It appears Fr. De Souza has recovered from his relapse into Bergolidolatry (his birthday tribute on eight reasons we must be thankful for this pope) to write a no-nonsense analysis of the AL crisis...
Debating ‘Amoris Laetitia’:
A look ahead
NEWS ANALYSIS
by Father Raymond J. de Souza, SJ
December 30, 2016
It was officially the Jubilee of Mercy, with its attendant graces. But 2016 was more the “Year of Amoris Laetitia”. Its ongoing reception may well produce a year ahead of increasing acrimony and division.
In the 1990s, St. John Paul II convened a series of continental synods to prepare for the Great Jubilee of 2000. The subsequent post-synodal apostolic exhortations took the titles Ecclesia in Africa, Ecclesia in America, Ecclesia in Oceania, etc. When the last one was released in 2003, Ecclesia in Europa, I joked in the Vatican press hall that perhaps a boxed set could be issued under the omnibus title Ecclesia ad Nauseam.
AL has not even reached is first anniversary and yet
a certain tedium is setting in. [Tedium does not describe the active and worsening outrage felt by those who object to AL's doctrinal lapses, the pope's defiant and arrogant obstinacy over these lapses, and the entire Bergoglian faction's vociferously unwavering support and defense of a pope while failing to credibly support and defend his lapses.] In the last months of the year, the debate over AL became increasingly heated. How did it come to be that way? And what can be expected in 2017?
The Issue
The controverted section of AL is Chapter 8, which deals with the pastoral care of those who are in “irregular” situations, most specifically those Catholics who have been sacramentally married, civilly divorced and now are living in a new conjugal union, either common-law cohabitation or civil marriage. They are living conjugal lives while being validly married to someone else.
The traditional pastoral practice of the Church has been that such couples may not receive absolution in the sacrament of confession unless they are willing to cease that conjugal relationship — either by separation, or, if that is considered impossible, by abstaining from conjugal relations. Without at least an intention to do so, there would be lacking the required purpose of amendment, and perhaps even contrition.
Without sacramental absolution, the person would not be able to receive Communion, being guilty of extra-marital sexual relations, which are always objectively grave sins. In addition, given that receiving holy Communion has a nuptial dimension — Christ the Bridegroom offering himself to his Bride, the Church, in total and indissoluble fidelity —
the divorced and civilly remarried present a counter sign to the communion of Christ and the Church.
Since at least the 1970s, principally in the German-speaking world, there has been a sustained effort to modify the Church’s pastoral practice to allow such couples to receive absolution and Communion without a required intention to change their situation. Most prominently associated with Cardinal Walter Kasper, the proposal was authoritatively rejected as incompatible with Catholic doctrine by St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, and thus expressed in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Synods on the Family, 2014-2015
Pope Francis held up Cardinal Kasper as a model theologian at his very first Angelus address on March 17, 2013, four days after his election. In February 2014, he invited Cardinal Kasper to address the College of Cardinals, wherein Cardinal Kasper argued for a change in the Church’s practice.
When the cardinals emphatically rejected Cardinal Kasper’s proposal as contrary to the Catholic faith, the Holy Father himself came to the embattled cardinal’s defense, indicating that the subject would be on the agenda for two synods on the family in October 2014 and October 2015.
[No, that's very early revisionism, Fr De Souza. The pope asked Kasper to deliver that address to set the stage for the first synod which he had already decided to convoke as early as July 2013, with the express purpose of getting the bishops to approve his 'communion for everyone' practice in Buenos Aires, beginning with RCDs as the wedge to get 'legitimacy' for everyone else wishing to receive communion without being in the required state of grace - in other words, to legitimize mass sacrilege, after mass condonement of chronic states of mortal sin.]
In August 2015, Pope Francis indicated in an elliptical way that he did not hold to the clear teaching of St. John Paul II in
Familiaris Consortio (1981) and
Reconciliatio et Paenitencia (1984), along with Pope Benedict’s
Sacramentum Caritatis (2007).
He quoted the relevant texts, but deliberately omitted their conclusive teaching on the points in question.
