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Pope Francis Departs from Church Teaching in New Exhortation

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Pope Francis has just published his long-awaited Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Laetitia. In it, he repeats many of the problematic and controversial statements of the previous 2014 and 2015 Synods of Bishops on the Family. Among these, one finds the law of gradualism with regard to sinful relationships, the claim that there are “seeds” of goodness in such relationships that are objectively contrary to God’s laws, and a general tone of not speaking of sin at all with regard to those ways of living that put the soul of the persistent sinner gravely at risk of not attaining to eternal salvation.

Pope Francis quotes amply both the 2014 and 2015 Synod reports, which shows that he approves of how they were handled, as well as the way they deftly steered the Church toward a more lenient attitude as regards the sinner and his misconduct. He also makes clear at the very beginning of his document that “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium. ” Some “aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it” can be, according to the pope, interpreted  in different ways. He explicitly stresses that

Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. For “cultures are in fact quite diverse and every general principle… needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied”.

The pope chooses, however, not to define what he means by “solutions better suited to its culture.” Is this, in fact, a form of cultural and moral relativism? The answer is not immediately clear.

Beside these themes, problematic in themselves, there are two grave and deeply serious claims in this new papal document which were not discussed during the previous two Synod sessions in the manner in which they appear in the exhortation. Each represents a deviation from the Catholic Church’s traditional moral teaching, thereby effectively departing from the Universal Magisterium of the Church.

In Chapter 8 (Paragraph 298), Pope Francis speaks about the “remarried” divorcees and claims that one has to look at each case individually – suggesting a form of Nominalism – since not every case has to be assessed the same way. As an example, he refers to a second “marriage” which has been “strengthened” (or “consolidated,” depending on the translation) and which also has “new children, proven fidelity, generous self giving, Christian commitment” – but which is also aware of “its irregularity and of the great difficulty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins.” As an example, Pope Francis brings up the education of children that calls for the “remarried” couple to stay closely together as a couple. While this example has been brought up repeatedly during the last two years, Pope Francis adds a novelty in his footnote (329) to this paragraph:

many people, knowing and accepting the possibility of living “as brothers and sisters” which the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, “it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers” [Here, a reference is made to the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes.]

What this means concretely is that the pope is sending a deeply troubling message: those who are living in the objective state of adultery (since they are still sacramentally and validly married to their real spouse, not the person they are living with) and have children from this second “marriage” are essentially bound to stay in this relationship, living as husband and wife (which they are not) and continuing to engage in acts proper only to spouses, and thus, adulterous in nature. Otherwise, the pope reasons, their new relationship – and the welfare of the children involved – could be put at risk! In this, Pope Francis undermines Catholic moral teaching at its core, and puts supposed practical concerns over the higher concern of the salvation of souls.

In paragraph 299 of Chapter 8, which deals in general with “irregular” unions, Pope Francis also claims that “remarried” divorcees should be more “integrated” into the life of the Church, “not only to realize that they belong to the Church as the body of Christ, but also to know that they can have a joyful and fruitful experience in it.” He proposes removing “forms of exclusion” with regard to “the liturgical, pastoral, educational and institutional framework”.

In this context, in Paragraph 300, Pope Francis brings up this idea of a “process of accompaniment and discernment” with the help of the “internal forum” in which the “remarried” divorcees may discern their own special situation with the help of a priest. “Discernment,” “pastoral accompaniment” and “integration” are key words here. In this context, the pope also calls for the humility, discretion, the love for the Church and her teaching and for the search for God’s will on the side of those taking counsel with a priest, and says that

These attitudes are essential for avoiding the grave danger of misunderstandings, such as the notion that any priest can quickly grant “exceptions”, or that some people can obtain sacramental privileges in exchange for favours.

This question of access to the sacraments for the divorced and remarried is taken up again in paragraph 305:

Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.

At the end of that sentence, footnote 351 clarifies: “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments,” and then refers to both Confession and the Eucharist. He writes: “I would also point out that the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.’”

 These statements call to mind the substance of the so-called Kasper proposal. The language of the Eucharist as “not a prize” is something both Kasper and Francis have used in public statements on this topic since the Synod process began in 2014. There is no specific prescription on whether the divorced and “remarried” can have access to the sacraments in this, but one sees the opening of a door.

The second grave scandal comes in paragraph 301. In the context of the question of “discernment” for those “irregular” relationships, Pope Francis does away with the claim that those who do not live according to God’s law are living in the state of mortal sin! He says:

Hence it is [sic]  can no longer simply be said that all those in any “irregular” [to include homosexual relationships?]  situations are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace. More is involved here than mere ignorance of the rule. A subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding “its inherent values” [?], or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin.

Among other mitigating factors in this regard, the pope mentions “affective immaturity” and “force of acquired habit” and “conditions of anxiety,” as well as other “psychological or social factors” that would alleviate a person’s culpability.

This statement of the pope seems to do away with any moral foundation on the question of marriage and divorce. It breaks apart the very basis of moral law, and opens the door to a lax and relativistic approach to the sanctity of marriage.

Taken together, we see that the pope is claiming that “remarried” couples who have children should continue to live as “husband” and “wife” and should not live “as brother and sister” and that all “irregular” relationships which are not in accordance with God’s laws do not, in his estimation, necessarily mean that persons in such situations are living in a state of sin. Thereby, the pope also indirectly opens the door to the admittance of all these persons to the sacraments, and, at the same time, undermines not just one, but three sacraments: the Sacrament of Marriage, the Sacrament of Penance, and the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

There is much more in the document that still demands to be unpacked. But on the basis of these points alone, we see the potential for serious danger to the souls of the faithful who would follow the advice laid out herein.

This post was updated to include the reference to paragraph 305 and footnote 351.

487 thoughts on “Pope Francis Departs from Church Teaching in New Exhortation”

  1. So when can we expect to hear from Cardinals Burke, Sarah, Müller, Pell on this exhortation or are they all in agreement with it? It’s time to step up to the mark & call it what it is – a Protestant document!

    Reply
    • I suspect they are going to tread very carefully. Which means we aren’t going to hear a lot at the speed we’re looking for it.

      Whether we hear it at all….well, that’s been the problem for a very long time. Some of them will at least say SOMETHING, I expect.

      Reply
      • MAKE NO MISTAKE, PARAGRAPH 301 IS REFERRING TO MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH WOMEN.

        EVIDENCE FOR THIS CLAIM IS THAT THE POPE DOES NOT CONDEMN “HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS”; INSTEAD, HE MERELY STATES THAT THEY ARE NOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS REAL MARRIAGE.

        IN OTHER WORDS, HE UTILIZES A RED-HERRING-LIKE TACTIC (LOOK AT THE RED BIRD OVER THERE!) BY MERELY STATING THAT GAY UNIONS AREN’T A MARRIAGE BUT OMITTING THE FACT THAT HOMOSEXUALITY ITSELF IS GRAVELY SINFUL. AMBIGUITY IS ALSO AT WORK THROUGHOUT.

        INDEED, CARDINAL KASPER’S STATEMENT IS VERY APT, THAT THIS DOCUMENT IS “the first step in a reform hat will turn the page back for the Church after a period of 1700 years.”

        THE “FIRST STEP” IS OMITTING KEY TEACHINGS – LIKE THE TEACHING THAT HOMOSEXUALITY IS GRAVELY DISORDERED. THE FIRST STEP IS ALSO MAKING EXCUSES AND REMOVING CULPABILITY FOR HOMOSEXUALS – “MITIGATING FACTORS.”

        STEP 2: “WELL GEE WHIZ, SINCE HOMOSEXUALS AREN’T CULPABLE, MAYBE HOMOSEXUALITY IS NORMAL?” ETC.

        THIS DOCUMENT IS HORRID.

        Reply
        • How did you come to that conclusion? I believe when he states in Para 301 “irregular situations” he was primarily talking about cohabitation and having children out of wedlock, divorced and remarried etc. What made you think he was talking about homosexual relations?

          Reply
          • That is the problem with vagueness, as it is open to interpretation. What is not said specifically with regards to sin, is another crack which the smoke of Satan enters the temple of God.

          • There is no vagueness. In the paragraph quoted and preceding paragraph, Pope Francis is talking specifically about marriage, divorce remarriage etc of men and women. Although I agree with your point in a general sense.

          • That’s the problem. You ‘believe.’ Because of its ambiguity, others will ‘believe’ differently, as is evinced by your reply to someone who ‘believes’ differently.

          • Sorry, I used the term “believe” in the sense that I hold, maintain or conclude that………… It was more in the sense of conversational etiquette. What I should have said is ” What Pope Francis stated……”
            From that paragraph it is clear who and what he is talking about.

