a decision that Cardinal Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said makes it a part of the pope’s “authentic magisterium.”
In their new statement, issued on the Feast of the Holy Family (Dec. 31), the Kazakhstani bishops do not specifically mention the recent actions of the pope, but nevertheless warn that
“The admission of so-called ‘divorced and remarried’ faithful to Holy Communion, which is the highest expression of the unity of Christ the Spouse with His Church, means in practice a way of approving or legitimizing divorce, and in this meaning a kind of introduction of divorce in the life of the Church.”
Further, they say, the new norms being implemented by bishops in various parts of the world (in line with the pope’s support of the Buenos Aires bishops) represent
“a matter of spreading the ‘plague of divorce’ even in the life of the Church, when the Church, instead, because of her unconditional fidelity to the doctrine of Christ, should be a bulwark and an unmistakable sign of contradiction against the plague of divorce which is every day more rampant in civil society.” [This implicit endorsement of divorce in AL's permissiveness is one of the greatly overlooked objections to AL - very few have pointed it out, and not often enough.]
The bishops go on to explain the gravity of the shift in direction from the Vatican:
Unequivocally and without admitting any exception, Our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ solemnly reaffirmed God’s will regarding the absolute prohibition of divorce. An approval or legitimation of the violation of the sacredness of the marriage bond, even indirectly through the mentioned new sacramental discipline, seriously contradicts God’s express will and His commandment.
This practice therefore represents a substantial alteration of the two thousand-year-old sacramental discipline of the Church. Furthermore, a substantially altered discipline will eventually lead to an alteration in the corresponding doctrine. [Since AL represents, in its lethal Chapter 8, an overall relaxation of discipline in the sacraments of Penance,the Eucharist and Matrimony (not to mention Holy Orders, by allowing priests and bishops to breach sacramental discipline in the other 3 sacraments), it represents an egregious case on which the Congregation for Divine Worship should be heard from, since its full name, after all, is Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments. But since the CDW-DS is part of the Roman Curia, which is technically an instrument of papal governance, I suppose it would be both 'unseemly' - and certainly not to be tolerated in the Bergoglio court, under pain of the direst 'off with their heads' conseqeunces - and unlikely for the dicastery to formally oppose this pope's clear and manifest intentions. In the same way that the CDF under Mueller could not and did not.]
The constant Magisterium of the Church, beginning with the teachings of the Apostles and of all the Supreme Pontiffs, has preserved and faithfully transmitted both in the doctrine (in theory) and in the sacramental discipline (in practice) in an unequivocal way, without any shadow of doubt and always in the same sense and in the same meaning (eodem sensu eademque sententia), the crystalline teaching of Christ concerning the indissolubility of marriage.
Because of its Divinely established nature, the discipline of the sacraments must never contradict the revealed word of God and the faith of the Church in the absolute indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage.
In support of their position, the Kazakhstani bishops make ample reference to teaching and thought not just of the Second Vatican Council, but also of the conciliar and post-conciliar popes and other Vatican dicasteries, making it difficult for papal defenders to dismiss their claims as a solely traditionalist critique.
They then invoke their obligation as bishops, who have a “grave responsibility” and “duty before the faithful who await from us a public and unequivocal profession of the truth and the immutable discipline of the Church regarding the indissolubility of marriage.”
“For this reason,” they say,
“we are not allowed to be silent.”
They conclude:
We affirm therefore in the spirit of St. John the Baptist, of St. John Fisher, of St. Thomas More, of Blessed Laura Vicuña and of numerous known and unknown confessors and martyrs of the indissolubility of marriage:
It is not licit (non licet) to justify, approve, or legitimize either directly or indirectly divorce and a non-conjugal stable sexual relationship through the sacramental discipline of the admission of so-called “divorced and remarried” to Holy Communion, in this case a discipline alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith.
By making this public profession before our conscience and before God who will judge us, we are sincerely convinced that we have provided a service of charity in truth to the Church of our day and to the Supreme Pontiff, Successor of Saint Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth.
The full text of the Kazakhstani bishops’ statement:
Profession of the Immutable Truths About Sacramental Marriage
After the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation “Amoris laetitia” (2016) various bishops issued at local, regional, and national levels applicable norms regarding the sacramental discipline of those faithful, called “divorced and remarried,” who having still a living spouse to whom they are united with a valid sacramental matrimonial bond, have nevertheless begun a stable cohabitation more uxorio with a person who is not their legitimate spouse.
