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Showing posts with label Amoris Laetitia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amoris Laetitia. Show all posts

Wednesday 3 January 2018

Two Italian bishops contradict Pope Francis!

From Edward Pentina at the National Catholic Register:

Update, Jan 2, 11.40pm:

According to the Italian Catholic website Corrispondenza Romana, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, has added his name to the Kazakh bishops’ profession of truth about sacramental marriage. So, too, has Italian emeritus Archbishop Luigi Negri of Ferrara-Comacchio.

Archbishop Vigano served as nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 until 2016. Benedict XVI appointed him to the position after two years as secretary of the Governorate of Vatican City State where he used his reputable administrative skills to uncover corrupt financial practices — something that caused other Vatican officials to elbow him out. Ordained a priest on March 24, 1968, he was appointed nuncio to Nigeria in 1992.

Archbishop Negri led the Archdiocese of Ferrara-Comacchio from Dec. 2012 until June 2017. Ordained a priest on 28 June 1972,  he is known as a vigorous pastor, theologian and philosopher.


Both archbishops have taken part in Italy’s March for Life in Rome, and last October they participated in an international conference on “Humanae Vitae 50 Years Later: Its Meaning Yesterday and Today,” held at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) and organized by the pro-life group, Voice of the Family.

And this:

Tuesday 19 December 2017

Archdiocese of Bombay states that Pope Francis has opened "communion to divorced and remarried Catholics."

The little-known homosexualist Cardinal Archbishop of Bombay, Oswald Gracias, has authorized a poster stating that Pope Francis has opened the door to "communion to divorced and remarried Catholics," -- those living and committing adultery. What can you expect from a homosexualist such as Gracias?

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Sunday 3 December 2017

Francis officially promulgates the heresy within Amoris Laetitia - Where are the Cardinals?


Perhaps you thought that Advent was only going to be videos of the real music of Advent as the secular world has already begun celebrating "money-mess," how can we ever use the word, Christmas for what they have done to the glorious feast of the Word of God becoming a little baby.

Alas, the world goes on and the horror which is Jorge Bergoglio must be made known.

As is being reported, the infamous letter to the bishops of Buenos Aires that their interpretation of Amoris Laetitia, -- that Holy Communion may be given to those living in adultery - divorced and civilly remarried with no Decree of Nullity that there was no prior marriage -- is the correct interpretation has now been published in the Act Apostoliicae Sedis, giving it official and potentially, "magisterial" status.

From OnePeterFive, we have these comments by Marco Tossatti:
[T]he “private” letter of Pope Francis to the Argentine bishops was published in the October 2016 edition of Acta Apostolicae Sedis, after they had issued directives for the application of chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (the chapter with the famous footnotes on giving communion to the divorced and remarried). Directives which, as has been noted and emphasized here, are anything but clear.
The publication of this letter in the Acta is accompanied by a brief note from the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, together with an official rescript from a papal audience in June 2017, announcing that the Pope himself wanted the two documents — the guidelines and the letter — published on the website of Acta Apostolicae Sedis.
The announcement can only serve to further fuel the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the controversial apostolic exhortation as well as the Pope’s way of doing things, which yet again appears to be a far cry from the clarity and straightforwardness that many of the faithful would expect [from the Holy Father]. He has given no response to the dubia Cardinals, no response to the letters, petitions and other initiatives written by scholars, theologians, and ordinary faithful people who have been confused by the deliberate ambiguity of the document. Yet, at the same time, he has given a veneer of officiality to one letter sent to one member of one bishops’ conference.
To what end? To obligate all to give religiosum obsequium [religious assent] to a magisterium expressed in oblique and ambiguous forms, or to respond without committing himself in a direct response which would express the mind of the Pope in an unequivocal manner to the doubtful and perplexed? One is given the feeling that the only thing this does is cause the simple believer annoyance with the Pope’s comportment, which may be defined as a “pretext” in the worst sense of that term.
 
And further, if what we have learned from two different sources is true, this annoyance extends to the Vatican. A cardinal of great renown, a former diplomat, who has served an impressive career at the head of Congregations and in high offices in the Secretariat of State, is said to have reproved the Pope for his actions [as Pope], saying to him essentially, “We elected you to make reforms, not to smash everything.” News of this conversation — if it can be called a conversation — has spread through the Vatican, because it took place at a high decibel level, which carried through the fragile barrier of the doors and walls. The cardinal in question was one of those who supported the candidacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the conclave of 2013.
The debate will now begin as the Catholics with their heads in the sand and deny reality try to spin that it is only magisterial if he commands it be taught. Look, a letter from a pope, private correspondence leaked to the media and published months back on the Vatican's own website is now published in the Official Acts of the Apostolic Seat. That is magisterial. Did Bergoglio not say that he speaks every day and everything he says is "magisterial?"


Doubt no longer.

A pernicious and filthy heretic is sitting on the Chair of Peter, Is it up to the few remaining Catholics to call him out as a heretic? 

The Cardinals must now begin the formal process. He must be called out and warned to recant it, given time and it must be done again.


If he refuses, he must be formally declared a heretic and that in itself, causes him to lose the Chair of Peter because a heretic cannot be Pope!

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Thursday 9 November 2017

And to think, Amoris Letitia was all about Haiti and North Korea

In an interview with the Italian publication La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and translated by LifeSiteNews, Cardinal Müller affirms the legitimacy of the Dubia of the four Cardinals, two of whom are now deceased. He also goes on to state that there are "no exceptions," to the ban on Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried. 

The issue that is jumped over here and in the two Synods is that of the Church's exercise within Marriage Tribunals of Decrees of Nullity. As one who was granted a Decree of Nullity which had numerous grounds aside from canonical irregularities, it always struck this writer as the misunderstood right of the Church and faithful in this whole discussion. Let us put aside the polemical debate of "abuse" of the process. If the parties are honest and tell the truth and the Church decrees nullity, then there is no sin, nor deception on the part of the faithful. If the Tribunal abused the process then it is the sin of those judges and the bishop. The fact is, if a Decree of Nullity is granted, it renders the fact that the first "marriage" was not valid, there was no marriage.

The process of "discernment" and "accompaniment" are the inherent issues of Eucharistic attack in Amoris Laetitia. Let the few, very few Catholics who care about practicing their faith seek decrees of nullity. Let the Church's age-old practice apply, streamlined if necessary. It is not a degrading process, nor is it overtly expensive, at least not from the experience of most.

But Müller's argument falls apart when he returns to the internal forum matter.  He confirms that Amoris Laetitia throws a battering ram through the traditional process of Decrees of Nullity for accompaniment, - accompaniment is the new annulment process. Why bother then for what is true and right, just make your own decision with a priest who is prepared to go along with it.

Of course, what we did not know, is that it is all for North Korea and Haiti.

And we thought selling ones soul for Wales was serious.