Supporters of Cardinal Kasper’s position
[led by the pope orchestrating all the synodal manipulations behind the scenes] attempted to get the synod of 2015 to endorse a modification of the settled teaching. The synod fathers refused to do so.
[But]They were not permitted the opportunity to vote clearly on whether the teaching of St. John Paul II was to be upheld in its entirety.
[They had a majority - why did they not insist on it???] They voted instead on a more ambiguous desire to include such couples in “fuller participation in the life of the Church.”
In the relevant sections of the synod’s final report, the words “sacrament” and “holy Communion” do not appear. [Surely, they knew this too! The need for 'compromise language' does not hold up. How is it compromising to describe marriage, penance and the Eucharist is sacraments?]
Pope Francis was not pleased at the synod’s outcome, concluding the gathering with a blistering address that characterized those who opposed Cardinal Kasper’s proposal as desiring to throw “stones” at the suffering and vulnerable. The seeds of rancor and division that would flower in the subsequent year were sown in that fierce denunciation by the Holy Father of those who disagreed with him.
[But these 'fierce denunciations of those who disagree with him' have characterized this pope's discourse from Day 1.]
Why does it matter?
Is the opposition to Cardinal Kasper’s proposal an ideological adherence to small-minded rules by pastors who are like the Pharisees, who Jesus himself denounced in the kind of incendiary language Pope Francis employs?
Is the desire to be more “lenient” opposed only by those whom Pope Francis characterizes as preferring “a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion”
(Amoris Laetitia, 308)? What do those who disagree with the Holy Father think is at stake?
It is not unworthy reception of Communion in and of itself. That happens in most parishes every Sunday in great numbers, as the practice of sacramental confession has become quite rare in many places. Many people receive Communion who are in an objective state of mortal sin. It would be serious for pastoral practice to recommend that people receive the Eucharist when they shouldn’t, but the existing norm is that it happens without anything being said about it at all. [An undeclared norm that Bergoglio hoped he would institutionalize in the universal Church through a rubberstamp synod, but failing that, he's trying to do it anyway through the accursed AL Chapter 8.]
Marriage is the key issue. Is it possible to be in a conjugal relationship with someone other than a validly married spouse that would be pleasing in the eyes of God? Is it possible to know with “a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal,” as AL puts it
(303)?
If that were to be the case, then the inseparable link between marriage and sexual relations — such that only in a valid marriage are such relations morally licit — would be split asunder in principle.
The opponents of Cardinal Kasper’s proposal see that the heart of the sexual revolution is the separating of those things that the Christian tradition has always insisted God intended to be kept together — sex and love, sex and marriage, sex and procreation.
If the Church were to teach that there were circumstances in which a couple who were not validly married to each other were morally permitted to engage in sexual relations, a great unraveling would begin. What, then, about couples who think that the “complexity of one’s limits” does not permit marriage in the first place?
It should be remembered that when the Anglican Communion first permitted a departure from the Christian tradition on sex and marriage, it was the much more limited case of occasional use of contraceptives by some married couples. Cardinal Kasper’s proposal goes much further than that.
The logic of the proposal not only threatens marriage, but applies to any situation in which a person, aware of the gravity of a sinful action, intends to continue on that course nevertheless. In November, the bishops of Atlantic Canada, explicitly citing the pastoral example of Pope Francis, issued a statement in which the possibility was foreseen of a priest offering absolution and viaticum to a person deliberately intending to proceed to an assisted suicide.
A rush to non-judgment
Dated for the feast of St. Joseph (March 19) and the anniversary of the installation of Pope Francis, AL was released on April 8. It came very quickly.
Despite being the longest papal document ever published in the entire history of the Church, the first draft arrived at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) from the papal household in early December 2015, barely six weeks after the conclusion of the second synod. Given that such post-synodal apostolic exhortations often appear two years after the relevant synod, the rush to get such a long and complex document to press was remarkable. It meant that widespread consultation in the drafting was avoided. [
DIM=9pt][And equally obvious, that the document had already been prepared beforehand - and had to be edited and adjusted to reflect the pope's failure to get the results he expected from the synods.]