        • Look who he (Francis) surrounds himself with, at Casa Santa Marta. Why do you think he wants to be there, instead of by himself at the Papal apartment? Perv parties are more fun! No surprise here.

          Reply
          • John,

            Anyone who has followed my Disqus. Profile knows where I stand. But a statement such as this needs chapter and verse!

          • “Why do you think he wants to be there, instead of by himself at the Papal apartment? Perv parties are more fun! ”

            You just said Pope Francis commits wanton adultery and promiscuity at ‘perv parties’. That is calumny and a mortal sin – objectively, clearly by Church teaching. It is clear you have no well-formed conscience as to your mortal sin of calumny.

          • In lieu of knowledge of its sinfulness (and gravity, willful commission) sinful action by definition is not mortal.

          • I haven’t said he actively participates in those acts, but he enjoys being around those who do. Wake up, I mean his ghost writer wrote a book “The Art of Kissing: Healing with Your Mouth.” The guy is a priest, no less. Research Msgr. Ricca, head of papal household. I’m saying what many know, he sure seems to enjoy the company of those demented people. I guess all those who are faithful to Church teaching are supposed to bury their heads in the sand while these evil men mock Christ and laugh at the Truth? Thank goddess for guys like Steve and a few others who have the guts to spread the truth and lead a resistance, the Bishops certainly aren’t doing much, sadly enough.

        • I noticed that as well, right off the top. Extremely disturbing.
          Pope Francis has shown his hand.
          And i agree whole heartedly, this document is horrific on that alone.
          Where are our strong and mighty prelates?

          Reply
        • Bingo……this is what I have been saying for some time now. This whole issue of ‘divorced and civilly married’, although part of what they want to overhaul, isn’t the core issue…..the real issue is homosexuality. It’s the red meat of this ‘reform’. Although Francis does say in this document that same sex marriage is off the table, they are really looking to normalize same sex relationships.

          Cdl. Dolan gave this away the other day when he said; he WISHES people would be knocking down his door wanting the sacraments and to come back into the Church, but they just aren’t there! So…….where are all these people that are in ‘irregular’ marriages that want to receive the sacraments? Wait! I’m sure there’s really a ton of them that we just aren’t aware of right?? RIGHT!

          Reply
          • Latest figures I read of 75 million Catholics still attending church found that only 30% of them even believe in the real presence. What is worse is that 57 million have left the church in the US alone. One wonders if they’d believed in a presence, would they have left? The Vatican fools intend to turn the Church inside out – not by tampering with doctrine, but by changing what Catholics believe by altering praxis.

            Christopher West, author of the Theology of the Body, seems to think the pope is just doing the right thing. Here West says what I learned a year ago at seminars at our local church,

            “Pope Francis is not the man the secular media often make him out to be. He has no agenda to change the teachings of the Church, but to challenge the Church to proclaim her teachings in the full context of Christ’s merciful love.

            “Pope Francis’s colorful images and frankness. He warns against becoming “sourpusses,” “mummies in a museum,”
            ..people who look like they’ve “just come back from a funeral.”

            “His bold condemnation of a self-righteous, elitist spirit within the Church. He calls this pharisaical attitude a “tremendous corruption disguised as a good” and an “adulterated form of Christianity” that will never lead anyone to Christ.”

            “His consistent call to be “bold and creative in the task of rethinking the goals, structure, style, and methods of evangelization.” The teaching of the Church does not change, but the manner in which it is proclaimed can and must.”

            “His call to get beyond our self-enclosed and self-absorbed worlds and get our shoes “soiled with the mud of the street.” We mustn’t be afraid, he insists, to enter the messy reality of people’s lives. When we do, “our lives become wonderfully complicated.”

            If anyone else has read West’s Theology of the Body or seen his videos I would love to hear your take on what he says. I attended a six week seminar on him a year ago at our local Catholic church…and my take on what he is offering was way different than the younger people attending. They seemed to think that it was all good…and myself being older, was more than shocked at what I was hearing. For me personally, it was like things have gone from bad to far, far worse since the 70’s.

          • Well said. But then too, the homosexual population is also trivial — 2-3%? — something like that.

            The real target MUST therefore be, as Ann Barnhardt, Hillary White and I’m pretty sure Steve have said, the Eucharist and the Church.

            This exercise has exactly zero to do with mercy.

      • Speaking of hearing and speed, Steve, as the old adage goes:

        “You never hear the bullet that kills you”.

        I might add even in the Hospital of Mercy.

        Thank you, Maike, for your piece here. Knowing where the fire might be coming from, we can at least duck for now.

        Reply
    • What would you expect these conservatives bishops to do? The commander in chief has spoken and they must now follow suit or they themselves risk being labeled dissenters of magisterial teaching… this is poetic justice in its truest form, I have to say.

      Be not afraid people… BE NOT AFRAID!!

      Reply
      • Müller in his capacity as Prefect for the CDF technically COULD declare the pope a heretic and the Bishops would have to respond. The Prefect has that power in his capacity as he is charged with safeguarding the doctrine of the Church.

        I doubt it’ll happen. But it could.

        Reply
      • We all have to figure out just where the hill is to die on. This is like Tudor England all over again, except the pope is more like Wolsey than Fisher.

        Reply
    • Anyone who does not accept the fullness of the Catholic tradition will…

      *say it with me…*

      burn forever in a lake of fire, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

      With Satan and his angels… you will burn…

      in every part of your body and soul.

      And God loves you.

      Reply
  2. With this…”Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. For “cultures are in fact quite diverse and every general principle… needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied”.
    He also opened polygamy in Africa.

    Reply
  3. Has not the pope said that this is “his church”? And that he means to set things in a new direction that cannot be undone? So where does that leave the faithful? Is there no longer any sense? So people can continue to live in a sexual relationship without marriage and that is OK now because there’s some kind of seed of goodness? And who is going to go running to a busy priest to see about some internal forum? When I was in mortal sin, my conscience did not bother me a bit. That is because I was fully in the grasp of the devil. Who is caring for the salvation of souls?? So does everyone go to heaven now?

    Reply
    • As Bp. Rene Gracida stated in his interview with Church Militant, and I am paraphrasing: ‘God is not mercy, God is love. How can the Father be merciful to the Son, and the Son merciful to the Holy Spirt, and so on within the Trinity? If someone is need of mercy, this corresponds to sin. No, God is love, He is not mercy’.

      Reply
    • According to him and his cohorts they do, remember, the progressive modernists don’t believe in hell. But…………they will when they get there!

      Reply
  4. Paragraph 80 of AL also turns on its head the ends of marriage, of which the primary end is the procreation and education of children. See Casti Connubii 11 et seq. This is the main reason for so much of what else has gone wrong with marriage.

    This flip had occurred before Pope Francis, however. But here it is stated clearly.

    Reply
    • I disagree. I think the Pope is right in what he stated there in Para 80. This is why he stated that couples that are not blessed with children are still considered married because the primary reason for marriage is unitive, secondarily it is procreative.
      That is why Adam on seeing Eve did not say “Oh great now I can procreate”. He said “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man”
      God before making woman said “It is not right that man should be alone. I shall make him a helper”
      Out of that love and unity, procreation takes place. Unity is not a by-product of procreation. Unity is necessary for procreation. Procreation is not necessary for unity, as was the case of Adam and Eve.
      Pope Francis makes it abundantly clear in Para 80 that the conjugal act is reserved for marriage only.

      Reply
      • Wrong, the procreative act is inherently generative and unitive. You can be unitive with a toaster, but it doesn’t make it a proper sexual act.

        Separating procreation and the unity of the sexes is no different than sodomy.

        Reply
        • I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. I never said the procreative act wasn`t inherently generative and unitive. I said that the marital act is primarily unitive and secondarily procreative. That is why an infertile married couple are still considered married as every marital act the engage in unites them even more, although there is no procreative outcome.

          Reply
          • Ah, well I was responding to:

            Procreation is not necessary for unity

            A married couple where one or both spouse(s) are infertile is a privation of the sexual faculty, the exception, and not the standard to define the procreative act. In this case I can’t see it being separated as primary and secondary since they’re both intrinsically linked.
            We don’t judge the standard by its privation.

          • Absolutely being infertile is a privation of the sexual or procreative faculty but not of the unitive faculty. And since union can still take place even with the absence of the procreative faculty, it would indicate that Unity takes primacy.

          • You’re separating unitive and generative when they are both aspects of the same act. I’m not saying that those married couples who have a privation of some sort are somehow less married than a couple who commands the full sexual faculty.
            … just that they have a privation. Same concept as a person who is blind does not alter the nature of the eye.