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Cardinal Müller clarifies: There are ‘no exceptions’ to ban on Communion for ‘remarried’



Cascioli: And so we touch on the question of the indissolubility of marriage. In recent days, it’s been said that you are convinced there can be some exceptions. 
Cardinal Muller: No exceptions. This idea is false. I gave a clear theological explanation, which left no room for misunderstanding. I would like to bring peace to the situation and not fuel polemics between opposing groups. 
And so we need to be clear that when it comes to a legitimate sacramental marriage there can be no exceptions. The sacraments are efficacious ex opere operato. Just as there are no exceptions in the validity of baptism, or of the transubstantiation of the bread into the Body of Christ.” 
But in Buttiglione’s essay, he refers to several very particular situations in which there would be a venial sin, so that it should be possible to be absolved and to receive the sacraments while maintaining the state of the second union. 
In my introduction it is very clearly written that reconciliation is needed, and this is only possible if there is first contrition and a firm purpose not to commit the sin anymore. Certain people who address these issues do not understand that approaching the Sacrament of Reconciliation does not mean automatic absolution. There are essential elements without which reconciliation cannot be achieved. If there isn’t contrition there cannot be absolution and if there is no absolution, if one remains in the state of mortal sin, one cannot receive Communion. 
As for Buttiglione, he refers to situations where knowledge of the Catholic faith is a problem. These are cases of unconscious Christians, who are baptized but unbelieving, who may have gotten married in Church to please their grandmother, but without a real awareness. Here it becomes a problem when, after many years, they return to the faith and then question the marriage. There are many such cases. Benedict XVI also looked at the issue. So what’s to be done? In this sense we can say with the Pope that discernment is needed, but this does not mean that one can be granted access to the sacraments without the conditions mentioned above. The issue here is not about the indissolubility of sacramental marriage, but about the validity of many marriages that aren’t really valid. 
But in your essay you also refer to cases of people who convert or return to the faith after already having entered a second union, and regarding the sacraments you talk about a decision in the internal forum. What do you mean? 
While in Europe things are clear enough at least theoretically, in many countries there are many difficult situations to judge. In Latin America, for example, there are many marriages that are not celebrated according to the canonical form. There are couples who live together but one doesn’t know if there is an actual marriage consent. I was in Haiti recently and the situation there is disastrous; everyone is called a spouse. They live together but they aren’t formally married either in church or civilly. When some mature, they start going to church and then you have to determine who the true husband or wife is. And here it’s important for the person to be honest and say sincerely with whom they have expressed true consent, because it is the consent that makes a marriage, not only the canonical form. In any case, in order to be admitted to the sacraments, the parish priest or bishop must clarify the situation in cooperation with the freedom of the faithful. But there are also situations that are overturned. 
Can you say more? 
There are particular circumstances, for example under regimes that persecute the Church, where it isn’t possible to be married canonically. Let’s take the example of North Korea: the few Catholics who are present there still have the right to marry, and here a marriage is possible only through consent. But if in time something happens and the two separate, and they want to remarry, then everything depends on the internal forum, on their honesty in acknowledging if there was consent or not, and they have to express that to the priest or to the new husband or wife. 
This is where conscience comes into play. 
Yes, but conscience understood properly, not like certain journalists explain it who water down the truth. We are talking about a right conscience, one that cannot say “I don’t have to respect God’s law.” Conscience does not free us from God’s law but gives us the guidance to fulfill it. 
However, in your introduction to Buttiglione’s book, you shy away from casuistry and seem especially concerned with offering several clear criteria for understanding Amoris Laetitia so as to avoid what you explicitly call “heretical interpretations.” 
Exactly. Unfortunately, there are individual bishops and whole episcopal conferences that are proposing interpretations that contradict the previous Magisterium, admitting to the sacraments persons who persist in objective situations of grave sin. But this is not the criterion for applying Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis himself spoke of a Thomist apostolic exhortation. And so it is right to read it in light of St. Thomas, and on admission to the Eucharist, St. Thomas is clear dogmatically and also has a pastoral sensitivity for individuals.

Thursday 2 November 2017

Capuchin Friar Thomas Weinandy states many clerics "fear" recriminations from the Church and immediately is proved correct by the USCCB!

In an unmerciful act, void of dialogue and encounter and administered in a most rigid manner by self-absorbed, Promethean, neo-Pelagians, Father Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap., was promptly sacked from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Having written (as in the post below) that...
"Many bishops are silent because they desire to be loyal to you, and so they do not express – at least publicly; privately is another matter – the concerns that your pontificate raises.  Many fear that if they speak their mind, they will be marginalized or worse."
...Cardinal DiNardo promptly sacked him displaying a act of merciless rigorism.

Wait, "or worse?" You mean, like "someone rid me of that meddlesome priest?" Hmmm, And then there were two, Dubia Cardinals....

Given that Friar Weinandy stated that...
"...faithful Catholics can only be disconcerted by your choice of some bishops, men who seem not merely open to those who hold views counter to Christian belief but who support and even defend them."
...one can well imagine that Cupich, McElroy, Farrell and Tobin must have been on DiNardo like flies on dung after that one. I guess the truth hurts, eh boys?

On this matter, this was Tweeted out by Hilary White at 5:23 EDT today.


But nobody can say it like Father Hunwicke
This cheap and vulgar ritual humiliation exemplifies the extent to which PF is presiding over a bully-boy Church in which midget bishops and minicardinals compete to defeat each other in the sycophancy stakes. Just as Tom Weinandy has, in effect, just said.
I would ask Friar Weinandy to "keep up the good writing!"

Below is the text of DiNardo's cowardly ironic act.

It is such a joy to see these men squirm like worms on a hook. Their end is coming fast.

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“The departure today of Fr. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap., as a consultant to the Committee on Doctrine and the publication of his letter to Pope Francis gives us an opportunity to reflect on the nature of dialogue within the Church.  Throughout the history of the Church, ministers, theologians and the laity all have debated and have held personal opinions on a variety of theological and pastoral issues. In more recent times, these debates have made their way into the popular press. That is to be expected and is often good.  However, these reports are often expressed in terms of opposition, as political – conservative vs. liberal, left vs. right, pre-Vatican II vs Vatican II.  These distinctions are not always very helpful.
Christian charity needs to be exercised by all involved. In saying this, we all must acknowledge that legitimate differences exist, and that it is the work of the Church, the entire body of Christ, to work towards an ever-growing understanding of God’s truth
As Bishops, we recognize the need for honest and humble discussions around theological and pastoral issues. We must always keep in mind St. Ignatius of Loyola’s “presupposition” to his Spiritual Exercises: “…that it should be presumed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it.” This presupposition should be afforded all the more to the teaching of Our Holy Father.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is a collegial body of bishops working towards that goal. As Pastors and Teachers of the Faith, therefore, let me assert that we always stand in strong unity with and loyalty to the Holy Father, Pope Francis, who “is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful” (LG, no. 23).”


Wednesday 1 November 2017

Capuchin Friar accuses Pope Francis of "calumny" and "demeaning" the importance of doctrine and creating confusion!

Capuchin Friar, Fr. Thomas Weinandy released a letter publicly, a letter which he wrote to Pope Francis in July. Weinandy is not unknown for controversy of the good kind, at least according to the National Uncatholic Reporter as they rejoiced in his stepping down from a USCCB post a few years ago.

As interesting and notable as the letter he issued to the Bishop of Rome is the lead up to it.