What, then, does AL say? Pope Francis strongly suggested that what the Church had taught in the past no longer held, but he did not explicitly teach that. Indeed, following the style of the synod’s final report, he did not explicitly mention holy Communion for “irregular” couples at all.
As I wrote then,
“from the first pages of Amoris Laetitia to the last, the exhortation evidently yearns to declare what it never declares: that the teaching on marriage and holy Communion can change. Indeed, the most critical line on the question is buried in a footnote, almost as if the editors hoped no one would notice.”
Could it be that the explicit teaching of three previous apostolic exhortations and the Catechism could be overturned by an exhortation that never directly addresses the specific issue?
When the Holy Father and others insist that no discrete doctrine was changed in AL, they are correct. That the Holy Father would like the teaching to change can be reasonably inferred from AL, but he does not teach that, and reading the pontifical mind is not determinative for establishing a magisterial teaching.
Hence, at the press conference for the presentation of Amoris Laetitia, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, the Pope’s favored interpreter of his exhortation, said that the famous Footnote 351 did not change anything. It spoke of the “help of the sacraments,” but that did not imply changing
Familiaris Consortio.
The following month, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the CDF, gave a major address in Madrid that insisted that
all interpretations of Amoris Laetitia had to be in strict continuity with the three apostolic exhortations that preceded it, as well as the Catechism. During an airborne press conference in which he was asked about Footnote 351, Pope Francis said that he did not remember it.
Selective footnotes and
the missing 'encyclical in the room'
AL takes a curious editorial approach for a document of unprecedented length.
It does not engage forthrightly the controverted issue at hand, but rather avoids a direct discussion. This is evident in the use of footnotes, which are both ambiguous and misleading. Several key footnotes do not in fact support the text where they appear, citing only portions of passages to pervert their plain meaning.
Yet the most astonishing editorial decision of AL is not the deceptive footnotes that appear, but the encyclical that does not appear.
There is not a single reference, in the main text or even in the footnotes, to Veritatis Splendor.
St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on the foundations of Catholic moral teaching is the principal magisterial document on the moral life since the Council of Trent. Ignoring
Veritatis Splendor is like writing about the nature of the Church and not making reference to the teaching of Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution on the Church,
Lumen Gentium.
The reason for the startling omission is evident. While it might be possible to square the general approach of AL with the specific teaching of Familiaris Consortio (see Buenos Aires guidelines),
the approach to the moral life proposed in AL is at odds with the teaching of Veritatis Splendor.
Indeed, the third part of
Veritatis Splendor, entitled “Lest the Cross of Christ Be Emptied of Its Power,” warns precisely against
the view that the demands of the moral life are too difficult and cannot be lived even with the help of God’s grace. Chapter 8 of AL appears to be exactly what St. John Paul II had in mind in writing Veritatis Splendor. It does appear to empty the cross of Christ of its power.
The drafters of AL [apparently] persuaded Pope Francis that it was better to pretend that
Veritatis Splendor had never been written.
[Why blame the drafters alone? How do we know Bergoglio himself was honest enough to know he could not possibly cite VS with any good faith?] That was a mistake (see the following on the dubia of the four cardinals).
Magisterium by stealth
After the spring interventions by Cardinals Schönborn and Müller, it appeared that AL had maintained the status quo, except that
those pastors who ignored Familiaris Consortio and the Catechism would now do so claiming that it was what Pope Francis really wanted, though he did not say so.
Over the summer, the predictable outcome of deliberate ambiguity came to pass. The German bishops said that those in “irregular” situations could approach the sacraments. The Polish bishops said they couldn’t. The Vatican did not step in to clarify. There seemed to be an effort to leave the whole matter behind.
Just before leaving for World Youth Day in St. John Paul II’s Kraków, Pope Francis said in his video message that he looked forward to symbolically handing AL To the youth of the world. By the time he got to Poland, that idea was dropped, and the entire World Youth Day proceeded with nary a reference to AL the Holy Father.
[Who would have compounded the pernicious effect of the lubricious Vatican handbook on sex handed out at WYD, with calling the attention of the assembled youth of the world to AL's moral dubiousness and rejection of absolute truth, in the very homeland of the saint who wrote Veritatis splendor.]