The aforementioned rules provide inter alia that in individual cases the persons, called “divorced and remarried,” may receive the sacrament of Penance and Holy Communion, while continuing to live habitually and intentionally more uxorio with a person who is not their legitimate spouse. These pastoral norms have received approval from various hierarchical authorities. Some of these norms have received approval even from the supreme authority of the Church.
The spread of these ecclesiastically approved pastoral norms has caused a considerable and ever increasing confusion among the faithful and the clergy, a confusion that touches the central manifestations of the life of the Church, such as sacramental marriage with the family, the domestic church, and the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist.
According to the doctrine of the Church, only the sacramental matrimonial bond constitutes a domestic church (see Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, 11). The admission of so-called “divorced and remarried” faithful to Holy Communion, which is the highest expression of the unity of Christ the Spouse with His Church, means in practice a way of approving or legitimizing divorce, and in this meaning a kind of introduction of divorce in the life of the Church.
The mentioned pastoral norms are revealed in practice and in time as a means of spreading the “plague of divorce” (an expression used by the Second Vatican Council, see Gaudium et spes, 47). It is a matter of spreading the “plague of divorce” even in the life of the Church, when the Church, instead, because of her unconditional fidelity to the doctrine of Christ, should be a bulwark and an unmistakable sign of contradiction against the plague of divorce which is every day more rampant in civil society.
Unequivocally and without admitting any exception Our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ solemnly reaffirmed God’s will regarding the absolute prohibition of divorce. An approval or legitimation of the violation of the sacredness of the marriage bond, even indirectly through the mentioned new sacramental discipline, seriously contradicts God’s express will and His commandment. This practice therefore represents a substantial alteration of the two thousand-year-old sacramental discipline of the Church. Furthermore, a substantially altered discipline will eventually lead to an alteration in the corresponding doctrine.
The constant Magisterium of the Church, beginning with the teachings of the Apostles and of all the Supreme Pontiffs, has preserved and faithfully transmitted both in the doctrine (in theory) and in the sacramental discipline (in practice) in an unequivocal way, without any shadow of doubt and always in the same sense and in the same meaning (eodem sensu eademque sententia), the crystalline teaching of Christ concerning the indissolubility of marriage.
Because of its Divinely established nature, the discipline of the sacraments must never contradict the revealed word of God and the faith of the Church in the absolute indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage. “The sacraments not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it; that is why they are called “sacraments of faith.” (Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 59).
“Even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the liturgy” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1125).
The Catholic faith by its nature excludes a formal contradiction between the faith professed on the one hand and the life and practice of the sacraments on the other. In this sense we can also understand the following affirmation of the Magisterium: “This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age.” (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 43) and “Accordingly, the concrete pedagogy of the Church must always remain linked with her doctrine and never be separated from it” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 33).
In view of the vital importance that the doctrine and discipline of marriage and the Eucharist constitute, the Church is obliged to speak with the same voice. The pastoral norms regarding the indissolubility of marriage must not, therefore, be contradicted between one diocese and another, between one country and another.
Since the time of the Apostles, the Church has observed this principle as St. Irenaeus of Lyons testifies: “The Church, though spread throughout the world to the ends of the earth, having received the faith from the Apostles and their disciples, preserves this preaching and this faith with care and, as if she inhabits a single house, believes in the same identical way, as if she had only one soul and only one heart, and preaches the truth of the faith, teaches it and transmits it in a unanimous voice, as if she had only one mouth” (Adversus haereses, I, 10, 2).
Saint Thomas Aquinas transmits to us the same perennial principle of the life of the Church: “There is one and the same faith of the ancients and the moderns, otherwise there would not be one and the same Church” (Questiones Disputatae de Veritate, q. 14, a. 12c).
The following warning from Pope John Paul II remains current and valid: “The confusion, created in the conscience of many faithful by the differences of opinions and teachings in theology, in preaching, in catechesis, in spiritual direction, about serious and delicate questions of Christian morals, ends up by diminishing the true sense of sin almost to the point of eliminating it” (Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitenia, 18).