 

"There was no longer any doubt that Jesus wanted me to write…"
by Thomas G. Weinandy
Last May I was in Rome for an International Theological Commission meeting.  I was staying at Domus Sanctae Marthae, and since I arrived early, I spent most of the Sunday afternoon prior to the meeting on Monday in Saint Peter’s praying in the Eucharistic Chapel.
I was praying about the present state of the Church and the anxieties I had about the present Pontificate.  I was beseeching Jesus and Mary, St. Peter and all of the saintly popes who are buried there to do something to rectify the confusion and turmoil within the Church today, a chaos and an uncertainty that I felt Pope Francis had himself caused.  I was also pondering whether or not I should write and publish something expressing my concerns and anxiety.
On the following Wednesday afternoon, at the conclusion of my meeting, I went again to St. Peter’s and prayed in the same manner.  That night I could not get to sleep, which is very unusual for me.  It was due to all that was on my mind pertaining to the Church and Pope Francis.
At 1:15 AM I got up and went outside for short time.  When I went back to my room, I said to the Lord: “If you want me to write something, you have to give me a clear sign.  This is what the sign must be.  Tomorrow morning I am going to Saint Mary Major’s to pray and then I am going to Saint John Lateran.  After that I am coming back to Saint Peter’s to have lunch with a seminary friend of mine.  During that interval, I must meet someone that I know but have not seen in a very long time and would never expect to see in Rome at this time.  That person cannot be from the United States, Canada or Great Britain.  Moreover, that person has to say to me in the course of our conversation, ‘Keep up the good writing’.”
The next morning I did all of the above and by the time I met my seminarian friend for lunch what I had asked the Lord the following night was no longer in the forefront of my mind.
However, towards the end of the meal an archbishop appeared between two parked cars right in front of our table (we were sitting outside).  I had not seen him for over twenty years, long before he became an archbishop.  We recognized one another immediately.  What made his appearance even more unusual was that, because of his recent personal circumstances, I would never have expected to see him in Rome or anywhere else, other than in his own archdiocese.  (He was from none of the above mentioned countries.)  We spoke about his coming to Rome and caught up on what we were doing.  I then introduced him to my seminarian friend.  He said to my friend that we had met a long time ago and that he had, at that time, just finished reading my book on the immutability of God and the Incarnation.  He told my friend that it was an excellent book, that it helped him sort out the issue, and that my friend should read the book.  Then he turned to me and said: “Keep up the good writing.”
I could hardly believe that this just happened in a matter of a few minutes.  But there was no longer any doubt in my mind that Jesus wanted me to write something.  I also think it significant that it was an Archbishop that Jesus used.  I considered it an apostolic mandate.
So giving it considerable thought and after writing many drafts, I decided to write Pope Francis directly about my concerns.  However, I always intended to make it public since I felt many of my concerns were the same concerns that others had, especially among the laity, and so I publicly wanted to give voice to their concerns as well.

Now, the letter...

Your Holiness,
I write this letter with love for the Church and sincere respect for your office.  You are the Vicar of Christ on earth, the shepherd of his flock, the successor to St. Peter and so the rock upon which Christ will build his Church.  All Catholics, clergy and laity alike, are to look to you with filial loyalty and obedience grounded in truth.  The Church turns to you in a spirit of faith, with the hope that you will guide her in love.
Yet, Your Holiness, a chronic confusion seems to mark your pontificate.  The light of faith, hope, and love is not absent, but too often it is obscured by the ambiguity of your words and actions.  This fosters within the faithful a growing unease.  It compromises their capacity for love, joy and peace.  Allow me to offer a few brief examples.
First there is the disputed Chapter 8 of "Amoris Laetitia."  I need not share my own concerns about its content.  Others, not only theologians, but also cardinals and bishops, have already done that.  The main source of concern is the manner of your teaching.  In "Amoris Laetitia," your guidance at times seems intentionally ambiguous, thus inviting both a traditional interpretation of Catholic teaching on marriage and divorce as well as one that might imply a change in that teaching.  As you wisely note, pastors should accompany and encourage persons in irregular marriages; but ambiguity persists about what that "accompaniment" actually means.  To teach with such a seemingly intentional lack of clarity inevitably risks sinning against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.  The Holy Spirit is given to the Church, and particularly to yourself, to dispel error, not to foster it.  Moreover, only where there is truth can there be authentic love, for truth is the light that sets women and men free from the blindness of sin, a darkness that kills the life of the soul.  Yet you seem to censor and even mock those who interpret Chapter 8 of "Amoris Laetitia" in accord with Church tradition as Pharisaic stone-throwers who embody a merciless rigorism.   This kind of calumny is alien to the nature of the Petrine ministry.  Some of your advisors regrettably seem to engage in similar actions.  Such behavior gives the impression that your views cannot survive theological scrutiny, and so must be sustained by "ad hominem" arguments.
Second, too often your manner seems to demean the importance of Church doctrine.  Again and again you portray doctrine as dead and bookish, and far from the pastoral concerns of everyday life.  Your critics have been accused, in your own words, of making doctrine an ideology.  But it is precisely Christian doctrine – including the fine distinctions made with regard to central beliefs like the Trinitarian nature of God; the nature and purpose of the Church; the Incarnation; the Redemption; and the sacraments – that frees people from worldly ideologies and assures that they are actually preaching and teaching the authentic, life-giving Gospel.  Those who devalue the doctrines of the Church separate themselves from Jesus, the author of truth.  What they then possess, and can only possess, is an ideology – one that conforms to the world of sin and death.
Third, faithful Catholics can only be disconcerted by your choice of some bishops, men who seem not merely open to those who hold views counter to Christian belief but who support and even defend them.  What scandalizes believers, and even some fellow bishops, is not only your having appointed such men to be shepherds of the Church, but that you also seem silent in the face of their teaching and pastoral practice.  This weakens the zeal of the many women and men who have championed authentic Catholic teaching over long periods of time, often at the risk of their own reputations and well-being.  As a result, many of the faithful, who embody the "sensus fidelium," are losing confidence in their supreme shepherd.
Fourth, the Church is one body, the Mystical Body of Christ, and you are commissioned by the Lord himself to promote and strengthen her unity.  But your actions and words too often seem intent on doing the opposite.  Encouraging a form of "synodality" that allows and promotes various doctrinal and moral options within the Church can only lead to more theological and pastoral confusion.  Such synodality is unwise and, in practice, works against collegial unity among bishops.
Holy Father, this brings me to my final concern.  You have often spoken about the need for transparency within the Church.  You have frequently encouraged, particularly during the two past synods, all persons, especially bishops, to speak their mind and not be fearful of what the pope may think.  But have you noticed that the majority of bishops throughout the world are remarkably silent?  Why is this?  Bishops are quick learners, and what many have learned from your pontificate is not that you are open to criticism, but that you resent it.  Many bishops are silent because they desire to be loyal to you, and so they do not express – at least publicly; privately is another matter – the concerns that your pontificate raises.  Many fear that if they speak their mind, they will be marginalized or worse.
I have often asked myself: "Why has Jesus let all of this happen?"   The only answer that comes to mind is that Jesus wants to manifest just how weak is the faith of many within the Church, even among too many of her bishops.  Ironically, your pontificate has given those who hold harmful theological and pastoral views the license and confidence to come into the light and expose their previously hidden darkness.  In recognizing this darkness, the Church will humbly need to renew herself, and so continue to grow in holiness.
Holy Father, I pray for you constantly and will continue to do so.  May the Holy Spirit lead you to the light of truth and the life of love so that you can dispel the darkness that now hides the beauty of Jesus’ Church.
Sincerely in Christ,
Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap.
July 31, 2017
Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola

Sunday 29 October 2017

Cardinal Brandmüller: Defenders of a Second Union are "excommunicated"

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Has Cardinal Brandmüller just thrown down the gauntlet at Bergoglio?

