A woman asked a friend to take her to the doctor’s office. She had a stressful medical procedure planned, and she needed her friend’s support. Her friend willingly agreed, and accompanied her throughout the process. The woman was happy to have this support during this stressful time.
Her medical procedure? An abortion.
Ecclesiastical Buzzwords
The latest buzzword in Catholicism today is “accompany.” By this is meant a “journeying together” with others, especially those who are in need or in irregular situations. A recent example of the emphasis can be found in Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s letter to the priests in his Archdiocese of Washington, DC. The subject of the letter is Amoris Laetitia, but a major theme is “accompaniment.” A few examples (emphasis added):
The emphasis [of Amoris Laetitia] is on pastoral discernment and accompaniment…
The second activity on which the document focuses is ACCOMPANYING, the pastoral accompaniment of families by the community of the Church. In many ways this is an extension of listening and of the synodality to which it gives rise. The journeying together of all of the members of the Church implies this accompaniment. But it also calls for a change in pastoral style and intensity…
Amoris Laetitia is not a list of answers to each individual human issue. Nor is it directed solely to the question of the reception of the Eucharist. The apostolic exhortation calls for a compassionate pastoral approach to many people – married, single, and divorced – who are struggling to face issues in life, the teaching of the Church, and their own desire to reconcile all of this. The exhortation is a call to compassionate accompaniment in helping all to experience Christ’s love and mercy…
I’m not picking on Cardinal Wuerl in this article, but he is an excellent bellwether for how the wind is blowing among high-ranking Church leaders. And there is no question that the promotion of “accompanying” has become the latest flavor of the month for many prelates and priests. But what does “accompanying” mean in the context of Christian evangelization and ministry? Unfortunately, and as usual today, Church leaders promote such buzzwords as doctrinal certainties to be accepted by the faithful (with any questioning harshly condemned), but nebulously define them. So each is left to determine for himself what is meant by “accompanying.” As we saw in the example given at the beginning of this article, however, accompanying itself is not an objective good – it is a morally neutral activity whose goodness or evil depends on what activity is being accompanied. If accompanying involves accommodating sin, then it is no Christian virtue.
Our Lord’s Accompaniment
As always, we should look to our Lord as the model for the proper way to practice accompaniment. No matter how popular a word – such as tolerance or mercy or accompany – may become in the Church, if its practice is not based on the example of Jesus Christ, then it should be rejected and resisted. One example of the Lord accompanying another in an “irregular” situation is his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42). Jesus and his disciples are passing through Samaria, whose inhabitants had a strained relationship with the Jews. They decide to take a break in the city of Sychar. As the disciples go off to refresh their supplies, Jesus rests next to Jacob’s well. A woman approaches the well, and Jesus asks her for a drink of water. Note first that in a sense Jesus is already accompanying her: he isn’t rejecting her as a Samaritan or a woman – he talks to her. He is, in a popular phrase used today, “coming alongside her.” As is typical for the Lord, he uses this common exchange as an opportunity to dive into deeper, spiritual issues. This is another example of accompaniment. Jesus takes a physical need of the woman’s – thirst – and uses it to launch into a more important discussion about spiritual needs, telling her,
“Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” (Jn 4:13-15)
So Jesus is using this moment of “accompanying” to lead this woman to a deeper understanding of spiritual realities. He is not content to merely walk alongside her, however. He wants to lead her to a specific destination: discipleship. What is interesting for our purposes here is the response Jesus gives the women’s inquiry, right when he has the Samaritan woman on the cusp of that discipleship.
Before looking at Christ’s response to the Samaritan woman, think of the typical response someone today is expected to give when an inquirer comes looking for spiritual answers. We will bend over backwards to welcome him, and we will do all we can to answer the questions in a way that satisfies his curiosity. In short, we will strive to do nothing that might turn the inquirer away.
This was my attitude leading inquiry meetings at my parish years ago. I did everything I could to make the inquirers feel comfortable and relaxed. I gave answers that would put the inquirer at ease, and worded them in the least offensive way possible. Never would I consider doing anything that might embarrass the inquirer or make him feel uncomfortable.
But what does Jesus say to the inquiring Samaritan woman? “Go, call your husband, and come here” (Jn 4:16). At first glance, it appears that Jesus just wants to include the woman’s whole household in this path to salvation. However, we find this wasn’t Christ’s purpose in asking this question. The woman answers, “I have no husband.” Jesus responds, ” You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly” (Jn 4:17-18).
