Sunday, April 10, 2016

Although this should go without saying ...

As Canonist Ed Peters points out, "The law before 'Amoris' is the law after" (In the Light of the Law, April 10, 2016):
Holy Communion is to be withheld from divorced-and-remarried Catholics in virtue of Canon 915 which, as has been explained countless times, does not require Catholic ministers to read the souls of would-be communicants, but rather, directs ministers to withhold holy Communion from those who, as an external and observable matter, “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin”. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 2384 describes civil remarriage after divorce as “public and permanent adultery” (something obviously gravely sinful), so, if Francis had wanted to authorize the administration of holy Communion to divorced-and-remarried Catholics (and he did not want to repudiate CCC 2384, 1650, etc.) he would have had to have wrought a change in the law contained in Canon 915.
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12 comments:

JM said...

I give the prize to Creative Minority Report... And add that, If the Internet was around at vatican II Cardinal Siri would have been vindicated....

"Amoris Laetitia has more words than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined. Think about it.

You'll hear many things about papal doc tomorrow. Ask this simple question. Does it tend to lead people out of sin or confirm them in it?

As I previously said, 2% actual Catholic teaching, 97% Jesuitical gobbledygook, and 1% poison. I stand by that."

PS. Jesuits are now irrelevant. Their day passed, perhaps some 70 years ago. *Quite* obviously. S.J. is like C.S.A. in my book.


Anonymous said...

Keep dreaming, Dr. Blosser.

Marital fidelity is a joke.

The pastoral practices of the Catholic Church long ago undermined marriage. I have seen it up very close and very personally for decades. There is nothing surprising to me in Jorge's bilge.


Karl

Jacobi said...

Just browsing.

I came across a note in a UK paper that the law of our sovereign Parliament is our protection against arbitrary and perverse government.

I have commented elsewhere that canon law serves the same function in Catholicism.

Canon law reflects the will of the Magisterium and cannot be changed arbitrarily.

Therefore it is, and will remain a Mortal sin for any adulterer, knowing they are adulterers to receive Holy Communion. As for priests, a bit more difficult, that is reading the soul of a person, but any priest who advises that adulterers and any other mortal sinner may receive, either publicly or in the Confessional, is certainly complicit.

Pertinacious Papist said...

Karl,

To maintain (with Dr. Peters) that the perennial Catholic dogma and doctrine on faith and morals remains what it always was (viz., the teaching of Christ) after the publication of this document is neither to declare anything about how the practice of that doctrine may be impacted by that document, nor to declare anything about whether Catholics have not effectively apostatized en masse or at least massively defected from obedience over the last half-century.

Kind regards, PP

Jacobi said...

Catholics have effectively apostatized over the last half century in large numbers, certainly here in Europe, and more will do so. The pendulum has now swung from the post-WWII confidant lay supported position, to the present one of confusion and melt-down.

It has of course happened before at what came to be called the Protestant Reformation. We survived that. Somehow, what with other difficulties around I suspect it will be more difficult this time?

Pertinacious Papist said...

Jacobi,

I heartily agree. The Arian controversy was brutal and we survived.

On the other hand, sometimes my students point out that nothing has really changed, that each generation has its own crises, that each has complained about the next going to hell in a handbasket, etc. And this is true.

Yet there are a number of things, I think, that may make our current crisis (or crises) a bit unique. For one thing, just the scale of some of the problems we face, not only in the Church but in the world and our country, like our national debt that is screaming upwards of 20 TRILLION dollars, having risen 7-10 TRILLION just while Obama has been president, the Muslim immigration which threatens to destroy the historical identity of Europe, which was once tanamount to Western 'Christendom', etc.

On the moral and spiritual front, I know of no other time in history when the Western world has so brazenly embraced contraception, abortion, and same-sex 'marriage' as our own -- all, as Peter Kreeft points out, "pelvic" issues.

But then, most disturbing of all, perhaps, is the wholesale apostasy of massive numbers of Catholics and the doctrinal confusion of Church teaching on the part of many priests and bishops themselves. The scale these problems probably surpasses even that of the Arian controversy, in which two-thirds of the bishops went over to Arianism -- simply because Catholicism now is a religion which lays claim to peoples throughout the world and not merely (or even primarily) Europe.

Jacobi said...

Agreed!

Catholic Mission said...

Doctrine has been changed.

Franciscans of the Immaculate seminarians are taught the new moral and salvation theology based on known exceptions, visible in Heaven
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2016/04/franciscans-of-immaculate-seminarians.html

Jacobi said...

@ C M,

Doctrine cannot be changed. If they are being taught different doctrine, they might agree in which case they are not Catholics. if they disagree then they get out. If they just can't be bothered or can't make up their minds they are in the wrong calling.

Anonymous said...

I understand what you are saying.

But, the institution has lost my loyalty.


Karl

Pertinacious Papist said...

Karl,

I don't follow. Have you 'left' the Church or do you still adhere to the Catholic Faith? I can understand losing respect for 'Judas' priests and bishops, etc. But if you hold to the Faith, as I suspect you do (since otherwise I can make little sense of your previously-expressed personal concerns), then I can't understand how you can say that the Church herself (if that is what you mean by 'institution') has lost your loyalty. Disrespect for Judas clerics is one thing; writing off the divine institution they betray is another; and I should worry about that being a betrayal as well. I'm not ascribing any of these views to you; just querying you for clarity. God's peace, PP

Anonymous said...

I still attend mass, at the request of my children, although I really do not want to. But I do not want to "lead" them wherever I may be going, when I have lost my ability to navigate my own beliefs.

I cannot not explain things more than that.

Peace, that is what I have not had for decades.


Karl