Does he have bodyguards and a food taster?

Bergoglio will not answer the dubia. If he answers one way, he would need to renounce his program of error and uphold magisterial teaching. If the other, he convicts himself of heresy and would cease to be Pope.

The logic then, is that Bergoglio is already in heresy, it is only that it has not been formally proclaimed by those empowered to do so - cardinals and bishops in an "imperfect Council." Following logically then, whether an imperfect Council takes place or not to declare the formal declaration of heresy - that is one thing, the reality of the fact is quite another, that Bergoglio is in heresy. Then the real tough question must be asked, "If Bergoglio is in heresy, is he still Pope?"

"Anyone who says a new union can begin while a legally married partner is still alive is excommunicated, because this is an heresy," Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, 88, told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (October 28).
Brandmüller explains: "The fact that marriage is a sacrament and therefore indissoluble is a dogma." It points out that no adulterer can receive Holy Communion.
The Cardinal can not understand the fact that Francesco does not respond to the Dubia about the Amoris Laetitia. He asks: "Can something be good today, if it was a sin yesterday?" Also: "Are there still actions that are always morally condemnable in every circumstance, such as murder or adultery?" Brandmüller is concerned about a "schism" in the Church.

More reading on this:

https://onepeterfive.com/cardinal-brandmuller-defenders-adultery-excommunicated/

Thursday 5 October 2017

Catholics live in an abusive family, the time to stand up to the abusers is long past - wake up!

Catholics today are living in dysfunctional household. We have a father who is abusive. In his heart, he is an unhappy man because he resents the life he has had. He lashes out at his children, he calls them names and insults them, he derides their offerings of love and affection to him, he uses vulgar descriptions and epithets. His love for our mother is superficial, he never really loved her, he uses her and abuses her and we are never, ever to talk about it. Some of our brothers and sisters think we must keep quiet and never, ever mention that father is an evil man. Some of our uncles have sexually abused us, they have done awful things to us, degrading, vulgar things. Many of our brothers and sisters have left home because of it and have lived lives of hatred, sexual depravity and substance abuse. Yet, our father seems to care more about those who did this to us then we ourselves.

"Something profoundly worrying about criticisms on the signatories of the Correction specifically for speaking out about problems which every informed Catholic already knows about, is the mindset it reveals, one focused not on the truth, but on appearances. It is strongly reminiscent of the mindset at work in abusive families, where children are taught to pretend things are all right, when they are not: certain topics are not to be broached, certain facts are not to be referred to. This attitude can be enforced not by the abusive parent directly, but by other family members who are trying to keep up appearances and hold the family together. It is nevertheless profoundly unhealthy, and indeed is linked to psychological disorders in the children." Dr. Joseph Shaw, Oxford

It is time to decide where you stand and how much abuse you are going to continue to take.

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Marc Cardinal Ouellet warns against "alarmist" interpretations of Amoris Laetitia and its obvious heresy - move along folks, nothing to see here!

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, says the Pope’s 2016 apostolic exhortation on the family must not be misinterpreted as a break with Church tradition.

Marc Cardinal Ouellet spoke yesterday at the annual plenary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB). and addressed before his fellow bishops, Amoris Laetitia. Clearly concerned about the Correctio Filialis, Canada's former Primate warned against "alarmist interpretations" of the document.

With all due respect to the good Cardinal, a man who was reportedly nearly elected instead of the Argentine Peronist, he needs to get his head of the sand and be honest with his brother bishops and the faithful. 

The Catholic Register reports that the Cardinal said:
"Any alarmist interpretation" that says the document is "a break with tradition," or a "permissive interpretation that celebrates access to the sacraments" for the divorced and remarried is "unfaithful to the text and to the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff."
Alarmist? Is he serious?

The Argentine bishops interpreted Amoris Laetitia in the most "permissive interpretation" to which Pope Bergoglio responded in writing, "there is no other interpretation." Yet, Ouellet conveniently ignored this fact. Nowhere, did the good Cardinal challenge the heretical interpretations of the bishops in Malta to say nothing of the egregious actions there against faithful priests. I cite but two examples, readers here know of many more.

Cardinal Ouellet is acting cowardly, fearfully. He might have been elected pope as a moderate alternative to Bergoglio but by his own admission, he fought it off. He is a weak man. He has failed as an apostle and he has mislead his brothers asking them to put their heads in the sand right along with him. 

He has blatantly ignored the heresies, or at least the heretical interpretation in various places but has no hesitation in accusing those who see these heresies clearly, as being "alarmist." To Ouellet and his ilk, the emperor is well dressed, well at least as well dressed as Bergoglio can be in polyester.

The time has now come, if it is not long since passed, for the two remaining Dubia Cardinals to gather other like thinking bishops and cardinals in conference to denounce the obvious heresies and call upon the Bishop of Rome to respond publicly or be guilty of heresy himself.

Marc Ouellet and the rest of our bishops and priests are filled with fear. They may agree that Amoris Laetitia is heretical and the Bishop of Rome is himself, a heretic. Yet, they sit and do nothing. They think they have faith. They have fear.

Father John Hunwicke, a signor of the Correctio Filialis, is not a man with fear and he has something to say about it.
Fear is quite beautiful, isn't it, as a Satanic operational strategy? The Enemy disseminates Fear. He fills good honest men with guilt because they feel too fearful to do what they know they should do. And then, when the Correctio is published, his ministers sneer as they answer the journalists' questions, and glibly point out how few signatories there are. As Marco Tossati has put it, "Belittle, label, marginalise".http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.ca/2017/09/the-aetiology-and-mechanics-of-fear.html
Without a doubt, those who fail to confront this crisis are doing the work of Satan. They are cowards, weak, effeminate men who will be spat out of His mouth for their lukewarmedness. 

Wednesday 6 September 2017

Cardinal Caffarra, may he rest in peace


Cardinal Caffarra, has died suddenly. While said to be ill, his death seems to have come as a surprise. May he rest in the peace of Christ, whom he loved.

The Cardinal is the second of the four "dubia" Cardinals to pass away in the last few months, the first being Cardinal Meisner.

Raymond Cardinal Burke has issued a statement:

“With the death of Cardinal Carlo Caffarra the Church has lost the earthly presence of an exemplary priest, Bishop and Cardinal. Having enjoyed the great gift of knowing Cardinal Caffarra over many years and of working very closely with him during the these last years in the safeguarding and promoting of the Church’s constant teaching and practice regarding Holy Matrimony and the Holy Eucharist, I can testify that he was completely and solely inspired by a deep and pure love of Christ and of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church. His purity of heart was always evident to me and was an unfailing inspiration. His knowledge of the Church’s doctrine and discipline was the fruit of years of study, which he continued until the end, for the sake of giving the best possible care to souls. Just recently, he related to me how he was studying the texts of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Cardinal Newman on conscience in preparation for a public lecture in England. While I mourn deeply the loss of his earthly presence, I am confident that his love of Christ and of the Church will continue. I count upon the help of his prayers in carrying out my weighty responsibility as a teacher of the faith and a doctor of souls. May the good and faithful Cardinal rest in peace.”