Picture this same scenario playing out at the local parish. A priest throwing a woman’s marriage history in her face and then noting the irregular status of her current relationship! It wouldn’t surprise me if a letter was on the bishop’s desk within a day or two, and the priest dragged down to the chancery for a sharp rebuke and perhaps some “re-education.” Yet this is exactly what Jesus does: he sees the barrier that the Samaritan woman’s immoral life is to her conversion, and so he confronts it head-on. She simply couldn’t keep living like she was and become a disciple of Jesus Christ. Our Lord obviously knew that such a confrontation could lead her to reject him, but he cared enough for her soul that he had to challenge – not accommodate – her sinful lifestyle. He refused to “accompany” her in her immoral lifestyle, for that would be accommodating a path that could lead to destruction.
Choose the Path on Which to Accompany
Today the term “accompany” has too often meant “accommodate.” We need to be clear about what exactly “accompany” means. It does mean loving sinners and helping those in need. It doesn’t mean ignoring or enabling sin, or offering the Sacraments for those not eligible to receive them.
We must always keep our end-goal in mind: conversion. When we accompany another, we do so in order to lead them down a path to communion with Christ. This is the only path that leads to eternal happiness, and to accommodate another’s sin only accompanies them on the path to eternal destruction.
Eric Sammons is the Executive Director of Crisis Publications.
https://twitter.com/TheWarOurTime/status/746725135147667456
Yes, integrating sin.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5ad96fde353d8c79d5bc056d00f8414484295e79bdfa6442237741b58a740437.jpg
AUTHENTIC
ACCOMPANIMENT
The flower fades
To a frail, pale yellow
The puffy clouds
They weep.
The rolling thunder
Now sounds mellow
But the lightning by the river
Strikes deep.
Accompanying clouds
And thunder with light
It did an authentic
Dance.
Whipped them to
A frenzy fright
Then left
To live by chance.
The cloud’s wrung out,
The thunder’s still,
In the glade
The flowers thirst…
But lightning’s
Accompanying
Sheep in the meadow
To the river where they’ll drown accursed!
Very excellent. And Christ literally did this in minutes with no real accompanying on an ongoing basis as He also accompanied the woman caught in adultery…no where.
He told her…go and sin no more. This term is fad city and might be gone with the next Pope unless he’s more of the same.
Jesus did Not accompany the women caught in adultery “no where” he saved her from a crowd seeking to impose Mosaic Law upon her. This was NOT nothing, it was a act of heroism. Only then did he counsel her to not make that mistake again. If we can’t even recognize what it is to accompany someone, even without putting ourselves in danger, as Jesus did, it is unlikely we will ever understand anything but our own rigid thinking
Yeah thanks for retorting against something I never said…I stressed that Christ didn’t become part of her physical companions for weeks.
I made no comment on the time prior to “sin no more”. I tutored a black girl on Chadwick Ave. in Newark above a drug gang by one floor for three years…virtually nightly and paid her bills for Catholic school and more. I didn’t give it a fad name and announce it every month. Don’t use other people’s post to have a pharisee orgasm.
Can you make your point without being vulgar.
No…I think it apposite and actually non vulgar ( in every relevant medical text) as a metaphor and there are no children here.
This kind of bickering is why traditional, faithful Catholics are not listened to, and get the reputation for lack of charity. We are all on the same page here, for Heaven sake. Why do exchanges become kindergarten squabbles?
Lol….addressing that to me would make sense in a world wherein the Veritas post had vanished. It didn’t. It’s still there. Is Veritas a woman by the way and is this a gang of women in contact by email.
Adultery is a sin and not a mistake. And Christ went beyond Mosaic law concerning marriage, divorce and adultery. Christ says there is no divorce, and if divorced couples do re-marry they commit adultery.
How do you extrapolate that Jesus put himself in danger?
The current Pope is working so that we get Francis version 2.
Man plans, but God disposes.
Very true. But I also think of all the evils that God has allowed (Auschwitz, Gulag, China) and even in the Church with all the bad Popes.
But yes, I have no doubt that the crooked lines will be the way that He will write straight.
I agree with the main point of the essay, but it is also important to realize that we don’t know the end of the story for the woman at the well. It is clear that she underwent conversion, and became a disciple, witnessing to others in her town, but we don’t have any idea of how she accommodated her personal life to this.
We are not told by the Gospel and I have seen people fill in the blanks consistent both with conservative and liberal thinking on marriage.
Given her situation and the culture at the time, for her to “fix” things meant that she likely would have been single and without support, the church of “Acts” having not yet formed. Accompaniment in her case would require of us to help support her if she found herself without means, how many of us are willing to do that?