Instead, Pope Francis opted for something more clandestine. It was arranged that the Buenos Aires bishops would propose guidelines for the implementation of AL and send them to the Pope. He then wrote a private letter to the bishops approving them, adding that there were “no other interpretations.”
It was magisterium by stealth — except that ambiguous magisterial documents cannot be officially clarified by private papal letters leaked to the press by those close to the Holy Father.
What did the Buenos Aires guidelines propose? Only the narrowest path possible, and something quite far from Cardinal Kasper’s original proposal. The bishops basically followed an argument proposed by professor Rocco Buttiglione, a collaborator with St. John Paul II, and praised by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago.
Buttiglione raises the case of a person who wishes to refrain from conjugal relations, but doing so would cause the other party to leave the irregular union, perhaps to the detriment of the children. In such a case, the person is not desiring the sinful behavior, and therefore is not culpable of it. Yet that argument is not new, and not really what AL seems to suggest. It is an approach long adopted already by confessors in matrimonial situations where, for example, one spouse wishes to refrain from contraception while the other insists upon it.
Cardinals ask for clarity
When official texts are unclear, there is a long-standing practice of submitting questions —
dubia — to the competent authority for clarification. Often this is done for liturgical matters. Can a pastor mandate that his congregation receives holy Communion only on the tongue or only in the hand? (No.)
In September, four cardinals submitted five questions (dubia) to the Holy Father, asking him to clarify that the teaching of
Familiaris Consortio and
Veritatis Splendor had not been changed by his exhortation. Interestingly, only one of the five questions dealt with the former, while four dealt with what AL refused to deal with, namely Veritatis Splendor. In November, after the Holy Father chose not to answer the dubia, the four cardinals released them publicly, creating a firestorm of attention.
Soon after AL was released, it had been suggested that the submission of dubia to the Holy Father or to the CDF might serve to clarify the ambiguities. One cardinal who would eventually sign the dubia rejected that approach in May. What changed? The cardinals have not said, but two developments over the summer might have prompted them.
First, the contradictory guidelines emerging from different bishops. Second, the Buenos Aires gambit, using press leaks of private letters as a sort of ersatz magisterium.
It threatened to undermine the gravity of the magisterial authority of the Church itself, a maneuver more suggestive of the machinations of a political spin doctor rather than a responsible exercise of the Church’s teaching authority. As Cardinal Raymond Burke told Raymond Arroyo of EWTN, a “worldly spirit” had entered the Church.
['Worldly' is a misnomer - 'nether-worldly' is perhaps more appropriate.]
Silence and attack
The dubia of the four cardinals might be considered something of a fool’s errand.
- They have asked for clarity about a document that was deliberately written to be ambiguous.
- They have asked whether AL is compatible with Veritatis Splendor, when the former was written specifically as if the latter did not exist.
- They have asked for a reaffirmation of traditional doctrine on marriage and sexuality when the entire synod process was driven by a desire to avoid talk of doctrine as much as possible.
And so it was not surprising that the Holy Father chose not to respond directly to the cardinals’ questions.
There are, however, other ways that a pope might speak indirectly, usually through his principal collaborators.
Perhaps most remarkable in the year of AL are the voices that have gone silent. The usual voices that one might expect to further explicate the argument of Amoris Laetitia have not done so.
- The congregations for the faith and for liturgy — most relevant to the doctrinal and sacramental questions involved — have not offered a word in support of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia.
- The official papal spokesman, Greg Burke, has given the teaching of AL a wide berth, not seeking to engage a question that greatly occupies the very press hall he presides over.
- Around the world, while there have been both notable voices supportive and critical, the norm from bishops has been next to nothing of substance. Just as AL pretends that Veritatis Splendor does not exist, perhaps a majority of bishops have taken a similar practical approach to AL, acting as if Chapter 8 did not exist.
The most vigorous support has come from papal spokesmen who have not been above attacking the motives and good faith of those who oppose the approach of AL.
- The Holy Father’s unofficial but authoritative spokesman, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, has tweeted and written about
those who raise questions “in order to create difficulty and division,” implying that the cardinals’ dubia do not “seek [answers] with sincerity.”
