"Let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.'" (RC, July 30, 2014):
Do you all remember Cardinal Hummes? Yes, the Pope's greatest friend in the College of Cardinals, the Franciscan who inspired the papal name "Francis", the man who was right by the Pope's side in the loggia in the memorable evening of his election. As an emeritus, his influence is obviously a more understated one.Our underground correspondent in an eastern seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, remarks:
Anyway, he granted an extensive interview days ago (July 27) to a paper in his native Brazil, and the answers are just remarkable, particularly this one, on same-sex "marriages":If Jesus were alive today, would he be in favor of gay marriage?Perfectly clear.
I don't know, I formulate no hypothesis on this. Who must answer this is the Church in its entirety. We must take care not to raise issues individually, because this ends up creating more difficulties for us to reach a valid conclusion. I think we must get together, listen to people, those who have an interest, the bishops. It is the Church that must indicate the ways, and there must be a way for all.
Because the opposition to gay marriage from the word go has been one of "marriage is between a man and a woman" with the defining caveat "since its purpose is children" and not any reference to the objection to homosexuality itself, the way this may easily play out over the decades is quite clear. Marriage can't be redefined at the moment, but civil partnerships can be allowed. Which is launching change by papering over a technicality. From there, things can quite easily graduate into allowing gay marriages if the intent from the start is to adopt...[Hat tip to JM]
Another example of the truism: Answers that are not simple are not answers, and yet they are: they most always also mean exactly what you suspect they mean.
6 comments:
"If Jesus were alive today," Hummes would have the imprint of His foot in his hindquarters.
Yes, this sort of comment goes a long way to explain why the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is in such an utter mess and shamble and is rapidly going down the plug hole.
What Cardinal Hummes is saying is heresy. That is not a judgement, rather an objective observation. Jesus is alive today in the Mystical Body of Christ on Earth and He has already ruled quite clearly on this matter. To say or suggest otherwise is, now I’m trying to think of a “nice” PC word but can’t so let’s just say, heresy, and since this is said by a priest of the Church, Formal Heresy.
And so what. It’s not for the first time that a Cardinal of the Church has expressed heresy, and it won’t be the last.
But what is so frightening is that this man is a close and influential friend of the Holy Father and not de-frocked and in exile in some remote monastery.
Oh yes, as the Chinese would say we live in interesting, very interesting times!
I believe supporting gay marriage is heresy not because of the catechism which can change ( heck this one changed on the death penalty in the same decade) but because of Scripture which cannot change on condemned actions...whether one pick Leviticus condemning male gay acts or Romans chapter one condemning gay acts of both genders. Many Church problems go back to the Church itself recurringly drifting away from scripture over the centuries. The current death penalty bowing to the Euro Union et al is a drift away from Romans 13:4 just as this Cardinal's opining on gay marriage is a drift away from Romans 1:26-27. When Aquinas affirmed killing heretics, he wrongly was preferring perhaps the OT to the NT in that the OT affirmed executing
"dreamers" who led others from the true God but Luke 9: 54-55 ends that when the disciples wish to do what Elijah appropriately did in the OT...kill heretics and Christ rebukes them for asking.
I believe in core, de fide, infallible Catholicism but not in what often passes for that. There is a core and there is the non infallible outer crust...and the Cardinal was representing crust and probably thinking of it us the " living Church".
Hello Bill,
It's always good to hear from you, my friend.
It's true that the apparent teachings of the catechism can change. The present one (the CCC) has undergone more than one set of revisions and corrections, even thought not all of the corrections mandated by the USCCB have made it into print yet (publishers move slowly).
It's also true that the words of Scripture cannot be altered, although what they're interpreted to "say" can.
So I guess the safest thing to say and believe is that the Word of God abides forever, Sacred Tradition serves as a reliable anchor, and the Living Magisterium is God's delegated voice as to how Scripture is to be understood.
The middle management (at least individually) and priests in local parishes, sadly but understandably (we're all human, fallible, and sinners) cannot be absolutely relied upon to know or clearly articulate Church teaching.
Thanks, PB
The Living Magisterium is not pan infallible and is getting people killed again ( murder victims) if the US Supreme Court was correct in its choice of studies in 1976 and its subsequent note which found that execution deters not passion murders but it does deter premeditated murders. God concurs apparently unless He gave the Jews 30+ death penalties because He thought it didn't deter. But Justin Martyr and Benedict agreed that God is rational.
Or put another way, UN figures give the murder rate in largely Catholic and non death penalty Central America as 31.1 per 100,000 people but largely death penalty East Asia as 1.1 per 100,000 people....with perhaps almost a billion poor people therein. European Catholic countries were formed into a civilization with the death penalty as part of that formation though they then abandoned it but have no radical rich poor divide anyway. Ccc 2267 is awful logic. It unwittingly talks only of deterring the murderer you caught not the high percent of murderers you never caught. Guatemala catches 4% of its murderers...the US 62%. Outside the US and in Catholic Latin America especially, ccc 2267 is delusional. And in Mexico ( non death penalty) where a government human rights office said that cartels control 60% of prisons, ccc 2267 is twice delusional...once about uncaptured murderers and next about captured murderers. And Mexico is the second largest Catholic population on earth. The first is Brazil, another non death penalty disaster. Research how real their prisons are. Here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2267420/Brazil-gives-prison-inmates-holiday-vacation--thousands-dont-return.html
Europe...no executions after many centuries of formation by executions partly... but also no great rich poor divide which produces high murder rates. If Japan gave up its death penalty, it would coast for a long time staying safe anyway because of the abscence of class division. Not so for China if she gave up executions because she has a poor class.
Hi Bill,
I have no disagreement with you about the value of deterrence, although I believe the rationale behind the OT lex talionis in cases of murder and other crimes is retributive justice rather than deterrence.
One problem in the age of twitter and popes opining at every turn to drive-by journalists is that fallible opinion often (sadly) gets interpreted as infallible teaching, which is ridiculous.
Again, as I've said elsewhere, I think Augustin Di Noia's question is pertinent, even if it sounds a bit over the top: "Who cares if it's infallible: Is it true?!"
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