What if she had children with her current arrangement? Move out? Live like brother and sister with someone unwilling to do so? I wish Jesus had given us these answers in the Gospel, but we are left to discern these questions, and the answers are not so neat and tidy most of the time.
It is true that the Biblical account doesn’t say how she lived her life after this encounter with Christ. The Eastern Orthodox tradition is that she became a great saint and even witnessed her faith to Emperor Nero.
Usually the Gospels don’t tell what happens long-term to someone who encounters Christ. However, one thing to note is that the original audience of the Gospels most likely knew “the rest of the story.” John probably included the Samaritan woman in his Gospel because she was known to be a disciple, and she was known to have changed her life. So when he brings up the five husbands remark, the original audience understood that she had amended her life. Why else bring it up?
Regarding the difficulty of her changing her life, that is no less true today, and Christ did give us the answer: “Take up your cross and follow me.” Jesus never claimed that being his disciple would be easy, but it is worth any sacrifice.
And we, as the church, are called to assist them, see Matthew ch 25
Of course we are.
There is wisdom and depth here.
Would that our heirarchy have the same clarity of mind as you.
The woman at the well in was alone because she had committed adultery with five other men of the village. The other wives of the village shunned her as a consequence. You’re really missing the point of this passage. Perhaps the Samaritan’s conversion led other in the village to Christ. But, since this was a 1 on 1 private encounter with Christ, I seriously doubt that many of the villages took much pity on the home-wrecker. But, Christ did, which was the point. Her adultery was leading her and others to Hell.
Today the definition of accompany for the modernists (Francis particularly) is to approve of sin. Sell the lie that Mercy is available without repentance and firm purpose of amendment.
Recall Scalfari reporting that “Pope has De Facto Abolished Sin With Evangelii Gaudium”.
Amazing how the atheist can be so truthful.
Pope Francis telegraphed everything that has come to pass.
Veritas, why are you concerned with the end of the story? Jesus points out to the Samaritan woman the error of her ways. She can correct her way or not. She is the sinner. It is her choice to stop sinning or continue on with her sinful ways. How the story ends is up to the Samaritan woman.
Accompanying does seem to mean allowing at this time and with the word in that use. It is not love to not speak the truth and to allow people to continue on a path that puts salvation at risk. In our so called politically correct ‘non-judgmental’ society, sin is given a pass and even promoted and protected. Remember “admonish the sinner”? It is still a spiritual work of mercy. One can unconditionally love another who is in a sinful situation but to without the truth out of a misplaced sense of ‘mercy’ or because of human respect is a lack of true love.
Very good Eric. Be honest. Be direct. Be charitable. I like the way Jesus talks. He speaks to create credibility and action.
“Jesus never
approached people “randomly or casually but as possible bearers of
witness to him to whole populations” (Sloyan, 54). A foreign, single
woman who had had five husbands, and was now living with a man who was
not her husband was the one Jesus chose to bring a town in Samaria to
him so that they could say, “We have heard for ourselves, and we know
that this is truly the Savior of the world” (v. 42).”
http://www.crivoice.org/WT-samaritan.html
Conclusion: The best way for the accompany someone is to speak the truth. One has the impression that truth has been sacrificed for likeability, comity, political correctness if we are to understand what “accompany” now means.
Conclusion: The best way for the accompany someone is to speak the truth. One has the impression that truth has been sacrificed for likeability, comity, political correctness if we are to understand what “accompany” now means.
Absolutely, yes!!
CATHOLICS!
Proclaim the Gospel!
Tell people the TRUTH like Jesus did.
Let them know God loves them but if they do not give their lives to Christ and follow the teaching of His Church they are bound for hell.
Priests!
What are you so afraid of???
What has HAPPENED that the CHURCH that evangelized the ENTIRE world now finds itself having spent 20 years just trying to figure out how to define the “New Evangelisation”? What the heck?
We are led by the utterly, utterly lost and confused.
I am a convert. A PROSELYTE! YEAH, POPE FRANCIS! AND THANKS BE TO GOD AND THROUGH NO HELP OF YOURS I AM A CATHOLIC. HAD I BEEN LEFT TO FOLLOW YOUR LEAD, POPE FRANCIS, I’D STILL BE A LUTHERAN HEADED FOR HELL. THANKS FOR NOTHING.
I had to lead myself into the Catholic Church and bring my young adult family too.