            If mere unity can be the primary function without procreation with or without a privation, then anything inevitably goes.

          • I am not separating, I am prioritising. That is the point. In marriage and the marital act, unity comes first, procreation second. That is all I am saying. The fact that an infertile couple are still considered married and enter into closer unity with each and every martial act, demonstrates my point.

          • You must be right. The first thing I thought when I saw my wife for the first time was “At last I found someone to procreate with and secondly unite myself in love”!!! Now that`s sarcasm!!!

          • I’m taking about love, not lust. What is supposed to be ridiculous about a man recognizing the love of his life when he realizes: “This is the woman with whom I want to have children and start a family”?

          • I am talking about Love too. That`s my point. When I met my wife for the first time and as time went by, I wanted to spend more and more time with her, to get to know her, to take care of her, to help her, to be part of her life, in a phrase: to be united with her. “two become one flesh”.
            Procreation is the fruit of unity. Unity is primary. Procreation is secondary.

          • No, we’re not talking about the same thing. I have lots of friends, male and female, with whom I like to spend time, whom I like to get to know, whom I like to take care of, whom I like to help, whose lives I like to be a part of. The one I married, however, is the one with whom I also wanted to have children, i.e. to “become one flesh.” What you’re describing is a friendship with benefits, and – hey! – maybe some kids if we decide its not too much of a hassle.

          • You keep mistaking my point. I am not saying the unitive and procreative are separate, they are not! My point is: the unitive is primary, the procreative is secondary. I believe Scripture (as I previously quoted) and reason support this.

          • No, I don’t think I’ve missed your point at all. You keep claiming that the unitive end of marriage is primary. This goes against what the Church has always taught, as summarized in the 1917 Code of Canon Law: “The primary end of matrimony is the procreation and education of offspring; its secondary end is mutual help and the remedying of concupiscence.” (Can. 1013, §1) Tell me again how your interpretation of Sacred Scripture overrides centuries of tradition.

          • Can. 1055 §1. “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring…..”

            See how the “partnership of the whole of life and the good of the spouses” comes first and “the procreation and education of the offspring” comes second.

            Can. 1056 “The essential properties of marriage are UNITY and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament”

            Also Scripture trumps tradition. And I noticed how you did not refute my interpretation of Scripture regarding this matter.

            By the way, Can. 1013 states “No bishop is permitted to consecrate anyone a bishop unless it is first evident that there is a pontifical mandate”. Where is the one you quoted?

          • Thanks for pursuing this. Juxtaposing the two different Codes shows how much things have changed, and how much we’ve lost.

          • You are quoting the heresy of Vatican II, which denied the perennial and consistent teaching of the Church on marriage. Their canon was written to incorporate the new “ecumenical” religion where any specific Catholic doctrine and practice that was offensive to or denied by non-Catholics had to be denied, obfuscated, contradicted, or worded according to the heretical understanding of it.

          • Tell me where the Vatican and clergy scream the Song of Songs from the rooftops. They don’t for if they did they would have to admit that women are an okay species. They are so stuck on the old track of women as evil it is sickening..and I am not for feminism, but the church like Judaism of old and Islime of present is a very misogynist mindset… all women haters. Fact is if they can have millions of folks pushing out them babies, the baskets get filled every sunday!

            This means the Vatican can go on being the wealthiest entity on the planet…show me where Christ advocated for whitened sepulchers..in fact, he denounced them. I recall back in the sixties/seventies with five little kids, getting these Bishop Sheen envelopes in the mail appealing to feed the poor and help the sick in Africa…and I would walk around the house crying for them while looking at my healthy five little ones.

            Now today I see the same BS asking for help to feed the hungry and help the down and out…it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that this is all calculated…keep countries poor, keep kids starving..send out appeals for more money ‘to feed the poor’..keep the same old dictators in power who keep the people poor like in Cuba…and those who ‘feel’ sorry for them keep sending in envelopes to help the poor.

            It is a grand game worthy of men spending an eternity in hell for using people as pawns in a game called greed. Take from those who have it and pretend to give to those who need it, but keep filling the coffers in Rome..sorry but it’s an old game that’s been played for eons, but you don’t get the picture until you’ve lived at least 70 years..and you see it is all one big lie..sorry to burst your bubble, but that ‘s what it is. No reason why Africa should be poor, except when you have dictators in power and a church aligned with the NWO PTB..so satanic.

          • what is your problem man….a high school sophomore for seeing the facts as they present themselves?? Methinks that if you are over sixty and don’t know or understand any of what I said, you are the one stuck in high school mode. Apparently the only sites you go on are those regarding religion..I invite you to ck out other sites that tell you what’s going on in the real world. Or does it give you more satisfaction pretending that world does not exist. Are you a lib? I invite you to ck out Ann Barnhardt’s site today as she has some awesome and honest info as per usual that should bring you up to speed in the knowledge dept.

          • Now that I think about it..what you said is most laughable as no high school kid today would have experienced enough to make assertions of things they never experienced. But I guess that obvious boo boo on your part fails to be seen by you.

          • No way could any intelligent person translate Joe’s remarks into having a ‘friend with benefits’ Sorry that is just plain goofy. He states the truth and by comments coming on here it is plain to see that many catholics have been raised to be sexually repressive. And this accounts for a hugh divorce rate…just ask any analyst in psychology…more catholics end up on shrink’s sofas than any other religion…we have been taught to think that sex is soo bad, and any that believe that should take it up with the Lord and ask him why the Song of Songs is in Scripture…c’mon folks..grow up!

          • Because the divorce rate is lowest among so called faithful Catholics does not necessarily equate to a happy marriage. I have known many folks who stayed together for fifty years and hated every minute of it, but the group think did not allow for them to be real…..merely to agree to forfeit their own minds

          • The divorce rate is so high among Catholics because they are sexually repressed. And yet the divorce rate among Catholics is so low because they suffer from group-think. Sounds like a classic case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

          • What part do you not get of SOME Catholics divorcing due to lousy Cana classes pushing nonsense about sex/procreation, thus leading to eventual divorce?. I have no idea how old you are but I have a hunch you must be under 30 for your lack of knowledge of what was taught in Cana classes in the sixties is woefully lacking. As for Catholics who remained together to the bitter end, I know many women in 70’s/80’s now who greatly regret staying in their marriage out of social mores militating against that. With husbands that were drinkers and philanderers, they felt that they lived in a closed tomb most their life..just at the point when they are actually facing a cold stone tomb.

            Having said that I DO HAVE a few catholic friends who have been married over 45/50 years and still much in love..this is what marriage was meant to be…not a ‘gotta-stay-in-there’ even if I wish I were dead miserable mindset. I am hoping that some friends who have been married over 50 years was kidding when he told me, ‘yep, we are still having hall sex’. I said ‘what on earth do you mean’..his answer, ‘Everytime we pass each other in the hall one says screw you’ and the other one replies ‘F U’ “. So I’m not so sure about their happiness.

          • What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China Rad? I was born before the war ended. My problem with Cana classes back then was being insulted by being told husband and wife could do what gays did.
            I thought it was abhorrent and disgusting, Why would one marry the opposite sex to do perv things that lesbians/gays do to each other?

            Having always been an avid reader of religion/philosophy, I was also taken aback by the priests who wrote of women as being mere sperm receptacles..only wish I had saved all those books to prove the loon aspect of some clergy back then. Now that I think about it, such an attitude is no different than terrorists who say their women’s bodies are their weapon, hence they need no nukes or other weaponry.

          • Well, SIJ, I’m trying to get a handle on where you’re coming from, because I can’t quite follow your chain of thought. Here are three of your claims, drawn from various comments:

            – Many Catholics have been sexually repressed, which has led to an increase in divorce and mental illness among Catholics.

            – Many of those Catholics who remain together are very unhappy, and only remain together because they suffer from ‘group-think’.

            – Cana classes in the 60’s were preaching the fruits of the liberal sexual revolution.

            Do you see my problem here? Were Catholics “sexually repressed” prior to the 1960’s, in your opinion? Or was it the sexual revolution which messed things up? Or do neither of those things really have anything to do with your main point, which – I think – is that love is an essential part of a successful and fulfilling marriage? It’s clear to me that you’re pretty upset with the current state of sexual morality in the Church, and you find the notion of women as “sperm receptacles” (I’d love to see actual documentation on that) very offensive (and rightly so), but I’m not quite sure what you see as the root cause.