- The Holy Father’s biographer, Austen Ivereigh, went further, accusing
those who ask whether AL contradicts Veritatis Splendor of being “dissenters … [who] question the legitimacy of the Pope’s rule.”
- Those who reasonably express concern that Al seeks an accommodation with the sexual revolution that is contrary to the words of Christ in the Gospels are dismissed contemptuously:
“But even as they insist that there is a debate to be had, a case to answer, a matter to be settled, the train is leaving the station, and they are left on the platform, waving their arms.”
Ivereigh argues that the Amoris Laetitia debate, surrounded though it is by ambiguities and contradictory interpretations, is over and the Church needs to move on.
Why the haste for a document that is less than a year old? Because
the longer AL remains under examination and discussion, the more clear it will be that the arguments of the critics, well developed in the Tradition of the Church, require arguments in response, similarly grounded.
To date, the defenders of Al Laetitia have not offered arguments as much as undemonstrated assertions and appeals to authority. Without a convincing argument to demonstrate why AL does not run afoul of Veritatis Splendor, which it prima facie does, attacking those who raise questions remains only a short-term political tactic.
The magisterium is not, over the long term, shaped by such tactics. We live, though, in the immediate term, where such tactics have their impact.
The year after the year of AL will thus be one of greater acrimony and division, with those close to the Pope questioning the integrity of those who insist that, indeed, the cross of Christ has not lost its power and, in fact, remains that which makes possible the joy of love — even in the 21st century.
Is Pope Francis aware
how grave the DUBIA situation is?
by Giuseppe Nardi
Translated from
KATHOLISCHES.INFO
December 29, 2016
ROME - Perhaps the Vatican has seen that a possible 'fraternal correction' of Pope Francis by some of his cardinals is a serious matter. That appears to be indicated by an article in Vatican Insider by Andrea Tornielli, perhaps the Vaticanista closest to this pope.
"A possible fraternal correction of the pope must first take place
in camera caritatis [an expression that means 'confidentially'; literally, it means 'in the room of love'], Tornielli quotes Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the four signatories of the DUBIA submitted to the pope over the post-synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia.
Under Francis, Tornielli has become the 'court Vaticanista'. He is known to always have immediate access to the pope, advises him on media questions, and has been used as a conduit to say things that the pope cannot say. One assumes that his article on the DUBIA represents the opinion and interests of the pope.
In effect, he is trying to drive a wedge between the four signatories of Dubia, but Cardinal Brandmüller is not playing.
Tornielli refers to an interview with Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke before Christmas in which he says that if the pope continues to ignore the letter about the DUBIA, a timeline for a possible fraternal correction of the pope by some cardinals could be set after Epiphany (Jan. 5).
Like the Bergoglian Luis Badilla, editor of the semi-official Vatican website Il Sismografo (under the auspices of the Secretariat of State), Tornielli is clutching at a straw in claiming that such a fraternal correction is not provided for in Church law.
Cardinal Burke, speaking of such a fraternal correction, had cited several precedents in the history of the Church, going back to St. Paul's fraternal correction of St. Peter.
Tornielli undertakes only a half-hearted attempt to dismiss the possibility of such a 'punishment' - it appears that he and those around the pope are all too aware of the seriousness of the situation, which he describes as 'a kind of ultimatum' from Cardinal Burke
[i.e.,'Answer the DUBIA, or else!']
At the Vatican, they seem to be really at their wits' end to deal with the DUBIA. It looks like Pope Francis, who deliberately got himself into this impasse, sees no way out. His vociferous entourage who reply to the pope's critics by attacking them have been more a detriment to him than an aid since the conflict over AL escalated.
Instead of opening a dialog, they have arrogantly escalated hostilities by abusive provocation.
Tornielli's article indicates that the papal court in Casa Santa Marta is aware they are on the horns of a dilemma, hence, the emphasis on Cardinal Brandmueller's words
in camera caritatis - that is, if there is to be a correction, then it should not be done in public.
In this, the pope's associates and the pope himself need not worry. The Four Cardinals are not out to 'expose' the pope. All they want is for him to do what he is called on by duty to do: to strengthen his brothers on the faith and to tell them clearly what the Church teaches.