I grew up in an Italian and Irish Catholic neighborhood and do not believe I have EVER, repeat, EVER been proselytized in any way, shape or form by any Catholic there or in any other state, country or region in which I have lived or traveled and I have traveled a lot…
UNTIL I and my wife walked into a Catholic Church and asked to speak to a priest. THANK GOD…THANK GOD that priest hadn’t been taught by this utterly lost Pope of ours. Thank GOD that young man was fresh out of a seminary where he was taught to lead people to Christ and His Church. TO PROSELYTIZE THEM.
And thank God for a family of Catholics in the parish who were bold enough to bring the teaching of the Church to us once we virtually kicked the door in to see what was going on.
Priests: the teaching of the Church demolishes the teaching of the Protestants. DO IT.
I really do not know what to say.
I steered clear of the Catholic Church till I was 49 years old because of my perception and the reality {!!} of pervasive Koran-kissing religious indifferentism that hid the truth and offered nothing BUT “accompaniment”.
Sorry, but I didn’t need “accompaniment”. I could find my way to hell all by myself.
I NEEDED THE TRUTH.
I am left to ponder the theological mystery of how this can even be. How can this mess be the same Church that converted the lost heathens of every shore? Hell, this Pope won’t even admit anybody IS lost!
All that crap talk about “accompaniment” is nothing more than platitudes designed to coax unbelieving people into sticking around long enough to feel compelled to drop a few bucks in the offering plate. Like my wife says, if the Catholic Church won’t speak the truth and spread the Gospel why bother to pay any attention to anything else She does? Why not just go fishing on Sundays or take the horses into the mountains? AND THAT MY FRIENDS IS EXACTLY WHAT PEOPLE HAVE DONE. GONE FISHIN.
What a bunch of Freemasonic communist wannabes and fag-chasers we are led by.
God Save the Catholic Church.
This is really helpful, a concrete example that can be used as a counter to the madness.
Everything was going along fine in this article until you began talking about the woman’s “sinful lifestyle.” Women in Israelite society had little to no control over their marital situation or sexuality. The woman’s five husbands could be due to a number of various factors including death, divorce, levirate marriage, or abuse—all circumstances about which we know nothing from the text and none of which would be the fault of the woman. People in the first century didn’t “shack up.” Blaming the victim, although common, is very unattractive.
Well bless your heart! You know more than our Lord about the woman’s situation!
More kindergarten squabbles. The point is Our Lord told the woman to stop committing adultery. PERIOD
“People in the first century didn’t “shack up.” Blaming the victim, although common, is very unattractive.”
You must be kidding, right? Also, the woman in question wasn’t “shaking up” in the modern sense. According to Christ she was committing adultery with 5 married men. If you read the passage closely, you would have noticed that she was alone. During Christ’s time, it was a custom for the women of the village to draw water in the morning together as a group. This Samaritan women was being shunned by the other women of the village for committing adultery with their husbands. Adultery is a sin that has several victims – namely the spouses and their children. To say that this Samaritan woman is the victim inverts the words of the Gospel, Christ’s own words. And if you read with an ear to the drama, you notice that the Samaritan woman changes the subject more than once. She has a guilty conscience and obviously doesn’t feel comfortable with the subject at hand. But, Christ persists. Christ didn’t approach her to accuse, but to redeem.
By down playing the guilt of the Samaritan woman, you also inadvertently down play Christ’s Mercy. Was that your intention? According to the Eastern Rite, the Samaritan became a great evangelizer and a Saint Saint Photini, The Luminous One.
You’re not reading the text; Jesus never once accuses her of adultery. Most likely her situation was shameful for her, but that wasn’t her fault. For examples, take a look at the story of Judah and Tamar or the book of Tobit. Or do some reading on the place of women in Israelite society.
There’s no evidence for a custom of women drawing water as group. She may indeed have been shunned by the women of the village or she may have just needed water—the text doesn’t say. You’ve been listening to too many inventive preachers.
The point of the story is that Jesus reaches out a women who has been “passed around” by the men in her society–he takes her seriously when it’s likely no one else did.
Hmm, in another text, Jesus says that one who divorces spouse and marries another commits adultery. Now this text. Jesus says she has had five and the one she is living with is not her husband. Do you think that to mean that they were merely “playing house”.
Where does the Bible say she divorced her prior husbands?
So you’re saying that she is still married to all 5 or that they are all dead? Are you proposing that she is another Tamar? If so, what’s with the fact that she is living with someone who is not her husband?
In your initial post you also made the assumption that she has been “passed around” by the men. How do you know that for a fact?