          • I am not just upset with the current state of sexual thought within the church (LGBT/feminism/gay pedo priests) but also that which came before which appeared to be a total 180 from that deviant outlook. Neither approach, be it pre 60’s or afterwards bore any resemblance to the Song of Songs. If you have never read that most poetic and sensuous part of scripture you are missing something good . What is wrong with moderation in all things..it is what scripture demands, not excessive either/or….I think it would serve you well to read Lois/Joseph Bird’s books which are still on Amazon. They obviously were in touch with the Song of Songs.

            They wrote books in the 70s and the church would be wise to listen to what they had to say about sex/marriage and the deep love which covers all. Sadly what we were taught, (if YOU actually read what I said about Cana classes), was down right sick in my mind. TO tell a couple that they can do what gays and lesbians do, was not an intelligent way to teach in cana classes. What part of that do you not understand? Now that I think about it that was no doubt a clue as to how the clergy viewed sex…from a gay standpoint….how sick is that?And why would you want to marry the opposite sex if you were only going to do perv stuff as the lgbt crowd does. Why don’t you understand that either?

            You are taking out of context some things I said and choosing to put your own spin on it…as for being able to quote said book of a priest about women as sperm receptacles, I did not save every book I’ve had the last fifty years or I would have no room to live in. It is bad enough that two years ago I decided to give away 400 of my remaining (what was a 1,000 book collection) to two libraries, but that still leaves me with 600. You can steal anything of mine, but steal a book and expect to have hands chopped off. Truth beats anything else and is more precious than any gem!

          • You need help If you think Joe was describing lust. Nothing he said had a trace of that silly notion on your part. Are you still in your sophomore mode…or just one foot in the grave rad? I guess you are one of those guys who thought that your wife should not ever wear a lacy gown to bed…oh god forbid, she look sexy!.

          • Joe, you must understand in today’s world that speaking truth is a no no, especially in religious matters. It is the new thought crime so well exposed by Orwell…it is all around us now. It is being manifested especially by the left…the college kids now being communized are turning into cry bullies…speak the truth and they go bananas, thanks to their Marxist twit professors who told them that it is not allowed to use your own mind to think ever, let alone to reason. Hence Catholics probably excel in that area having been raised to be passive, as we have been taught for eons to forfeit our own god given minds…thank god Joe, you haven’t!

          • A marriage based solely on two people’s desire to have children would not be considered valid. The couple has to love each other. Openness to procreation is necessary, but the unitive function of marriage is at least as important.

          • If by “love” you mean “matrimonial consent,” you’re completely right. As Can. 1081 (1917) states:

            §1. The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested, makes a marriage between persons who are capable in law of marrying; no human power is able to supply this consent.

            §2. Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which each part gives and accepts perpetual and exclusive rights to the body, for those actions that are of themselves for the generation of children.

            If by “love” you mean “romantic sentiment,” note that Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the CDF, recently clarified:

            “One cannot declare a marriage to be extinct on the pretext that the love between the spouses is ‘dead,’ because the indissolubility of marriage does not depend on human sentiments, whether permanent or transitory. This property of marriage is intended by God Himself.”

          • No way anyone could disagree with your sound reasoning Joe. One would be a moron to think the baby comes before the sex. Without the act coming first (no pun intended) no baby is born!

          • The sex coming first proves nothing. The plague of abortion and all its accompanying evils is clear evidence of what happens when there is no thought about the true end of sex. So sex comes first, and for many that is as far as it goes. Simply a leisure activity with unitive dimensions, nothing more.

          • I think you are confusing the issues. Nobody here is denying the procreative end of the marital act, or denying the multi dimensions of the marital act.
            The disagreement lies in the prioritisation of the unitive and procreative elements of the marital act.

          • So are you saying that centuries of Church tradition, as summarized in the 1917 Canon Law: “The primary end of matrimony is the procreation and education of offspring” (Can. 1013, §1) can be dismissed as worthless and without basis?

            I’ll have to disagree with you there. Those centuries of tradition are a manifestation of the perennial wisdom of the Church. It can be clearly seen that when the teaching about the primacy of procreation in marriage is turned on its head the results are disastrous: things like abortion and same sex ‘marriage’ proliferate and become accepted in society, together with a myriad attendant evils.

          • No I would never dismiss it as worthless or without basis. I would put it down to an evolution of revelation so to speak. As with Dignitas Humanae supported the belief in Freedom of Religion, which for centuries was opposed by the Church and Popes for centuries. I believe that they were well intentioned and viewing these issues through the prism of their time when Church and State were one and the same.

            As you know the updated Canon Law states:

            Can. 1055 §1. “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring…..”

            See how the “partnership of the whole of life and the good of the spouses” comes first and “the procreation and education of the offspring” comes second.

            Can. 1056 “The essential properties of marriage are UNITY and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament”

            This is what I meant when I stated earlier:

            “That is why Adam on seeing Eve did not say “Oh great now I can procreate”. He said “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man”
            God before making woman said “It is not right that man should be alone. I shall make him a helper”
            Out of that love and unity, procreation takes place. Unity is not a by-product of procreation. Unity is necessary for procreation. Procreation is not necessary for unity, as was the case of Adam and Eve”

          • Do you think that the church teaches that unity is the primary end of marriage because it is mentioned first in the sentence? The Church has always held and still holds that procreation is the primary end of marriage.

          • That is the whole point of this discussion. It seems like the Church is slowly changing that to highlighting the primacy of unity in marriage and the secondary nature of procreation.

            For example Para 80 of AL states:

            “Marriage is firstly an “intimate partnership of life and love”80 which is a good for the spouses themselves,81 while sexuality is “ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman”.82 It follows that “spouses to whom God has not granted children can have a conjugal life full of meaning, in both human and Christian terms”.83 Nonetheless, the conjugal union is ordered to procreation “by its very nature”.84 The child who is born “does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfilment”.85 He or she does not appear at the end of a process, but is present from the beginning of love as an essential feature, one that cannot be denied without disfiguring that love itself. From the outset, love refuses every impulse to close in on itself; it is open to a fruitfulness that draws it beyond itself. Hence no genital act of husband and wife can refuse this meaning,86 even when for various reasons it may not always in fact beget a new life”

            Also Para 1601 of the CCC states:

            “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring”

            See how the “partnership of the whole of life and the good of the spouses” comes first and “the procreation and education of the offspring” comes second.

            Personally I agree with this and I think the basis for this is found in Scripture. That is why I stated in my first comment:

            “I think the Pope is right in what he stated there in Para 80. This is why he stated that couples that are not blessed with children are still considered married because the primary reason for marriage is unitive, secondarily it is procreative.
            That is why Adam on seeing Eve did not say “Oh great now I can procreate”. He said “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man”
            God before making woman said “It is not right that man should be alone. I shall make him a helper”
            Out of that love and unity, procreation takes place. Unity is not a by-product of procreation. Unity is necessary for procreation. Procreation is not necessary for unity, as was the case of Adam and Eve.”
            What is your opinion on this topic?

          • The Church can’t “slowly change” a doctrine that it has pronounced to be a revealed Truth as is the doctrine that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation.
            You have become Protestantized and don’t seem to know it.

          • Can. 1055 §1. “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring…..”

            See how the “partnership of the whole of life and the good of the spouses” comes first and “the procreation and education of the offspring” comes second.

            Can. 1056 “The essential properties of marriage are UNITY and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament”

          • You have been infected with the Modernist heresy of “evolution of revelation”. There is no such reality. Revelation of God’s Truth ended with the death of the last Apostle. There can only be a better of understanding of revealed Truth but Truth cannot “evolve”. Otherwise, God would be a liar and no one could ever know whether or not he knew what was true.
            You really need to do some research on what the Church taught before Vatican II because then you will see how you have been deceived.

          • I said “so to speak”. A “better understanding of revealed Truth” is a better term though.

          • Joe, there can be no disagreement when the Church has already pronounced, for centuries, the truth about marriage. Either you believe what the Church has always taught and disregard any new teaching which refutes what the Church has always taught, or you cannot claim to be a Catholic.

          • Come back to me when you have researched what the Catholic Church has always taught prior to Vatican II on marriage, religious liberty, the mission and definition of the Church, salvation, grace, sin, Hell, “the narrow gate”, heretics and schismatics, and have done a thorough review of the papal writings on the heresies of Liberalism, Modernism, Freemasonry, Socialism, Communism, and Pantheism.

          • You would have to be a full fledged moron to marry for ‘just’ a leisure activity/sex. Any Catholic hopefully understands that when you say ‘in sickness and health’, it means that this is a serious relationship one enters..requiring much thought. That hardly equates to marrying for a ‘leisure activity’– One would also be a moron to marry and have no unitive aspect.