Its seems to this writer that Cardinals Burke and Brandmuller should avail themselves of food-tasters, body-guards and bullet vests under their albs and if you think I'm wearing a tin-foiled hat then you've not studied history.


Tuesday 20 June 2017

Pope not only ignores the Cardinals' dubia, but their request for an Audience

The Pope not only ignores the legitimate questions, the dubia, of four leading Cardinals of the Church, he even ignores their plea for an audience.

Remember friends; your job and mine is to be faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Etneral Father begotten from the beginning, consubstantial with Him and the Second Person in the Unity of the Godhead of the Holy Trinity. Your job is to be faithful to Him. Let us praise the FATHER, SON & HOLY SPIRIT, let us praise Him forever. Put not your trust in princes or popes. You must remain faithful to Jesus and to His Church and to the Papacy as an institution and the Magisterium of teaching of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. You must be faithful to Christ, not to men.

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/full-text-of-dubia-cardinals-letter-asking-pope-for-an-audience


 Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, the archbishop emeritus of Bologna, asked for an audience on behalf of the four 'dubia' cardinals.
“Most Holy Father,
It is with a certain trepidation that I address myself to Your Holiness, during these days of the Easter season. I do so on behalf of the Most Eminent Cardinals: Walter Brandmüller, Raymond L. Burke, Joachim Meisner, and myself.
We wish to begin by renewing our absolute dedication and our unconditional love for the Chair of Peter and for Your august person, in whom we recognize the Successor of Peter and the Vicar of Jesus: the “sweet Christ on earth,” as Saint Catherine of Siena was fond of saying. We do not share in the slightest the position of those who consider the See of Peter vacant, nor of those who want to attribute to others the indivisible responsibility of the Petrine munus. We are moved solely by the awareness of the grave responsibility arising from the munus of cardinals: to be advisers of the Successor of Peter in his sovereign ministry. And from the Sacrament of the Episcopate, which “has placed us as bishops to pasture the Church, which He has acquired with his blood” (Acts 20:28).
On September 19, 2016 we delivered to Your Holiness and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith five dubia, asking You to resolve uncertainties and to bring clarity on some points of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.
Not having received any response from Your Holiness, we have reached the decision to ask You, respectfully and humbly, for an Audience, together if Your Holiness would like. We attach, as is the practice, an Audience Sheet in which we present the two points we wish to discuss with you.
Most Holy Father,
A year has now gone by since the publication of Amoris Laetitia. During this time, interpretations of some objectively ambiguous passages of the post-synodal Exhortation have publicly been given that are not divergent from, but contrary to, the permanent Magisterium of the Church. Despite the fact that the Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith has repeatedly declared that the doctrine of the Church has not changed, numerous statements have appeared from individual Bishops, Cardinals, and even Episcopal Conferences, approving what the Magisterium of the Church has never approved. Not only access to the Holy Eucharist for those who objectively and publicly live in a situation of grave sin, and intend to remain in it, but also a conception of moral conscience contrary to the Tradition of the Church. And so it is happening — how painful it is to see this! — that what is sin in Poland is good in Germany, that what is prohibited in the archdiocese of Philadelphia is permitted in Malta. And so on. One is reminded of the bitter observation of B. Pascal: “Justice on this side of the Pyrenees, injustice on the other; justice on the left bank of the river, injustice on the right bank.”
Numerous competent lay faithful, who are deeply in love with the Church and staunchly loyal to the Apostolic See, have turned to their Pastors and to Your Holiness in order to be confirmed in the Holy Doctrine concerning the three sacraments of Marriage, Confession, and the Eucharist. And in these very days, in Rome, six lay faithful, from every Continent, have presented a very well-attended study seminar with the meaningful title: “Bringing clarity.”
Faced with this grave situation, in which many Christian communities are being divided, we feel the weight of our responsibility, and our conscience impels us to ask humbly and respectfully for an Audience.
May Your Holiness remember us in Your prayers, as we pledge to remember You in ours. And we ask for the gift of Your Apostolic Blessing.
Carlo Card. Caffarra
Rome, April 25, 2017
Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist
*
AUDIENCE SHEET
1. Request for clarification of the five points indicated by the dubia; reasons for this request.
2. Situation of confusion and disorientation, especially among pastors of souls, in primis parish priests.”


Friday 28 April 2017

The challenge to Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia - IV

I meant this post for yesterday, but my schedule did not permit it. The remainder of the articles are not yet in English (if they are please direct me), however, Maike Hickson at OnePeterFive gives a brief summary.

The Pope continues to refuse to answer the reasonable questions of the Cardinals. He is boxed in, one answer undoes the whole house of Amoris, the other would declare himself to have taught against doctrine and opens himself for a declaration of heresy. The laity are confused, the bishops, emasculated, the Church, in increasing turmoil.

The Psalm from the Office of Sext for yesterday, Feria Quinta infra Hebdomadam I post Octavam Paschae speaks clearly to us in this day of the darkness that has descended on our Holy Mother, the Church.

Be edified by its reading.

Ut quid, Deus. A prayer of the church under grievous persecutions.

[1] Understanding for Asaph. O God, why hast thou cast us off unto the end: why is thy wrath enkindled against the sheep of thy pasture? [2] Remember thy congregation, which thou hast possessed from the beginning. The sceptre of thy inheritance which thou hast redeemed: mount Sion in which thou hast dwelt. [3] Lift up thy hands against their pride unto the end; see what things the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary. [4] And they that hate thee have made their boasts, in the midst of thy solemnity. They have set up their ensigns for signs, [5] And they knew not both in the going out and on the highest top. As with axes in a wood of trees, [6] They have cut down at once the gates thereof, with axe and hatchet they have brought it down. [7] They have set fire to thy sanctuary: they have defiled the dwelling place of thy name on the earth. [8] They said in their heart, the whole kindred of them together: Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land. [9] Our signs we have not seen, there is now no prophet: and he will know us no more. [10] How long, O God, shall the enemy reproach: is the adversary to provoke thy name for ever?

[11] Why dost thou turn away thy hand: and thy right hand out of the midst of thy bosom for ever? [12] But God is our king before ages: he hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth. [13] Thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters. [14] Thou hast broken the heads of the dragon: thou hast given him to be meat for the people of the Ethiopians. [15] Thou hast broken up the fountains and the torrents: thou hast dried up the Ethan rivers.

[16] Thine is the day, and thine is the night: thou hast made the morning light and the sun. [17] Thou hast made all the borders of the earth: the summer and the spring were formed by thee. [18] Remember this, the enemy hath reproached the Lord: and a foolish people hath provoked thy name. [19] Deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to thee: and forget not to the end the souls of thy poor. [20] Have regard to thy covenant: for they that are the obscure of the earth have been filled with dwellings of iniquity. [21] Let not the humble be turned away with confusion: the poor and needy shall praise thy name. [22] Arise, O God, judge thy own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man hath reproached thee all the day. [23] Forget not the voices of thy enemies: the pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually.

Wednesday 26 April 2017

The challenge to Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia: III - The Roots of the Present Crisis

On April 22, 2017 at the Hotel Columbus in Rome and in the vicinity of St. Peter's Square a conference took place called "Seeing Clarity: One year after Amoris Laetitia." It featured six eminent Catholic laymen who called on Pope Francis to answer the dubia of the four cardinals on the matter of certain passages in Amoris Laetitia, passages that undermine the Church's magisterial teaching on adultery, mortal sin and the Holy Eucharist.