The meaning of the following statements of the Magisterium of the Church is fully applicable to the doctrine and sacramental discipline concerning the indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage:
“For the Church of Christ, watchful guardian that she is, and defender of the dogmas deposited with her, never changes anything, never diminishes anything, never adds anything to them; but with all diligence she treats the ancient doctrines faithfully and wisely, which the faith of the Fathers has transmitted. She strives to investigate and explain them in such a way that the ancient dogmas of heavenly doctrine will be made evident and clear, but will retain their full, integral, and proper nature, and will grow only within their own genus — that is, within the same dogma, in the same sense and the same meaning” (Pius IX, Dogmatic Bull Ineffabilis Deus)
“With regard to the very substance of truth, the Church has before God and men the sacred duty to announce it, to teach it without any attenuation, as Christ revealed it, and there is no condition of time that can reduce the rigor of this obligation. It binds in conscience every priest who is entrusted with the care of teaching, admonishing, and guiding the faithful “(Pius XII, Discourse to parish priests and Lenten preachers, March 23, 1949).
“The Church does not historicize, does not relativize to the metamorphoses of profane culture the nature of the Church that is always equal and faithful to itself, as Christ wanted it and authentic tradition perfected it” (Paul VI, Homily from October 28, 1965).
“Now it is an outstanding manifestation of charity toward souls to omit nothing from the saving doctrine of Christ” (Paul VI, Encyclical Humanae Vitae, 29).
“Any conjugal difficulties are resolved without ever falsifying and compromising the truth” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 33).
“The Church is in no way the author or the arbiter of this norm [of the Divine moral law]. In obedience to the truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the nature and dignity of the human person, the Church interprets the moral norm and proposes it to all people of good will, without concealing its demands of radicalness and perfection” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 33).
“The other principle is that of truth and consistency, whereby the church does not agree to call good evil and evil good. Basing herself on these two complementary principles, the church can only invite her children who find themselves in these painful situations to approach the divine mercy by other ways, not however through the sacraments of penance and the eucharist until such time as they have attained the required dispositions” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 34).
“The Church’s firmness in defending the universal and unchanging moral norms is not demeaning at all. Its only purpose is to serve man’s true freedom. Because there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth”(John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 96).
“When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the 'poorest of the poor' on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal” (emphasis in original) (John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 96).
“The obligation of reiterating this impossibility of admission to the Eucharist is required for genuine pastoral care and for an authentic concern for the well-being of these faithful and of the whole Church, as it indicates the conditions necessary for the fullness of that conversion to which all are always invited by the Lord“ (Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Declaration on the admissibility to the Holy Communion of the divorced and remarried, 24 June 2000, n. 5).
As Catholic bishops, who – according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council – must defend the unity of faith and the common discipline of the Church, and take care that the light of the full truth should arise for all men (see Lumen Gentium, 23) we are forced in conscience to profess in the face of the current rampant confusion the unchanging truth and the equally immutable sacramental discipline regarding the indissolubility of marriage according to the bimillennial and unaltered teaching of the Magisterium of the Church. In this spirit we reiterate:
Sexual relationships between people who are not in the bond to one another of a valid marriage – which occurs in the case of the so-called “divorced and remarried” – are always contrary to God’s will and constitute a grave offense against God.
No circumstance or finality, not even a possible imputability or diminished guilt, can make such sexual relations a positive moral reality and pleasing to God. The same applies to the other negative precepts of the Ten Commandments of God. Since “there exist acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 17).
The Church does not possess the infallible charism of judging the internal state of grace of a member of the faithful (see Council of Trent, session 24, chapter 1). The non-admission to Holy Communion of the so-called “divorced and remarried” does not therefore mean a judgment on their state of grace before God, but a judgment on the visible, public, and objective character of their situation. Because of the visible nature of the sacraments and of the Church herself, the reception of the sacraments necessarily depends on the corresponding visible and objective situation of the faithful.
It is not morally licit to engage in sexual relations with a person who is not one’s legitimate spouse supposedly to avoid another sin. Since the Word of God teaches us, it is not lawful “to do evil so that good may come” (Romans 3, 8).
The admission of such persons to Holy Communion may be permitted only when they with the help of God’s grace and a patient and individual pastoral accompaniment make a sincere intention to cease from now on the habit of such sexual relations and to avoid scandal. It is in this way that true discernment and authentic pastoral accompaniment were always expressed in the Church.