All we know from the text is that she has been married to five men—and marriage in Israelite society is substantially different from what we know today. A marriage requires a payment of a mohar or “bride price” to the bride’s father by the new husband’s household. Women in Israelite society had little agency and any woman who wasn’t attached to a male-headed household typically had two choices: starvation or prostitution. This is why widows are portrayed as so vulnerable in the Scriptures and why Jesus ensures that his mother will be part of a household when he is dying on the cross.
So we have to think of the most likely scenarios for the woman at the well. The most likely is that her previous husbands have died. It is also possible that some of her husbands have divorced her, perhaps due to infertility or another reason, or the situation could be a combination of death and divorce. The idea that the Tamar story is a type of foreshadowing of this story is certainly possible, especially considering that Tamar is an ancestor of Jesus. Tamar was treated quite unjustly by Judah by denying her offspring, so perhaps this woman has also been treated unjustly—thus my suggestion that she may have been “passed around” in some way by the men she has been assigned to by her culture.
The absolute LEAST likely scenario of all (thus my strenuous objection to the article) is that the woman has been nonchalantly divorcing a series of husbands, because each divorce makes her extremely vulnerable to homelessness and starvation. Because she has been with 5 other men already (see Tobit) one could easily see why no sixth man would pay the mohar for her to be his wife. But some man, perhaps a kind relative or someone who just needed household help, has allowed her to live with him, but she has no title or standing as “wife” because no money has changed hands for her. Or she may be a virtual slave to the household she is in, in exchange for food and shelter. Regardless, she is lowliest of the low in her society.
Davend, all your explanation about Israelite marriage is irrelevant. The only point at issue is that she had 5 husbands and is now living with someone. Whether adulterous because one or more husband is still alive or simply cohabiting (in which case fornicating) because all husbands are now dead.
Now, Jesus brings up the point of the 5 husbands. Why would he do that if she was widowed 5 times? There’s nothing wrong with being widowed 5 times (unless you killed all of them :-)).
Nowhere does the text say that she is committing fornication. She is “living with a man who is not her husband.” That’s all the Bible tells us. She is likely just trying to survive.
Certainly there’s nothing wrong with being widowed multiple times in our society, but (again see the story of Judah and Tamar) there was in Israelite society. Virgins were clearly valued above all else because their sexual pedigrees were clear and their offspring not so easily subject to questions about paternity. Women who had been with multiple men…not so much.
What do you think it means when someone shacks up with someone? Do you think they are playing house?
Whether she is just trying to survive, she is either commiting adultery if previous husband is till alive, or she is fornicating if all of them are dead.
Maybe part of the disconnect is that you’re thinking of the Israelite household as if it were the more familiar “couple-based” household of modern society. There are likely 6-8 other people living in this same household as woman at the well–various other relatives—older and younger, probably along with other unrelated individuals. “Living with a man…” doesn’t have the same connotation that it does today.
LOL The way you want to spin this.
Listen, Jesus first points to the fact that she has had 5 husbands and the one she is living with now is not here husband.
Having had five husbands is not automatically sinful and living with a man who is not your husband isn’t automatically sinful. It’s exponentially more likely that this is instead a very tragic situation for this woman, not of her own doing.
But what is sinful is assuming the worst of someone when there’s no reasonable call to do so, and smearing someone’s reputation when you don’t know all the facts.
It’s QUITE clear that Our Lord led her step-by-step to the question of her adultery as a moral impediment to be dealt with – what could be more clear? ….”…he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.”
“There are none so blind as those who will not see…..”
This is so wonderfully clear. What is harsh here? What is unkind? What is judgemental? We have lost our Faith and so must invent newer and newer ‘solutions’ to achieve worldly happiness. Accompaniment is one way that everyone can be happy. The person who gets to sin still yet feel good about the journey, and the person doing the accompanying who gets to feel good because he/she did a ‘good work.’ Souls fall into hell like snowflakes but do so feeling happy. Our Lady of Fatima pray for the conversion of sinners.
The spiritual work of mercy is to “admonish the sinner”. What ever became of that?
Accompany we must!
to the brothel? yes, accompany we must
to the abortion clinic? yes, accompany we must
to the porn shop? yes, accompany we must.
to the confessional? naaah
Mr. Sammons. I’ve tried locating an email address to write you. But I’ll write here in hopes of reaching you. You wrote on your blog, apparently sometime around 2010, that Pius X had permitted inter-communion with the Russian Orthodox. I’ve searched high and low for the document which would offer evidence for this. The allegation is being repeated on the internet recently. It seems the only reference I could find to the original story is at the Transalpine Redemptorist and on a blog that was once yours. Can you help me out with any documentation? Thank you.
Sean North
Christ had perfect knowlede of the futyre
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