This is the third of six, which will be posted on subsequent days.

The Roots of the Present Crisis
by Douglas Farrow

It is not too much to speak of a crisis in the Church today, a crisis in several dimensions. There is a crisis of morality. There is a crisis of doctrine. There is a crisis of authority. There is a crisis of unity.

True, such crises are more common than some like to think. Perhaps the closest analog, however, comes from the sixteenth century. Half a millennium ago, the fathers of Trent had to defend the sacraments governing confession, communion, and conjugality from coordinated, if somewhat chaotic, attacks. The same three sacraments are threatened again today. They had to defend the Church’s unity and authority against the Protestant principle – against the inevitably divisive claim that the meaning of holy scripture could be determined independently of tradition and without accountability before the entire Church. That too is necessary today. They had to weed out persistent abuses both in the sacramental life and in the governance of the Church, while striving to recover a unified vision of Christian existence in which justification and sanctification, freedom and obedience, hold together. This also is urgently required in our own time.

There are differences, of course. During the Reformation, the problem of justification put the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist under pressure, before overwhelming the sacraments generally and washing away, for many Protestants, the very idea that Christian marriage is a sacrament. Today the flow is in the other direction. There is great pressure on marriage, and this pressure is being felt by the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist, which are being asked to accommodate a changed view of marriage. But the problem of justification remains, as we shall see, a driving force and source of pressure.

Another difference can be found in the fact that the individualism of the nominalists, aided and abetted by the Protestant Reformation, has carried our whole civilization much further down the road towards a mythical utopia called Autonomy, governed (in Benedict’s apt phrase) by the dictatorship of relativism. This utopia is in fact a deepening abyss of strife between body and soul, between man and woman, between the human and the divine.

Recently, the sexual revolution has created a moral landscape more like that of the first century than of the sixteenth, and even worse in some respects. For we belong now to a generation with few sexual scruples and with little love for children. Indeed, we belong to a generation fully absorbed in the contraceptive mentality; a generation engaged in an attempt to detach its sexual acts from procreation as far as possible; a generation losing, in consequence, the unitive function of sex along with the procreative. Ours is a generation which, for all its talk of global unity, is lacking the glue of a common humanity, deficient in inter-generational interests.

It is not surprising, in such a context, that the sacrament of marriage is under great pressure. A generation that approaches sex in this fashion, as Humanae Vitae predicted, is a generation that experiences alienation between the sexes, routine abortions, and growing dependency on increasingly authoritarian government. It is a generation in which the body is at best a play-thing of, and at worst a resented impediment to, the soul – or rather to the will, since we no longer believe in the soul. It is a generation in which marriage is becoming rarer, and in which roughly half of marriages end in divorce. It is a generation that does not look after others, and cannot even look after itself, except by trying to amass as much wealth as possible in support of its profligate habits.

Were it merely the case that the Church had to confront this in society at large, the task would be very much like that of the first century – a missionary task, a call to conversion, to a new vision of man, to a new mode of life, to a new discipline in support of a new hope. But not so; the situation is more complicated than that. For, in the West, all of this has entered the Church. It is inside as well as outside. It is celebrated in murals and liturgies. Hence there are those who think the Church has little choice but to change its own view of sex and of marriage and of the body itself.

The problem is: It cannot do so without losing its own soul, without sacrificing its own identity as the body of Christ, as the people and society and kingdom of Christ. It cannot do so without denying the lordship of Christ. It cannot do so without rejecting the Lord and Giver of life. It cannot do so without the gravest disobedience to God the Father Almighty. What was said at Trent is true again today: There is an urgent need for “the rooting out of heresy and the reform of conduct.” There is a need to recognize, as those fathers explicitly recognized, “that ‘we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’” (Eph. 6:12; Session 3). Yet Trent is behind us. Vatican I is behind us. All those fine passages produced by the fathers of Vatican II, they also are behind us. What then is ahead of us?

Another thing that is different today is the uncertainty that people inside the Church feel about the Pope’s own approach to the crisis. Now, I am not among those who suppose that everything rests on the Pope; it did not do so then, and it does not do so now. Nor am I among those who can only be critical of the Pope, or of Amoris Laetitia. There is a real danger in that. How can we fail to show proper love for, and deference to, the successor of Peter, through whom God has moved people on every continent to begin (or begin again) to pay heed to the gospel of Christ, especially as it concerns the poor? How can we fail, without ourselves forfeiting both good sense and the joy of love, to acknowledge the many wise insights, incisive cultural critiques, and inspiring admonitions of Amoris? But I do share the concern of many around the world that the situation has evolved in such a way, not without some encouragement from the Pope, that the dubia – we might even say, the notorious dubia – were deemed necessary.

That, having been deemed necessary, they are necessarily in need of an answer, is clear enough; my concern here is not with process, however, but rather with substance. The substance, as I see it, is this: The Church is in crisis because it must once again face – inside itself, precisely as the Church – the question of its allegiance to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For society at large it cannot decide. For the separated brethren it cannot decide. For itself it must decide, and give answer. And that answer ought to be voiced without hesitation by the successor of Peter.

So much for prolegomena. I would like now to say something further, and more theological, about the roots of the crisis. I said that the crisis is a crisis of morality, doctrine, authority, and unity. Permit me to speak briefly to each of these dimensions, calling on St Irenaeus (more specifically on Adversus haereses 3.24f.) for help.

The Moral Root: Justifying Sin

The moral root is always the deepest. Legend has it, and in the legend there is at least a parable, that the arch-heretic Marcion was excommunicated by his father, a bishop in Pontus, for sexual sin. Instead of repenting, this wealthy young shipping magnate sailed to Rome and founded a dissident network of competing religious communities, for which he was excommunicated permanently in AD 144. Marcion, as you know, taught that the God of Moses was a capricious, despotic deity; that the God and Father of Jesus was an altogether different God. To that extent he was a forerunner of the movement we call Gnosticism.

The Marcionite communities were morally rigorist rather than libertine, and were eventually absorbed into the Manichaean religion. Perhaps that’s the kind of repentance Marcion thought his father was looking for, but it came at quite a price – not only for his own soul, but for all who followed him. Everything that smacked of the Jewish religion, Christianity’s own mother, he rebelled against. He tore up the emerging canon, excluding everything that Jesus himself had regarded as holy scripture and much of what the apostles wrote as well, preserving only ten letters of Paul and a truncated version of Luke’s Gospel. In other words, he set covenant against covenant, scripture against scripture, community against community, and God against God. Rather than repent of his own sexual sin, he chose to remain outside the ark of salvation that is the Church of God.

Irenaeus – where today is our Irenaeus? – led the Christian bishops in providing a theological response to Marcionism, and he did not shy from fingering the real problem. The heretics, he said, “defraud themselves of life through their perverse opinions and infamous behaviour.” The one is connected to the other; let us not deny it. Orthodoxy, of course, is no guarantee of good will or of good behaviour. Too well do we know that it can be a cover for all manner of deceit and wickedness! But heterodoxy actually lends itself to wickedness, though this too may be slow in revealing itself.