People who have habitual non-marital sexual relations violate their indissoluble sacramental nuptial bond with their life style in relation to their legitimate spouse. For this reason they are not able to participate “in Spirit and in Truth” (see John 4, 23) at the Eucharistic wedding supper of Christ, also taking into account the words of the rite of Holy Communion: “Blessed are the guests at the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation 19, 9)
.
The fulfillment of God’s will, revealed in His Ten Commandments and in His explicit and absolute prohibition of divorce, constitutes the true spiritual good of the people here on earth and will lead them to the true joy of love in the salvation of eternal life.
Being bishops in the pastoral office, who promote the Catholic and Apostolic faith (“cultores catholicae et apostolicae fidei”, see Missale Romanum, Canon Romanus), we are aware of this grave responsibility and our duty before the faithful who await from us a public and unequivocal profession of the truth and the immutable discipline of the Church regarding the indissolubility of marriage. For this reason we are not allowed to be silent.
We affirm therefore in the spirit of St. John the Baptist, of St. John Fisher, of St. Thomas More, of Blessed Laura Vicuña and of numerous known and unknown confessors and martyrs of the indissolubility of marriage:
It is not licit (non licet) to justify, approve, or legitimize either directly or indirectly divorce and a non-conjugal stable sexual relationship through the sacramental discipline of the admission of so-called “divorced and remarried” to Holy Communion, in this case a discipline alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith.
By making this public profession before our conscience and before God who will judge us, we are sincerely convinced that we have provided a service of charity in truth to the Church of our day and to the Supreme Pontiff, Successor of Saint Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth .
31 December 2017, the Feast of the Holy Family,
in the year of the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima.
+ Tomash Peta, Archbishop Metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
+ Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop-Bishop of Karaganda
+ Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
Here is why ‘non licet’
Translated from
January 3, 2018
Let me be frank. I had promised myself that I would quit commenting on AL and its application because I think that the positions in play have become very clear, and that the debate, for lack of any substantial novelties, has become a bit nauseating.
But a novelty has arrived which cannot be ignored. It is the document “Profession of immutable truths regarding sacramental marirage” signed and made public by the the three Catholic bishops of Kazakhstan (once a Soviet republic).
Tomash Peta, metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Mary Most Holy in Astana; Jan Pawel Lenga, emeritus Bishop of Kraganda; and Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, speak from a country where Catholics are less than one percent of the population, and where the Church had been reborn in the 1930s, thanks to some priests and faithful who had been veterans of Stalin lagers and chose to remain in Kazakhstan to engage in clandestine missionary activity.
The document cannot be ignored because it is not a new demand for clarity on AL, but is, in fact, a correction of the errors and ambiguities in that document. Moreover, not coming from scholars but from bishops, it certifies that there is a division in the Church today on decisive matters.
In underscoring that
the Church is held to speak with one voice, the three bishops do not hesitate to denounce the present state of confusion in everyhting that has to do with “the central manifestations of the life of the Church such as sacramental matrimony and the family as the domestic church, an the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist”.
And we have just learned that two more bishops have joined to sign the Profession: Mons. Luigi Negri, emeritus Archbishop fo Ferrara-Comacchia, and Mons. Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the USA until this pope replaced him in 2016.
But read the full text, in which the problem of the applicative norms regarding communion for remarried divorcees is clearly confronted in the light of the Church’s immutable doctrine on the sacramental bond of matrimony.
The Kazakhstan bishops''Profession':
A model of clarity compared to the statements
from the German and Maltese bishops
January 2, 2018
The presentation of Catholic teachings on marriage and morality set forth in the brief statement from Kazakhstan Bps. Peta, Lenga, and Schneider is quite sound. Indeed, in contrast to, for example, the ambiguous statement from the Argentines, the Kazakhstan profession is a model of clarity; set against the disastrous statements by, among others, the Bishops of Malta and German episcopal conference the Kazakhstans are withering. I offer three notes for those reading on the Kazakhstan profession.
First, while the Kazakhstans address only sacramental marriage (that is, marriage between two baptized persons) much of their message applies to any marriage, for all marriage is, as canonists say, intrinsically indissoluble.
Second,
when the Church talks about “marriage”, she always means marriage valid in her eyes and not necessarily marriage in the state’s eyes or marriage as many people use the term in common speech. It is, of course, far too cumbersome to include every qualifier that the Church assumes in regard to marriage every time the word “marriage” is used, but these qualifiers must be recalled when one composes and analyzes technical texts closely.