            I actually knew a married man who believed that a unitive aspect to marriage was NOT necessary. As he proudly bloviated, he lived on a farm as a kid and the cows only mated to procreate, hence, having pleasure in his book was forbidden. After all, cows don’t have foreplay do they?

            His second belief was that the Blessed Virgin Mary didn’t have sex, and as she was to be the model for all women, in his twisted head, sex wasn’t really necessary unless you were going to make a baby. I suppose you agree with him too MSA. I have a hunch his college training under German priests at an all male Catholic college in Indiana, was a hugh factor in crazy group think, hence it killed his marriage.

          • This is wrong and a position condemned by the Holy Office (now the CDF) on April 1, 1944. The primary purpose of marriage is procreative, and unitive is secondary.

          • In the seventies a catholic couple, Lois and Joseph Bird wrote several books on marriage and parenting…each was a gem and I think some of them are still available on Amazon. They had nine children then as I recall and probably have at least 33 grandkids now decades later…and possibly great grandkids too. I think they would heartily disagree with the bishops here on what they say.

            I do believe that the Birds used the Song of Songs as their template for married sexual love…my own feelings are if the church spoke the truth the Bird’s possess, we would find few marriages faltering. What on earth does any prelate know about sexual love for that matter? They have put their own spin on it, have never married and go against the grain via aberro sex. Ask yourself why we find now that many of them are faggots to the max totally ignoring the reality of what God created. A goes into B..it’s just that simple, not the sickening display of priests going nuts in the sexual sphere and calling it ‘just another type of love’…that is balderdash.

            “Make it clear that nature has undoubtedly given the instinctive desire for pleasure and sanctioned it in lawful wedlock, not as an end in itself, but in the service of life. Banish from your hearts this cult of pleasure, and do your best to stop the spreading of literature which considers it a duty to describe the intimacies of married life under the pretext of giving instruction, guidance and reassurance. In general, common sense, natural instinct, and a short instruction on the clear and simple maxims of the Christian moral law, will suffice to give peace to husband and wife of tender conscience. (Pius XII, Allocution to
            Midwives, October 29, 1951)

            ALLOCUTION TO MIDWIVES tells me all I need to know. Since when does a midwife hop in bed with married couples?

            Making this speech to midwives sounds more like treating women as breeders…..Hitler would have loved Pius XII.

            http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/catholic-teaching/upload/Unitive-and-Proc-Nature-of-Interc.pdf

          • Spot on Joe..i have known couples who have done somersaults in their attempts to conceive, along with hugh outlays of money in so doing and all to no avail. Does this make their marriage any less?..hardly..fact is, they can devote themselves to each other more and to help others beyond their own home. SO now I wonder who is going to begin hollering at the Lord, aren’t you going to punish them for not having children…or adopting them?

        • Unitive with a TOASTER?? Sounds like you would be burned in so doing just as you would be if the marriage descends into an only mommy/daddy scenario and the wife/husband flies out the back door. Kids to see parents loving each other, yes, even in healthy sexy ways..nothing wrong with johnny seeing daddy pat mommy on her derriere. Methinks the pope is right on one thing and that is Catholics for too long made the religion into one long funeral procession with thinking of only sadness, suffering and grim thoughts 24/7. How does that prepare one for an eventual eternity in heaven is what enquiring minds want to know.

          Reply
      • A thousand likes on that Joe…you don’t put the cart before the horse, so why would one say the only reason men and women marry is to churn out as many children as possible. Does anyone seriously believe that God thinks that quantity is far more important than quality? I doubt it. And surely without the cement that holds the marriage together, i.e. the unitive aspect is just as important..in fact probably is the MOST important aspect for if you have 15 kids but, never have time to be husband and wife, there is no marriage! Marriage is far more than just playing mommy and daddy..those who don’t get that often end up divorced in time.

        Reply
        • Thanks! Ye I could never understand why some people claim that the procreative element of the marital act has primacy over the unitive. Surely the desire for unity between the spouses is what facilitates the marital act which in turn leads to procreation.
          Absolutely, every marriage needs to have that balance in it or it will fall apart.

          Reply
          • Methinks that many uninformed Catholics would castigate God himself for making men and women sexual creatures. And then in his glory punish them for how He made/designed them…viva la difference as the French say. I believe it’s that sick attitude of hating what God made and calling it NOT good, that has led to many divorces among Catholics who believed the balderdash. As I see it, what is natural is good and what comes from nature is from God, so how do you argue with that?

          • I agree with you. Some people would tell God “were he went wrong” if they could. Discussion on human sexuality was definitely suppressed, especially here in Ireland in previous decades. But thankfully the Church is finally realising that human sexuality is a gift from God. St Pope JP II wrote such great books on the subject. And we have some great lay speakers like Christopher West and Jason and Chrystalina Evert doing fantastic work spreading the word.

      • The perennial and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church has been that the primary reason for marriage is procreative and secondarily unitive. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

        This blatant reversal of the Truth occurred in Vatican II and has helped to destroy marriage, destroy families, and usher in accepting the lies of the feminists and sodomites.

        Reply
        • Haha you guys are hilarious. If a Pope or Church document agrees with you. It`s great and heroic. If a Pope or Church document disagrees with you, it is HERESY. You guys must both love and hate St Pope JP II.
          Tell me, how is he considered a Saint if he supposedly supported heresy?
          For example, his input into the belief of Religious Freedom in Dignitatus Humanae seemingly went against Church tradition and Papal preaching over the centuries.

          Reply
          • A dishonest judge and a jury made up of criminals would likely find another criminal innocent. A body of Modernist Cardinals, elevated by fellow Modernists, wouldn’t hesitate to support one of their own. Easier too when they had already relaxed (corrupted) the canonization process, with the one canonized signing the final document.

            Consider what you wrote: “..his (JPII) input into the belief of Religiious Freedom in Dignitatus Humanae seemingly went against Church tradition and Papal preaching over the centuries.” How is it possible for the Church to be in error for 19 centuries? Why would God allow His Church to teach such a grave error (that man has a right to believe anything he chooses to believe) which led to the death of millions, where the blood of martyrs filled the soil of the earth, while leaving the living Catholic deceived? If religious freedom, as espoused by JPII and Vatican II, is true, then it does not matter what you believe. Catholicism is simply one choice out of thousands. This idea of religious freedom was born in the minds of the enemies of Christ. It spawned the Protestant revolt and the French Revolution. It is the denial of the Truth of Christ who taught that He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is indifferentism to the Truth. And that is what the Catholic Church has always recognized and taught because it is the Truth.

          • Firstly you have provided no documentation to disagree with anything that I have claimed. I cannot find anything in Church Dogma that disagrees with what I have said. I have quoted Scripture, the CCC and a number of Church documents that support my view. You have brought nothing.

            Secondly, I`m delighted you are showing your true colours. You are basically saying that St Pope JPII is a heretic and not a saint. I know your type. You would have told Christ that he should have “forced” the rich man to obey Christ`s word (Mt 19). God has given every human being free will. You choose if you want to obey. Freedom to chose does not mean freedom from consequence.
            As it says is Sirach 15: 14-18:

            “God in the beginning created human beings
            and made them subject to their own free choice.
            If you choose, you can keep the commandments;
            loyalty is doing the will of God.
            Set before you are fire and water;
            to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand.
            Before everyone are life and death,
            whichever they choose will be given them.
            Immense is the wisdom of the LORD;
            mighty in power, he sees all things”

          • Here are a few sources which refute your claims.
            On Marriage:

            “..the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children”. (- Pope Pius XI, “Casti Connubii”, #54), and that “the act of marriage exercised for pleasure only is condemned as a sin” for both the married and unmarried people alike (Pope Innocent XI, Denz. 1159).

            Natural Law has revealed that the primary nature of the conjugal act is procreation. The Natural Law is rooted in design. God, the Supreme Designer, has imprinted a design on all created things-including the human person, both in his spiritual and physical being-a purpose for which each has been created. Thus, with regard to the human person, God has designed speech for communicating the truth and the mouth to swallow food, etc. Likewise, God has designed the sexual organs for something noble, namely, for procreating children.

            The Baltimore Catechism, “On Matrimony” – Q. 1010 – “What are the chief ends of the Sacrament of Matriomony? Answer: The chief ends of the Sacrament of matrimony are: (1) To enable the husband and wife to aid each other in securing the salvation of their souls: (YOU DON’T EVER HEAR THAT TAUGHT ANY MORE); (2) To propagate or keep up the existence of the human race by bringing children into the world to serve God; (3) To prevent sins against the holy virtue of purity by faithfully obeying the laws of the marriage state.