Who are the men and women of real holiness in the Church today? Do they tell us that scripture may be set against scripture? Do they remind us that no one caught the words of Jesus about adultery with a tape-recorder? Do they invite us to rearrange tradition in a fashion more convenient to the mores of our age? Do they turn the principle of double effect into the principle of proportionalism, telling us that we may do evil if we think doing good will do more harm than good? Do they, for that matter, wink at contraception, turn a blind eye to abortion and euthanasia, or paint homoerotic pictures on the walls of their churches? Of what manner of life are such things the signs? I hear the voice, not only of St Irenaeus, but of St Basil, lamenting in his 90th letter:

"Our distresses are notorious, even though we leave them untold, for now their sound has gone out into all the world. The doctrines of the Fathers are despised; apostolic traditions are set at nought; the devices of innovators are in vogue in the churches; now men are rather contrivers of cunning systems than theologians; the wisdom of this world wins the highest prize and has rejected the glory of the cross; shepherds are banished, and in their places are introduced grievous wolves harrying the flock of Christ…".

The Doctrinal Root: Opposing Justice and Mercy

Let us turn to the matter of “perverse opinions” and to the second root, the theological or doctrinal root. There is almost always a doctrinal problem attached to a persistent moral problem, for it is a feature of fallen man that he projects his own disorder into the heavens, imagining strife in God as the real source of his own strife. Marcion and the Gnostic teachers spent a good deal of theological energy doing just that.

Not surprisingly, what Irenaeus fixes upon here (he needed no help from Feuerbach or Freud) is the opposition set up by Marcion between those two great perfections of God, namely, his justice and his mercy. “That they might remove the rebuking and judicial power from the Father,” says Irenaeus, “reckoning that as unworthy of God, and thinking that they had found out a God without anger and merely kind or good, they have alleged that one God judges but that another saves” (Haer. 3.25). By thus dividing God, they unwittingly deny “the intelligence and justice of both deities,” putting an end to deity altogether:

"For, if the judicial one is not also good enough to bestow favours upon the deserving and to direct reproofs against those requiring them, he will appear neither a just nor a wise judge. On the other hand, the good God, if he is merely good and not one who tests those upon whom he shall send his goodness, will be beyond both goodness and justice; his goodness will seem imperfect, as not saving all who deserve it, if it be not accompanied with judgment."

Today our neo-Marcionites are more subtle. They do not speak of two gods, but they do speak of the one God as if he lacked judgment or could be known only by way of his mercy. They say they are serving this one God when they accompany non-judgmentally all who desire their accompaniment. “Judge not, that you be not judged” – here is a scripture, indeed a dominical saying, of which they are quite certain. Very good. But they forget to speak to those whom they accompany of the judgment of God, which is a very different matter than the judgment of mere men. They forget to speak to them of the holiness without which no one will see God. They think that to speak thus is intrusive, insensitive, rigid, or at all events unrealistic. Who would willingly listen to such a thing? Who wants to hear of the judgment of God?

This means, of course, that a great deal of what Moses and the prophets said, of what Jesus and the apostles said, must simply be set aside; for in the dominical coinage judgment and mercy are two sides of the one gospel about the one God, who is always perfect in justice and in loving-kindness. It means, not that Jesus has displaced us as judge – the true judge taking the place of the false – but that there is no judgment at all. There is only negotiation; gradual, drawn out, endless negotiation. Under the “law of gradualness,” it seems, no final judgment need ever be reached by us and perhaps none will ever be reached by God either, as regards us. Not to put too fine a point on it, it means that justification is possible without sanctification; that Trent, therefore, has been undone.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the Church today is to lift its eyes from earth to heaven; from “discernment of situations” to discernment of God; to recover its sense of the unity of God, the God who is all holy mercy and all merciful holiness, the God who does not need to attenuate justice for the sake of mercy or mercy for the sake of justice. St Irenaeus, ora pro nobis. St Anselm, ora pro nobis.

The Jurisdictional Root: Conscience v. Revelation

Now, to divide God, it is necessary to divide his revelation: not just scripture from scripture, but scripture from tradition. Tradition itself is regarded with suspicion as that which confines us in error rather than that which maintains us in the truth. So they do it violence. And their violence extends, as Cardinal Sarah (The Catholic World Report, 31 March 2017) recently observed, as far as the gospel itself. In his remarks to a colloquium on the tenth anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, he speaks of “a horrible, outrageous thing that seem[s] like the desire for ... a complete break with the Church’s past” – as if “the apostolic Church and the Christian communities in the early centuries of Christianity understood nothing of the gospel,” as if the gospel has remained all but unrecognized until our own time, as if it were “only in our era that the plan of salvation brought by Jesus has been understood”!

He refers us, for example, to “the audacious, surprising statement” of Paul Joseph Schmitt, Bishop of Metz:

"The transformation of the [modern] world teaches and demands a change in the very concept of the salvation brought by Jesus Christ. This transformation reveals to us that the Church’s thinking about God’s plan was, before the present change, insufficiently evangelical... No era has been as capable as ours of understanding the evangelical ideal of fraternal life" (cited from Jean Madiran, L’hérésie du XX siècle, Paris 1968, 164ff.).

“With a vision like that,” says Sarah, “it is not surprising that devastation, destruction and wars have followed ... at the liturgical, doctrinal and moral level.”

Indeed. And from whom were these habits learned? Who taught us to exercise a hermeneutic of suspicion about the past and to prize our present enlightenment? How did we learn to mark, not the time of Jesus Christ, but our own time as the fullness of times? I have already said in my books on the ascension most of what I want to say about the myth of progress, to which the Bishop of Metz obviously subscribed. I will add here, however, that by the 1960s that myth had deeply penetrated Catholicism, having found forceful expression fifty years earlier in Buonaiuti’s The Program of the Modernists (1907), whose handling of scripture and tradition is thoroughly Protestant in spirit even where it is Catholic in form. The outright rejection of Pascendi Dominici Gregis marks a turning point of sorts in Catholicism, after which it became at least conceivable that Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendor should also be rejected, and that we should eventually be presented with a puzzle like Amoris Laetitia, which both is and (in a few spots) isn’t obviously part of the Great Tradition.

No one drew it up quite like this, of course. The whole problem was meant to be solved at Vatican II. There the council fathers sought to incorporate what they could of Protestant insight into scripture and tradition, while recalling critical scholarship to the path of faith without loss of its enquiring spirit. So we have, for example, Dei Verbum, and Dei Verbum will not hear of any such change as the Bishop of Metz and his ilk demand. Nor will it hear of Marcionism, old or new.

"In His gracious goodness, God has seen to it that what He had revealed for the salvation of all nations would abide perpetually in its full integrity and be handed on to all generations... Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers...” (DV 7–10).

But we have not been holding fast to this deposit as one entire holy people united with their shepherds. On the contrary, among the shepherds themselves there has been, in far too many cases, a letting-go of the deposit, a departure from tradition, an embrace of the Marcionite “divide and conquer” principle that Modernism did its best to disguise. Scripture is indeed set against scripture, and tradition deprived of its integrity. Both are rejected where they prove inconvenient. The function of the magisterium is therefore in doubt. The new voice of authority is that of the conscience, to which revelation, as vouchsafed in scripture and tradition, is merely a guide and not a governor.