Thus, third, with regard to the Kazakhstans’ assertion that
“Unequivocally and without admitting any exception Our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ solemnly reaffirmed God’s will regarding the absolute prohibition of divorce”, two important qualifiers (briefly indicated later, but easy to miss in this first assertion) are necessary for this statement to stand, namely, we must be talking about sacramental marriage (else, the Pauline and Petrine Privileges fall), and second, we must be talking about consummated Christian marriage (else, papal dissolution of ratam-non-consummatum marriages falls).
These three exceptions to the permanence of marriage comprise, to be sure, a minuscule percentage of the divorce-and-remarried cases actually faced by pastors, but sweeping language must account for legitimate exceptions to its terms, however rare such exceptions are in real life.
I'd have gladly done without the following post which for the most part predicts what is already too predictable about what Bergoglio will do about the Kazakhstan bishops' and their 'Profession...' It's the last paragraph of the item that I find more significant and most ominous, indeed - a clever plan to impose Bergoglio thought on all the priests int he world, and through them, their parishes! Speaking of gross misuse of technology!
Rumors Part 56:
The quiet before the storm
What is Bergoglio preparing for the bishops who have
signed what is, in effect, a correction to AL
by Fra Cristoforo
Translated from
It is quite predictable. All this silence so far on the part of the Vatican media and those closely associated with them on the correction from the bishops of Kazakhstan does not augur well. In fact, Bergoglio is working on his counterattack.
My source at the Vatican says that last night, Bergoglio met at Casa Santa Marta with various Vatican media officials and his close advisers on how best to deal with this ‘unforeseen’ initiative from the Kazakhstan bishops. My source said Omissis
[that’s a new nickname but quite appropriate for someone who habitually omits any part of Christ’s words in the Gospel which do not concur with Bergoglianism] was furious as only he can be. Because he cannot stand any opposition. He is said to have screamed: “They will repent this! They will repent this!” They being the courageous bishops who have dared the contradict the neo-gospel of the new church: Amoris Laetitia.
But my source also found out the outcome of this meeting – which I am publishing only so that the three bishops and anyone else who joins them can be prepared.
In short, Bergoglio and his acolytes are preparing to ‘counter-attack’
[which means they consider the statement of Catholic doctrine by the Kazakhstan bishops an ‘attack’.]. But it will not be Bergoglio who will frontally rebut the ‘corrector’ bishops – he has given carte blanche to his official and non-official media consultants and experts to start a denigratory media campaign against them.
But this is a standard operational procedure for Latin American dictatorial regimes.
[And nothing new here on the part of Bergoglio, who refuses to even meet with his critics though they are ranking and senior cardinals, but prefers to snipe at them from a distance as he pleases]. For Bergoglio, it won’t be a problem to muzzle journalists
The denigratory campaign would, of course, serve to discredit the bishops, perhaps publishing stories from their past, true or false, or planting fake news that will serve to lessen the bishops’ credibility. Exactly as they did in Communist regimes before they proceeded to eliminate a ‘dissident’.
So in the next few days, expect Bergoglio’s media experts to publish something damaging about the 3 Kazakhstan bishops and their 2 Italian supporters so far.
[Mons Carlo Maria Vigano stands to be smeared mercilessly because of his pre-Vatileaks-1 antics, and whatever wrongdowing the Vatican ould accuse him of doing while he was the Nuncio to the USA. I am sure he knew this risk going in.] But expect Bergoglio to say something snide, anyway.
[He just cannot resist yapping to show off “how good I am and how bad all these others are”!]
It is for us who are not under Bergoglio’s thumb to act as a shield for these courageous bishops.
We know that a totalitarian regime is in charge at the Vatican. Multiple sources have confirmed that Bergoglian ‘controls’ have become near obsessive. E-mails and personal cellphones and the activities of everyone are said to be under strict surveillance. It’s the order of the day.
And now, hear this:
the Holy See has developed an App that every priest in the world can download, so that every week, they will have a homily all prepared for Sunday Mass. Prepared of coruse by the pope’ aides. With the themes of Bergoglo. With the words of Bergoglio. Downloading these pre-cooked homilies is optional for now. In a few months, it will be ardently recommended. Within a year, it will be mandatory. So that every priest too lazy to think up his own homily becomes obliged, every Sunday, to repeat only and exclusively the words of the Jefe Maximo.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/01/2018 01:56]