The DUBIA became necessary after a drawn-out process in the past three tears in which the pope's people have behaved like shysters, and he has allowed them to do so. And the exhortation with its infamous footnotes bears the mark of their shopkeeper mentality.
[Really, the brunt of the blame should be on Bergoglio himself - his henchmen have only been carrying out what he wants.]
Since then, the whole question has taken a completely new dimension. With his signature on AL, he brought discord and confusion to the Church. In the past eight months since AL was released, he has been repeatedly called on to clarify its ambiguities.
By refusing to do so, he opens himself to the obvious suspicion that he is deliberately not reaffirming Church doctrine on the disputed points but that he is replacing it with his own. He could easily dispel this thought, without risking any loss of face, if he simply reaffirmed the unchanging doctrine of the Church.
But something in him balks strongly against doing that, and he would rather have himself come to this most dangerous situation which could damage the Petrine ministry and the prestige of the Church, or worse,
drive a fatal schism. [Herewith, my usual objection to this facile, utterly unrealistic line!] That does not look like responsible handling at all.
Will Francis himself be that 'Pelagian' that he has often accused his opponents, actual or imaginary, to be?
[I do not see how this is relevant, any more than I could understand why Bergoglio denounced 'neo-Pelagians' in Evangelii gaudium. The Pelagian heresy was that man is basically good, original sin had no effect on him, and that he can choose good or evil without God's aid.]
Cardinal Brandmueller answered Tornielli's questions with utmost composure, without any of that nervousness that appears to have gripped those on the pope's side. He pointed out that Cardinal Burke "never said that an eventual 'fraternal correction' - in the sense this is mentioned in Galatians 1, 11-14 - would be done in public", because a fraternal correction should be done
in camera caritatis.
Tornielli spun his own wishful thinking from that statement, saying that Brandmueller pointed out Cardinal Burke was not speaking in these interviews as a 'spokesmen' for the Four Cardinals. Which seems to express the desperation prevailing in Casa Santa Marta.
Brandmueller underscored that "We are waiting for an answer to the DUBIA, because
the absence of such an answer could be seen by many in the Church as the pope's refusal to agree clearly and explicitly with defined doctrine".
Three days earlier, on December 23, he told
Der Spiegel: "
Anyone who considers that continuing in adultery and receiving Holy Communion are compatible is a heretic and promotes schism."
And that this is valid even if it applied to just one case. But it is precisely a case-by-case approach that Pope Francis advocates in AL, as his closest associates have confirmed in their statements and writings.
The above statements by Cardinal Brandmueller are so dramatically clear and sharp that they can be frightening. He makes it clear what is at stake here.
If the pope continues to refuse an answer, or gives a heterodox answer to the DUBIA, then the accusation of 'heretical' and 'promoting schism' would apply to him. With all the consequences thereof.
The details are not known but it seems that in the past week,
the pope himself did not rule out a surprise resignation as a way out of the dead end he has reached on AL. [Sounds very much like wishful thinking! Uber-narcissist Bergoglio give up the immense power and authority of the papacy??? Think again. If he did, then we will all have to acknowledge that he is capable, after all, of genuine humility!] Church historian Roberto Di Mattei suggests that such a drumbeat may not be unlikely in 2017.
Howsoever this sad conflict ends, it will remain an irritating question mark that a pope could play coy and avoid answering questions, thereby refusing to acknowledge and validate the doctrine of the Church he was elected to lead.
The Four Cardinals are to be thanked for having spotlighted this intolerable papal deficiency, which is incomprehensible and infinitely worrying in the light of Church history.
As a factual PS, I append hereby Fr. Hunwicke's posts on three questions that he posed in writing to Cardinal Burke, with the cardinal's answers.
Answers from Cardinal Burke
to some younger priests' own dubia
December 27, 28, 29, 2016
As we await the text of the Fraternal Correction of the Roman Pontiff which Cardinal Burke has promised, I can share with you a briefer text from his Eminence's pen.
