There are two ongoing 'Maltese debacles'. The first involves the Vatican's improper and illegal attempt to intervene in the internal governance of the Sovereign Order of Malta which has the same status as a sovereign state in international law as Vatican City State. And the second involves the Church in Malta whose bishops - including the once iconic prosecutor of clerical sex abuses Mons. Charles Scicluna - have decided to go all the way and interpret AL the way this pope really intends it to be interpreted, no ifs or buts, which dramatically illustrates the great split in the Church that this pope has now provoked directly with his deliberate equivocations in AL and refusal to clear them up...
More on the (second) Maltese debacle
by Christopher A. Ferrara
January 17, 2017
The Church has reached a turning point in her history whose magnitude cannot be exaggerated. With the evident approval of a sitting Roman Pontiff, who immediately published their “guidelines” in his semi-official newspaper, the bishops of Malta have turned what was once a veritable fortress of orthodox Catholicism, into an outpost for the institutionalized acceptance of divorce and “remarriage” in the Catholic Church.
The Maltese prelates accomplish their evil end by proclaiming patent moral nonsense not even worthy of being called casuistry. As they write (citing Amoris Laetitia [AL]):
If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with ‘humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching [!], in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it’ (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).”
This is devilish sophistry, shamelessly dependent upon a deliberate abuse of language. How can “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching,” “a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” and “an informed and enlightened conscience” be consistent with a belief that one can be “at peace with God” while continuing to engage in adulterous sexual relations outside of marriage?
How can the bishops of Malta, successors of the Apostles themselves, dare to proclaim that public adulterers thus deluded must be admitted to Holy Communion? Have these bishops gone mad? Or are they merely the cunning proponents of a new religion that is attempting to impose itself upon the universal Church during this pontificate? A religion that drapes itself in pious blandishments while it promotes an intrinsic evil at war with the piety it deviously professes.
Of course the bishops of Malta are no mere outliers. They are only following the trend that Francis has set in motion throughout the Catholic world.
For example, before the bishops of Malta made explicit what was always implicit in AL, Bishop Robert McElroy, installed as the Bishop of San Diego by none other than Francis, had already done the same. In a statement issued to parishes in San Diego, McElroy declared that priests of the diocese must “assist those who are divorced and remarried and cannot receive an annulment to utilize the internal forum of conscience in order to discern if God is calling them to return to the Eucharist.”
That’s right: the bishop personally installed by Francis in a major American diocese has decreed that Catholics who cannot obtain an annulment, and thus are bound for life to their spouses in Holy Matrimony, may nonetheless “discern” that they can “return to the Eucharist” while engaging in sexual relations with someone to whom they are not married.
As the always sober and balanced Father Brian Harrison has observed,
“if Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on marital love comes to be generally interpreted and applied as liberally as it has been in the Diocese of San Diego, California, it will in effect mean the death of this sacrament as the Gospel of Christ and the Catholic Church have always presented it: a sacred covenant whose indissoluble character means that remarriage after divorce constitutes adultery — a violation of the Sixth Commandment that excludes one from sacramental absolution and Eucharistic communion.”
Apocalyptic is the only word that captures the gravity of this situation. One cannot say too much about it. No doubt more will be said here, for nothing like this has ever happened in the entire history of the Catholic Church.
The impression of a terminal phase in the ecclesial crisis of the past half-century is now almost palpable, as is the sense of an impending and quite dramatic intervention from on high. God will not be mocked, and His mockers will not have long to continue trampling upon His law.
There is no doubt any longer: to recall the famous words of Cardinal Ciappi,
this is the apostasy that “begins at the top” as foretold in the Third Secret of Fatima.
[For some time now, I have felt that de facto apostasy, rather than just heresy - even if apostasy means, in the religious sense, the formal disaffiliation from, or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person, and in the broader sociological sense, renunciation and criticism of, or opposition to, a person's former religion - is the more appropriate term to apply to what Jorge Bergoglio has been doing in the past four years, in setting up his undeclared church of Bergoglio most cunningly and conveniently on the readymade infrastructure and institutions of the Roman Catholic Church.
Obviously, he cannot formally renounce or disaffiliate from the Church he was elected to lead, and he would be foolish to give up all the perks and prerogatives, the power and authority, he enjoys as pope to do what he wants, as he wants, without recognizing any limitation to what he can do. So, for the moment, he is having his cake - setting up the church of Bergoglio with every day that passes while, in effect, gobbling up what he can of the Roman Catholic Church. The world and the Church have not seen a more satanic scheme for one man to have his perverted way with the Church of Christ.]