This requires a word of explanation. Properly understood, conscience is a function of practical reason. It is the innate capacity and involuntary instinct to measure particular actions by the moral principles and knowledge of good and evil that are grasped by the intellect, whether through natural law or by instruction. Its primary role is to mark the divergence of actions, whether performed or proposed, from the good, insofar as the good is known to the agent. Conscience is ineffective to the degree that the good is not properly known, or to the degree that the agent has suppressed the instinct in question. Simply put, conscience belongs to the rational soul through its participation in the divine intellect, as that capacity “whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act” (Catechism 1778).

Which is to say, conscience is not itself a source, but only a voice, of moral authority. Its function is to point out to me that I am out of step with true moral authority, known to me through natural and divine law. Conscience therefore invites me – through conscience God himself, my maker, invites me – to a free, if sometimes costly, conformity to natural and divine law. And it rightly and rationally accuses me if I do not conform.

I say all of this, not to be pedantic, but to make clear that conscience can in no way assume jurisdiction over natural or divine law. Over civil law, yes; over natural or divine law, no. Now, what of ecclesial law? Ecclesial law, in its narrow sense as ius canonicum, is, to be sure, a form of civil or positive law, which must always be measured by natural and divine law, and therefore also by conscience. But that is not our present problem. Our present problem – and a major component of the current crisis – is that conscience is being misconstrued as a source of moral authority alongside natural and divine law: a source capable of overriding, not merely the ius canonicum and sacramental discipline, but dominical teaching and the lex credendi, on which such discipline is based.

Is this not what worries the authors of the dubia? After asking for clarification in the first dubium regarding a single type of situation – sexual relations that, because of Jesus’ own words, have always been regarded as adulterous: are they adulterous or are they not? – the burden of the others comes to rest in the fifth, regarding the role of conscience in relation to scripture and tradition:

"After Amoris Laetitia (n. 303) does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor n. 56, based on Sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, which excludes a creative interpretation of the role of conscience and emphasizes that conscience can never be authorized to legitimate exceptions to absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts by virtue of their object?"

Amoris §303 calls for “individual conscience ... to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage.” It urges a certain negotiation between conscience and the moral norms of the Church, observing that “discernment is dynamic” and “must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.” Veritatis Splendor §56, on the other hand, already rules out such an approach, objecting to the opposition thus established

"between the teaching of the precept, which is valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called “pastoral” solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a “creative” hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept."

No one, it adds, can fail to see that such an approach poses “a challenge to the very identity of the moral conscience in relation to human freedom and God's law;” that it overturns the teaching that conscience derives its binding force from the fact that it “does not command things on its own authority, but commands them as coming from God's authority, like a herald when he proclaims the edict of the king” (§58, quoting St Boniface).

Well, apparently some can fail to see it, but no one can fail to see that there is a conflict. Hence the fifth dubium, which asks whether the earlier text remains binding. This is first of all a question about tradition: Can it contradict itself? If it can’t, then either one of the texts must be read in a manner contrary to its evident meaning or one of the texts must be judged not to carry the force of tradition.

Second, it is a question about conscience. Does conscience determine what is right, or does it merely discern what is established by God as right? Does conscience, in other words, command on its own authority or on the authority of another? If the former, then the first step in moral analysis is eliminated. One no longer has to consider whether a particular act (in this case an act of adultery) is intrinsically right or wrong, to be recognized as such by way of natural or divine law. One can bypass that and move straight on to questions about intention, circumstance, and consequences. In addressing these, the act can be rendered right without reference to its intrinsic character. The maxim that it is never licit to do evil that good may come – a maxim that distinguishes Catholic ethics from competing ethical systems, as St John Paul II emphasized – is set aside. But then the very notion of conscience disappears into a black hole of subjectivity. The lesson of Genesis 3 is lost to the subtleties and lies of the Serpent. (“Did God really say, ‘thou shalt,’ or ‘thou shalt not’?”) The fear of the Lord, it turns out, is not necessarily the beginning of wisdom.

There is a third, pastoral question as well: How do things stand in the internal forum and especially in the confessional? Where the conscience is excused from reckoning with the intrinsic nature of an act, and set directly to wrestling with the subjective and circumstantial and consequential dimensions of the act, the requisite contrition, penance, and absolution will be quite different. And this will have implications for the external forum also. What was once regarded as adultery, and hence as a disqualification for communion, will now be regarded as a new form of fidelity, and hence as a qualification. In which case, the Eucharist itself will be made witness to this fidelity that was once an infidelity.

I said earlier that the dubia, having been deemed necessary, are necessarily in need of an answer. But it is not so simple as that. Considered substantively, and not merely procedurally, the dubia are indeed necessary; but the fifth, at least, cannot be answered. Or rather, the only possible answer would be to withdraw the offending section of Amoris Laetitia and to correct or clarify the premises, appearing elsewhere, which support that section.

The Diabolical Root: Dividing the Church

I come now to my conclusion, and to what I will call the diabolical root of our present crisis. The enemy of our souls is also, and a fortiori, the enemy of the Church of God. The devil seeks to divide man from God, woman from man, the steward of creation from creation itself, even from his body. He seeks above all to divide the Church. And division in the Church is what can be expected if we justify sin by insinuating opposition between the perfections of God; if we set scripture against scripture and tradition against tradition, and conscience against both.

The truth about God is that he is never without either his justice or his mercy. “Neither does he show himself unmercifully just; for his goodness, no doubt, goes on before his judgment and takes precedency” (Haer. 3.25), the two working in wonderful harmony.

The truth about scripture and tradition is that they cohere, and in their coherence they sustain the Church. There is, as Irenaeus says, “a well-grounded system that tends to man's salvation, namely, our faith: which, having been received from the Church, we do preserve, and which always, by the Spirit of God renewing its youth as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself to renew its youth also.”

The truth about conscience is that it has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the law of God.

We are faced with a crisis in the Church today, a crisis much exacerbated (though not caused) by Amoris Laetitia, because that “well-grounded system” has begun to come apart, as it did in the sixteenth century. Where the Protestant reformers tried and failed to put it back together, the Council of Trent succeeded; but it can no longer be said, even in the Catholic Church, that “the preaching of the Church is everywhere consistent, and continues in a stable course” (Haer. 3.24). On the contrary, bishop vies with bishop, and it must in all honesty be said of Amoris that it appears to “think differently in regard to the same things at different times” (ibid.). As Cardinal Sarah himself remarks, our present crisis is made more acute by the fact that high-ranking prelates “refuse to face up to the Church’s work of self-destruction through the deliberate demolition of her doctrinal, liturgical, moral and pastoral foundations.”

I cannot claim here what Irenaeus claims at the conclusion of his third book, for it is impossible in so short a space even to list, much less to “expose and overthrow,” all those “impious doctrines” and falsehoods with which we are again confronted. But I can and will maintain this: If Marcion’s problem was fundamentally a moral problem, so is ours. I will go further, and say that its character is spiritual. It is not, in the last analysis, a question about pastoring people who have fallen into sexual sins and other relational difficulties, as important as that is. It is not a question of being patient or charitable, either to those appeal to us for help or to those who beg to differ with us – “for our love, inasmuch as it is true, is salutary to them, if they will but receive it” (Haer. 3.25). And it is not a question, I hasten to add, of meeting this or that test of orthodoxy prescribed by the pride, or the insecurity, of über-traditionalists, who in their own fashion only perpetuate Marcionite errors. It is finally a question of allegiance to our Lord, a question of the fear of the Lord. Without a renewal of the fear of the Lord, it will not be resolved.


Rome April 22, 2017