            St. Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent explain that the goals of marriage are two: the primary goal is the procreation and education of offspring; the secondary goal is the mutual support of the spouses, either psychologically or as a remedy for concupiscence. (Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, VII, paragraphs 13-14), and St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa theologiae, Supplementum, Q. 67, a. 1, ad 4th).

            Catholicism 101: “This must be made clear: the primary purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of children, most especially educating them to know, love, and serve God; its secondary purposes are “mutual society and help, and a lawful remedy for concupiscence: (Catholic Encyclopedia). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09699a.htm

            Here are some papal encyclicals that you ought to read as they condemn the heresies that have seen their way into the teaching Church. All of them are available online.

            Pope St. Pius V Jan. 7, 1566 – May 1, 1572

            Quo Primum July 14, 1570

            On Promulgating the Tridentine Liturgy

            Pope Gregory XVI Feb. 2, 1831 – June 1, 1846

            Mirari Vos August 15, 1832

            On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism

            Pope Pius IX June 16, 1846 – Feb. 7, 1878

            The Syllabus of Errors 1864

            Pope Leo XIII Feb. 20, 1878 – July 20, 1903

            Human Gensus April 20, 1884

            On Freemasonry

            Custodi di Quella Fede December 8, 1892

            On Freemasonry

            Testem Benevoltiae Nostrae January 22, 1899,

            On Americanism

            Testem Benevoltiae Nostrae – On Americanism – 1899

          • Thanks for taking the time to search for those resources. I appreciate it.
            However I did notice the majority of your sources are from previous centuries, and pre Vatican II.
            Obviously you consider any theology that came from modernity to be false. Although I agree that some of it is, I believe that a lot of it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Especially theology from St Pope JP II, regarding sexual morality, religious freedom etc.
            Well we both have quoted sources and gave our opinions. Thanks for the discussion. Keep fighting the good fight and God bless you and yours.

          • My sources were from pre-Vatican II as yours were from Vatican II.

            The Church has always taught that when a novel or new teaching is introduced, it ought to be compared with what the Church has either already declared to be settled, or look at what a consensus of reliable sources (Doctors and Fathers of the Church, Saints, Ecumenical Councils, theologians, doctors of Canon Law, and previous popes) has declared upon the matter.

            If you research the writings of popes prior to those of Vatican II, if they had written about the same subject or controversial issue, they agreed with each other. None that I know of ever issued a new writing which contradicted the previous pope’s exhortation or view on that subject. This is not the case with the popes since Vatican II. In fact, they not only rejected some of the dogmatic pronouncements of previous Ecumenical Councils, rejected apostolic exhortations of previous popes (the papal bull of Pope Pius V regarding not changing the Roman Rite liturgy as the most egregious example), and rejected what a consensus of previous popes had agreed upon, but even went so far as to adopt the very opposite of what these various dogmatic pronouncements and consistent teachings of prior sources had taught.

            For example:

            -the dogmatic and infallible teaching of the Council of Trent that outside of the Catholic Church, there is no salvation; (The Church has always taught this, from its beginning). Vatican II denied this dogmatic and infallible teaching of the Council and the constant teaching of the Church.

            -the dogmatic and infallible teaching that Christ instituted a monarchical, or hierarchical form of governing the Church where the pope is the Supreme Authority over the whole Church with the bishops having secondary power. (Vatican II gave the pope and bishops equal authority under the name “collegiality”.

            -the dogmatic and infallible teaching that praying with non-Catholics and worshipping false gods was forbidden for Catholics and a mortal sin;

            -the dogmatic and infallible teaching that the establishment of the New Covenant of Jesus replaced the old covenant with the Jews’

            -previous popes condemnation of ecumenism; (Vatican II’s false attempt at “unifying” the heretics and schismatics with the Catholic Church by claiming all religions have some truth in them and all are paths to salvation and the claim that the Catholic Church is not THE Church of Christ but merely subsists within it.

            -previous popes condemnation of religious liberty and the dissimenation of publications of theologians or philosopher’s within the Church that contained heresy.

            Why would you place more value on the contradictory teachings of the last 50 years than the consistent teachings for the previous 1900+ years?

            What you have been taught Joe is not true. What you seem not to be aware of is what was going on within the Church at the time Vatican II was called (and the century prior to it). I pray that you do some research on it. (I have for the last 25 years.) It explains why there is a crisis within the Church where dissent, confusion, and contradiction are normal, leaving the faithful’s soul in jeopardy.

          • Look we can go back and forth quoting papal writings, Council proclamations etc, both supporting each others point of view, which we have done.

            For me, as a devout Catholic, I take everything into account. I look at St Pope JP II life, writings, Papacy and witness to the faith and that speaks volumes.

            I think you are debating a different point. I am not contradicting Church doctrine per se. I am contradicting and criticising how they have expressed it, or the lack of understanding, which is exactly what St Pope JP II did on a number of occasions.

            Using your example. Vatican II never denied that there is salvation outside of the Church. They simply said that Christ`s death and resurrection was the event that brought about salvation. But people who have never heard of Christ or never had the opportunity to hear about Christ can be saved.

            CCC Para 847: “This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation”.

          • Joe, I believe you did not properly read what I wrote. I wrote that the Church has always taught that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. Vatican II denied that teaching, claiming there is salvation outside of the Church. So the CCC Para 847 which you cited is heresy, plain and simple.
            I do agree with you that we should take everything into account while also being careful that we aren’t being led to a different understanding of the faith. I understand you admire JPII but he is simply one of 240 popes, not the be-all and end-all.
            I would be very careful in criticizing how the perennial and constant teachings of the Church have been expressed, particularly in light of how they have been obfuscated or compromised by the innovator’s (Modernists) who took control of Vatican II.
            Believe as you wish Joe but I have confidence that the way the Church expressed its teachings for 1900+ years carries more weight than what we have heard for the past 50.

          • Para 847 of the CCC does not contradict Church teaching in the way you are claiming.
            Answer me this. A man is born in say good old Catholic Ireland, to devout Catholic parents. He remains a devout Catholic until death and enters his “eternal reward”. Happy days.
            Another man at the same time is born in Saudi Arabia, where all other religions are banned and renouncing Islam is punishable by death. He is a simple farmer out in the countryside, with barely any electricity. Certainly no internet. Education is limited to learning to read and write at a basic level and all literature is heavily censored. He lives his life in the best way he can. Behaves morally. Treats people charitably. Practices his faith as best he can. Islam never sits right with him, but there is a faint echo of the Truth in it, so he just lives his life doing the best he can. He dies. Where does his soul go and why?!!!

          • Joe, you are using a tactic that dissenter’s always use; that is, provide an exception (usually so rare it is almost an impossibility), and then change the dogma to fit the heresy.
            The other tactic of the dissenter is to first cite the orthodox teaching and then go on to add a “but” – in other words, contradict the orthodox teaching. Para 847 of the CCC does cite the true teaching of the Church but then contradicts in Para 848.

            The truth is, the Church has never taught that are Christian “churches” but one, which is the Catholic Church. It has always taught that anyone who is not a member of the Catholic Church cannot be saved.

            Let us say that God can save anyone He chooses to save, but that is not a sensible nor charitable idea for any of us to have since we know that Jesus Christ said of Himself that “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6)

            Here are many references which prove that the Church has always taught there is no salvation outside of Her – and – that the Catholic Church IS the ONLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH.#20. Membership of the Catholic Church is necessary for all men for salvation. This is from Dr. Ludwig Ott’s, “Fundaments of Catholic Dogma”, a standard reference work on dogmatics.

            http://www.theworkofgod.org/dogmas.htm#Dogma-VI-Church

            The following is a link which provides the ex cathedra pronouncements of popes from two Church Councils (The Council of Florence and the Fourth Lateran Council), one writing from Pope St. Gregory XVI, and one from Pope Bonifice VII, all confirming the Catholic dogma that outside of the Catholic Church there is no salvation.

            http://prophecyfilm.blogspot.se/2015/03/important-catholic-dogma-you-must.html#no-salvation-outside-of-the-catholic-church

            Pope Pius IX: “The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman; unique, the Chair founded on Peter…Outside her fold is to be found neither the true faith nor eternal salvation, for it is impossible to have God for a Father if one has not the Church for a Mother.”

            Pope Leo XII: “If any man be outside the Church, he will be excluded from the number of sons, and will not have God for Father since he has not the Church for Mother.”

            Pope Pius XI: “This Church, thus marvelosly founded, assuredly could not cease with the death of its Founder, nor of the Apostles who led the way in its propagation, for to it the commission was given of bringing all men to eternal salvation: all men, without distinction of time or place…Now, no one is in this One Church, and no one perseveres in it unless he acknowledges and obediently accepts the power and authority of Peter and his legitimate successors.”