A few weeks ago, some younger clergy asked me to put some queries to the Cardinal. I think the reason for this was that I, being old, am perhaps not quite as vulnerable to intimidatory threats and petty episcopal malice as they are. These queries were sent before it was made public that the Four Cardinals had submitted their five DUBIA.
I received his Eminence's most gracious answers dated 3 December. He responded, he said, "to certain serious questions of the clergy in the present situation of widespread confusion and error in the Church".
My first query, which was followed by the reply, follows below.
Is it licit for a priest to give Absolution or the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist to a person who is living as husband or wife with another to whom they are not, in the eyes of the Church, validly married; when that person makes clear that he or she has no intention of metanoia and of doing their best, with the help of Divine Grace, to avoid committing such adultery in the future?
Answer: A priest may not give Absolution to a party who is living in an irregular matrimonial union and has no firm purpose of amendment. If the party has the firm purpose of amendment, pledging, with the help of Divine Grace, to avoid any sin of adultery in the future, then the priest may give Absolution, counseling the party that he should only approach to receive Holy Communion in a place in which there is no reasonable chance of scandal.
Is it acceptable for a couple not validly married and with offspring for whom they are responsible to argue that, for the good of that offspring, they may lawfully continue to live as husband and wife because it may prudently be foreseen that their relationship, if not sustained by adulterous intimacies, would fail to survive?
A couple who are living in an irregular matrimonial union may argue that they must continue to live under the same roof for the sake of their offspring, but they must live without recourse to adulterous acts, that is, they must live as brother and sister. In other words, the need to live under the same roof for the sake of children or elderly grandparents is not an argument which justifies acts of adultery.
Both reason and faith tell us that adulterous acts can never be justified, can never serve the good of either the parties or of their children.
Is there any pastoral or legislative authority within the Church Militant by which dispensations can be granted in these matters, or do they involve a ius Divinum which sets them beyond dispensation and legislative modification?
There is no pastoral authority of any kind within the Church who can grant a dispensation to a party, so that he may live in a marital way with someone who is not his spouse. This is a question of
Ius Divinum and is articulated in can. 1141 of the Code of Canon Law: "A marriage which is ratified and consummated cannot be dissolved by any human power or by any cause other than death".
His Eminence concluded his letter thus:
I hope that these answers are of some help to you and to the clergy who have raised them to you. The clear answer to these questions is imperative for the correction of the widespread confusion in the Church which is redounding to the grave harm of souls.
Asking God to bless you and all your priestly labors, and confiding your intentions to the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint Joseph, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John Apostle and Evangelist, and Saint John Fisher, I remain
Yours in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
Meanwhile, bookmark this link
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XKimKuzgHgbE9YsJXojwhiufsDosCURraly6mMXIxDE/edit
as a ready reference courtesy of Rorate caeli...
What the Church and her best thinkers
have said through the centuries about adultery -
and what has happened since in this pontificate
December 30, 2016
For the benefit of our readers, Mr. Andrew Guernsey has graciously shared with us his Denzinger-style research identifying the sources of Church teaching and perennial discipline, and exhaustively cataloguing the Bergoglian machinations, to allow communion for divorced and civilly “remarried” adulterers.
In a nutshell, this is nearly every known utterance on the topic from the dawn of man, until our current, pathetic state of affairs.
The document starts with the Old Testament, then the New Testament, and then continues chronologically through the Fathers, popes, martyrs, councils and more, upon which the Church bases its unchanging doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage and Her perennial mandate of excluding adulterers from Holy Communion and the Sacrament of Penance, except that they live in complete continence as brother and sister.
Subsequent to Church history, the document also catalogues the timeline of source interviews, homilies and other mischief surrounding the pontificate of Pope Francis.
The contrast pre- and post-Francis on this matte
is nothing short of incredible, read in the context of Church history, as this well-researched document proves.
Now, the burden of proof is clearly on those agitating for change -- for rupture. Let them prove how they advocate for this change while remaining God-fearing Catholics.
If you didn't already know it before, the arrogant, authoritarian, brook-no-resistance ways in which this pope has sought to impose his modernist views to overturn a Church doctrine that had been enunciated by Christ himself constitute more than abundant proof of his blind hubris and abiding delusion that he knows better than Christ himself what a church ought to be.