May Our Lady of Fatima protect us from the chastisement that is surely approaching as the human element of the Church
[led by no less than the supposed Vicar of Christ on earth] widely rebels against her divine Founder!
Meltdown in Malta
BY Fr. Gerald E. Murray
JANUARY 18, 2017
One of the most troubling and questionable affirmations in Amoris Laetitia is found in paragraph 301:
“The Church possesses a solid body of reflection concerning mitigating factors and situations. Hence it can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.”
But how can anyone be so sure of the truth of this counter-intuitive assertion when applied to a particular case of an adulterous union? - - Isn’t there a greater probability that a Catholic who has separated from his spouse and entered a second “marriage” in a civil or non-Catholic ceremony, and then committed acts of adultery with someone who is not in truth his spouse, would be aware that his behavior was condemned by Our Lord Himself:
“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.” (Lk 16:18) [But the metaphysical elephant occupying the entire space of AL is precisely that teaching of Christ, which the document ignores completely!]
- And would he not thus would be guilty of offending God by his freely chosen sinful behavior?
- Is it possible that he never heard of this teaching?
- Didn’t he attend Pre-Cana classes before marrying his spouse in a Catholic ceremony in which he vowed fidelity until death in the indissoluble bond of marriage?
- Isn’t it the reality that he couldn’t celebrate a Catholic ceremony for his second “marriage” because the Church does not consider a second union, while his spouse is still living, to be a marriage, but rather an adulterous union?
The Church’s discipline of denying Holy Communion to those living in a public state of sin is not uniquely based on her duty to prevent public scandal.
It is also based on the plainly reasonable assumption that someone who freely commits objectively grave violations of God’s law in a matter with which they have sufficient familiarity (in this case, the recognition by a Catholic who has been married in a Church ceremony that he is never allowed to commit adultery) is, in fact, guilty of intentional violations of that law and thus has fallen into mortal sin.
Can a Catholic married man who, following a civil divorce from his wife, “remarries” and has ongoing sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife safely assume for any reason whatsoever that he is not guilty of mortal sin, and thus is free to approach the altar to receive Holy Communion?
Of course not!
The Church is not in the business of supplying “get-out-of-jail-free cards” to people who violate God’s law and then search for excuses why that law does not apply to them in their particular cases. To do so is to treat God’s law on marriage, or any other matter, as merely a suggestion, subject to personal ratification before becoming obligatory.
The bishops of Malta have regrettably embraced the get-out-of-jail-free mentality. They recently chose to instruct their faithful as follows:
If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).
Thus Maltese Catholics who are living in an adulterous second marriage are now being told by their bishops that they can engage in gravely sinful behavior that is publicly known and not be denied Holy Communion when they “acknowledge and believe” that they are “at peace with God.”
- What did Our Lord ever say that gave the bishops the impression that being at peace with God includes committing acts that are explicitly and strictly forbidden by God?
- Did Our Lord tell the woman caught in adultery “Go and sin no more, unless you have convinced yourself that you are exempt from obeying the Sixth Commandment, and that adulterous behavior in your case is pleasing, not displeasing, to God and should therefore be embraced as good for you by the rest of the Church community, including any spouse aggrieved by this behavior.” No. He simply said: “Go and sin no more.” (Jn 8:11)
- How should Maltese priests who hear confessions respond from this point on to divorced and remarried Catholics who seek absolution without a firm purpose of amendment?
- Are they to cooperate in what is plainly an act of non-repentance of adulterous behavior, as in the case of a man who tells the priest in confession that he plans to continue committing acts that he was taught were mortally sinful but now, thanks to this new document, he believes he is at peace with God?
- Are priests now to accept without question the “at peace with God” claim of divorced and remarried Catholics who come forward for Holy Communion in their parishes?
- Is there no harm and scandal given when publicly known behavior reprobated by God is treated as a matter of indifference by the Church – so long as the person engaging is such behavior has decided, against the plain words of Our Lord, that he is just fine with God.
- Or thanks to his bishops, he is now sure that God has no problem with his behavior, which he has judged to be good for himself in his concrete circumstances?
Clearly, this is scandalous and destructive of faith and morals.
Should Pope Francis answer the dubia of Cardinal Burke et al? The Maltese Bishops’ document is undeniable evidence that in the absence of a papal reaffirmation of the Church’s constant discipline and teaching about marriage, divorce, adultery, and the reception of the sacraments the integrity of the Church’s teaching and mission will be undermined by her own confused shepherds.
Unless the pope acts, we will witness a global fragmentation of what was once consistent, universal, faithful Catholic teaching.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2017 06:23]