            Pope St. Pius V: “He Who reigns on high, to Whom is given all power in Heaven and on earth, has entrusted His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside which there is no salvation, to one person on earth alone, namely: to Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and to Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, to be governed by him with the fullness of power.”

            Bl. Pope Pius IX: “Neither sanctity nor salvation can be found outside the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church.”

            Pope John XXIII: “Before everything else, fidelity to the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Jesus did not found several churchs, but one single Church.”

            Pope Gregory XVI: “He who is separated from the Catholic Church will not have life.”

            Bl. Pope Pius IX: “It is a sin to believe that there is salvation outside the Catholic Church!

            Pope Pius XI: “If any many does not enter the Church, or if any man departs from it, he is far from the hope of life and salvation.”

            Pope Pius XII: “What is the roade which opens for us the way to Jesus Christ?…The answer, valid yesterday as it is today and for all time to come; is: The Church.”

            Pope Innocent III: “There is only one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved.”

          • Oh Good Lord, HELP US!!! (And I say that as a prayer, literally!!!).

            Firstly, you did not answer what is a perfectly reasonable question!

            Secondly, you say: “you are using a tactic that dissenter’s always use; that is, provide an exception (usually so rare it is almost an impossibility)”.

            How could billions of people throughout the world now, in the Islamic world or Communist China etc, and throughout history who have never heard in any detail about Christ or his Church, possibly be considered AN EXCEPTION?!!!!!!!!

            Thirdly, all the links and quotes you use are from when the Papacy was dealing with its own insular Catholic theocracy, mainly dealing with pagans who refused to believe and heretics and schismatics who tried to thwart the Faith. It is not dealing with human beings in an Amazonian tribe who have never heard of Christ.

            Fourthly, papal infallibility was only declared dogma in 1870. Not all Papal pronouncements prior to this meet the criteria set out in the dogmatic definition, in order to be considered infallible. The CDF released an incomplete list. You may want to check it.

            Lastly as Cardinal Newman, who was a supporter of Papal Infallibility, reportedly said regarding it: “I shall drink to the Pope if you please—still, to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards”

          • How can you possibly reject the perennial and consistent teaching of Ecumenical Councils, Doctors and Fathers of the Church, Saints, and holy popes in favor of the new doctrines of a 1960’s council, which wasn’t dogmatic but merely pastoral (a oddity in itself since that type of council had never been called in the history of the Church.)

            You actually claim that none of the papal pronouncements prior to the 1870 dogma of papal infallibility have any authority whatsoever. This is the most ridiculous claim I have heard yet. Did Christ withhold the Truth from all of the popes prior to 1870 because the Church did not infallibly pronounce papal infallibility? Was the Holy Ghost absent until 1870? That is impossible but that is exactly what you claim.

            Are you claiming that there is no longer such a thing as a heretic, a schismatic, or those within and without the Church who are trying to thwart the faith? There always has been and always will be those who attack the faith and the Church, until the Second Coming of Christ. There always has been, and always will be, two cities-the City of God, and the City of Man.

            The fact is there were and are many heretics and apostates sitting in the positions of Cardinal, Bishop, priest, laity and teachers in the seminaries, universities, dioceases, and parishes right now.

            You can choose to reject what the Church has always taught and believe the false teachings of the pastoral, not dogmatic, Second Vatican Council but I cannot.

          • Where did I “claim that none of the papal pronouncements prior to the 1870 dogma of papal infallibility have any authority whatsoever”?!!!
            I never said any such thing.

            What I did say is ” Not all Papal pronouncements prior to this (Papal Infallibility) meet the criteria set out in the dogmatic definition, in order to be considered infallible. The CDF released an incomplete list. You may want to check it”……….That is a fact and the Truth. Check it for yourself.

            And how on earth did you even get the idea that I might think that “there is no longer such a thing as a heretic, a schismatic, or those within and without the Church who are trying to thwart the faith”?!!!
            I was talking about the context of the Papal documents that YOU quoted.
            And you STILL have not answer my question. I`m waiting!!!!
            It is a perfectly reasonable question. So please stop dodging it!!!!

          • To answer your question, listen to the answer of the Church. Outside of the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Unambiguous. Clear. To the point. Taught perennially and consistently. Until Vatican II. Why? Was the Church in error for over 1900 years? Of course not. Vatican II is in error.
            Looking at the question of salvation through the human mind can’t solve the question. Modern man in particular cannot conceive of God as a God of wrath where people will actually go to Hell. They do and they will, according to the very word of God, according to the Doctors and Fathers of the Church, according to the Saints, and our Holy popes.
            There are hardly billions today who have the excuse that they know nothing about Christ. Today more than ever in history, people have access to getting information on anything, through television, the internet, libraries, Catholics in every country of the world, and through the efforts of missionaries who are (or used to be) in almost every nick and corner of the world.
            If you are referring to the Vatican 11 CDF concerning papal pronouncements, that is about as reliable as turning to the New York Times for the truth. Vatican II rejected, denied, and implemented dozens of papal teachings which convicted the heretics and apostates of their Modernist/Liberal/Socialist errors so of course, they deny these papal teachings were “infallible.” Only their own are worthy of being authoritive.

          • First point: Jesus never taught that a person can be saved if they are merely good (only God is good), if they practice a false religion, if they treat people nicely, and just do the best they can. He taught that only He is the path to salvation and that path is narrow.

            What He did teach is:

            (1) One must Believe in Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. That leaves out all non-Christians.

            (2) One must be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

            This is clearly taught in Sacred Scripture. Jesus’ own words.

            But who knows the mind and will of God? Maybe he will save atheists, Hindus, Buddahists, and even Satanists. But the point is, the Catholic Church exists as an institution of Christ so that the world knows the one, True God, believes in Him, and has the means necessary to “work out their salvation.” With that in mind, is it an act of love or justice for the Catholic Church to even imply that salvation is a possibility outside of believing in Christ and belonging to the one Church He instituted?

            Christ instituted the Catholic Church (the visible body of believers) -one Church, with one faith, one baptism, one head, and seven sacraments. Not two, three, or a thousand churches, but one Church. Since no other body of people outside of the Catholic Church have the same faith or the same head or the same seven sacraments, there is no other Church of Christ than the Catholic Church. Thus, it is only through the one Church of Christ-the Catholic Church-where one can hope to attain salvation.

            Second point: You state: “Thirdly, all the links and quotes you use are from when the Papacy was dealing with its own insular Catholic theocracy, mainly dealing with pagans who refused to believe and heretics and schismatics who tried to thwart the Faith. It is not dealing with human beings in an Amazonian tribe who have never heard of Christ.” So you seem to claim that two Ecumenical Councils (which I cited), two saint popes, and popes reigning from the time 1903 to 1963, all simply claimed the doctrine that outside the Church there is no salvation merely as an answer to pagans, heretics, and schismatics. I guess a doctrine that central to the very definition of the Church was nothing more than “an insular Catholic theocracy” until, low and behold, the light finally shined after 1900 years that the doctrine was completely false and the Church had deceived people for 19 centuries! Kind of puts the claim the Church is indefectible and makes Jesus Christ a liar when He promised the Holy Ghost would ensure the Church could teach no doctrinal or moral errors.

            Third point: As far as people not having heard about Jesus Christ, I might remind you that since Vatican II, Catholics are forbidden to teach the Gospel to the Jews. For them, then, they are going to have to figure it out without the help of any Catholic. Let us pray they can!

            And with the Vatican II teaching that all religions are to be respected, even if they deny God, and Jesus Christ as the Savior of all mankind, and all are paths to salvation, how many Catholic missionaries do you think there are now? The ones who are sent throughout the world to teach the Good News to those who still might never have heard the name of Jesus? How many priests? How many religious? All the numbers have decreased dramatically since Vatican II, as the membership of the Church has decreased. Really, what incentive is there to go out and teach and preach the Catholic faith when the Church Herself tells people there are other faiths, other paths to eternal life?

            Fourth point: You said: “Fourthly, papal infallibility was only declared dogma in 1870. Not all Papal pronouncements PRIOR TO THIS meet the criteria set out in the dogmatic definition, in order to be considered infallible.” Thus, you actually DID claim that certain papal pronouncements prior to 1870 are not infallible. The infallible nature of the papacy was always believed in the Church, evident from the Scriptures themselves. This teaching was only formally defined in the First Vatican Council in 1870.

          • Yes, I did claim that there was the possibility that “that certain papal pronouncements prior to 1870 are not infallible”.

            What I did NOT claim, was “that none of the papal pronouncements prior to the 1870 dogma of papal infallibility have any authority whatsoever”, which what YOU claimed I claimed.

            See, this is indicative of your inability to have logical and consistent conversation.

            You just seem to be ranting like some indoctrinated zealot that is incapable of independent critical thought.

            For example: “Catholics are forbidden to teach the Gospel to the Jews”. What on earth are you on about?!!!
            Also when Christ said that there was no salvation but through him; ask yourself, who and what is Christ? He the way, the truth and the life. He was the Son of God. And what is God? Love.
            The way to salvation is through Love.
            See you seem to be unable to understand things beyond the literal.

            I feel sorry for you, and really sorry and worried for anyone who maybe under your influence or care.

            So I will leave you be. I will pray for you as I see no point in debating with you any further. God bless you.

          • His analogy of the objective and subjective ends of a family meeting for a meal and comparing this to marriage and the marital act is flawed. It is a false equivalency.
            As I said before, when Adam first laid eyes on Eve, he did not think to himself “Ah, now I have someone to procreate with!”
            He said “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!”
            Unity comes first, procreation comes from that unity. Procreation needs unity. Unity does not need procreation. Thence an infertile couple who are married, become more unified with each act of intercourse.

          • I feel the same way about you.
            I will pray for the both of us. That God, who is Truth, will guide us.

      • The fact that the primary end of marriage is procreation has been the perennial teaching of the Church. Casti Connubii (the last clear magisterial teaching on marriage) makes this abundantly clear:

        “11. Thus amongst the blessings of marriage, the child holds
        the first place. And indeed the Creator of the human race Himself, Who
        in His goodness wishes to use men as His helpers in the propagation of
        life, taught this when, instituting marriage in Paradise, He said to our
        first parents, and through them to all future spouses: “Increase and
        multiply, and fill the earth.”[12] As St. Augustine admirably deduces
        from the words of the holy Apostle Saint Paul to Timothy[13] when he
        says: “The Apostle himself is therefore a witness that marriage is for
        the sake of generation: ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘young girls to marry.’ And,
        as if someone said to him, ‘Why?,’ he immediately adds: ‘To bear
        children, to be mothers of families’.”

        Reply
        • Can. 1055 §1. “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring…..”

          See how the “partnership of the whole of life and the good of the spouses” comes first and “the procreation and education of the offspring” comes second.

          Can. 1056 “The essential properties of marriage are UNITY and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament”

          Reply
          • Then canon law is wrong. The 1983 code obviously follows the inversions previously established. The Church has always taught that the procreation of children is the primary good of marriage. The unitive is an important secondary end, but MUST NOT be conflated with the first.

          • Hey Steve.

            I think the debate is getting bogged down because of a misunderstanding of the definition of the word “primary”.
            The definition of Primary, is:

            1. of chief importance; principal.
            2. earliest in time or order.
            3. First or highest in rank or importance.
            4. most basic or essential

            Now logically, the unitive is primary in marriage because without unity there is no procreation.
            Unity is “essential”, it is “of chief importance”, and unity comes “first” in marriage.
            Infertile couples are always considered married and no less unified, even though they cannot procreate.
            Unity comes first. Procreation comes second.
            Therefore marriage is primarily unitive and secondarily procreative.
            A marriage is STILL a marriage without procreation. A marriage is NOT a marriage without unity. Thence unity is primary.

          • You would think the demographic suicide of Western Europe would be common knowledge to the socialist eggheads in the Vatican, but I guess not.

            Here’s a site you all should bookmark, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the UK Telegraph. Best global financial columnist around. This talks about the economic basketcase that is Italy.

            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/11/italy-must-chose-between-the-euro-and-its-own-economic-survival/

            This is what Bernie (quickly) and Hillary (slowly) want for our country.

    • It is exactly how I reacted reading that paragraph. “Natural rhythms” or NFP is now justified in order to respect each other bodies…but keep ignoring God’s plan.

      Reply
      • Natural rhythm is kid’s stuff compared to new and not so improved insanity..instead of ‘respect’ each other’s body,,now they are pushing to ‘inspect’ each others body…as with mother/son sexual relationship. BTW it’s getting so creepy here on the east coast that Massachusetts passed a law last week allowing grown men to shower with younger girls. To me that is a sign that the moes are making inroads into the system to prepare for what the muslim brotherhood has said about taking over the US within a year…get the law passed now..and then no problem later. The road will be cleared for their depravity.

        As if the aforesaid is not horrific enough, this is another layer, let us call it the 8th layer in Dante’s hell. I think he only had seven, right?

        They call it ‘genetic sexual attraction’…something Turks have been doing for over a thousand years..and we see the mental misfit results of that. Inbreeding has been going on in islime for 1,400 years.

        http://www.thedailysheeple.com/are-they-trying-to-normalize-incest-now-genetic-sexual-attraction-cited-for-why-mother-and-adopted-son-are-getting-married_042016

        Reply
        • We live in a Nietzsche world. God is dead to most people. The madman, Nietasche’s philosophy of absolute hatred of man is becoming the dominant philosophy of the world.

          Reply
        • Not a US citizen, so it is useful to know what other perversions are going on there. Thank you for that horrific reference.

          Reply
  5. “…many people, knowing and accepting the possibility of living “as brothers and sisters” which the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, “it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers””

    So is he saying that one may may do evil in order to achieve a good end? The end justifies the means after all? If he is teaching this then he is a heretic.

    Reply
          • ‘I will watch programs that endanger the faith & morals of my family and I, but that’s OK because I am a commenter over at 1P5 “defending the faith”.’

          • The teaching of the Church which warned us to stay clear of anything that might even be an occasion of sin has long been dismissed – or completely ignored.

          • @Matt I haven’t assumed anything only responding to:

            Whether people are watching a tv show is really our biggest worry right now!

            One cannot give what they don’t have. One will be unable to positively counteract the crisis that you identify a big worry if they themselves are not [or struggling to be] right with the LORD, on the contrary, the will simply be absorbed by the very pagan atmosphere they are lamenting. Now let’s focus on the task at hand.

          • Cool it down a bit there, friend. Is it sunny where you are? Get out and have some fun. It was nice talking with you.

        • Not me for sure, as I got rid of my glass toilet/television over six years ago. It always amazes me that Catholics have tvs when you consider that most cable companies have loads of porn and other unacceptable trash and kids can view it after school if mom works outside the home. In essence kiddies, you help pay for all that porn..for shame that you don’t knock on cable co doors!

          Reply
          • “Someone’s view on how TV works and who is responsible for the filth.”

            An anti-Semite’s view, that is.

          • anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, bigots, rigorits, merciless, stone-throwers, small-minded, … … labels and name-calling to shutdown debate and obscure the truth are beginiing to wear thin. People are waking up.

          • How is that picture not anti-Semitic? Posting that garbage is objectively sinful, unlike watching a television drama.

          • You tell me how it is anti-semtic and after you have looked up the the ethnicity of the persom who retweeted. To shorten your research, I will give you his name: Dr. Henry Makow, Ph.D.

          • You mean Dr Henry Makow, the famous conspiracy-theorist and Holocaust denier? You are proving my point and digging yourself a hole here.

          • If there is one who thinks that the state of Israel is oppressive and attempting to control land, that one is an “anti-semite”. If there is one who can research the ownership of companies which supply some or all trash available to be viewed, that one must certainly be an anti-semite.

          • Looks like an Amish dude to me….you don’t really think that they are pushing the cable crap now, do you? Actually their kids are lucky for their minds aren’t being polluted.

          • A guy who reads and pushes anti-Semitic conspiracy theory garbage is exhorting people not to watch BBC dramas? I think Downton Abbey is pretty trashy and I don’t watch it but it is way less harmful than the excrement you are into, man.

          • Noting that you didn’t answer my question and further noting you have resorted to and continue with the tactic of hurling labels and name-calling, I think you’d better then take it up with Dr. Makow who has shown great courage in identifying himself as an “Ex-Luciferian Jew” [http://www.henrymakow.com/confessions-of-a-luciferian-jew.html] and therefore talks from his own experience and has an insider’s perspective.

          • You got that right and so I started this exchange [https://onepeterfive.wpengine.com/pope-francis-departs-from-church-teaching-in-new-exhortation/#comment-2614925362]

          • FMS—Thanks for making my point that it is all trash. Not so sure I buy your anti-semitic bias knowing the Saudis own a good share of Fox. So the big question is this, do you pay for cable, and if so,why? You like to pay for other imbecile’s porn? It would be good to know how many of the aforesaid companies are in the Vatican’s investment portfolios. You seem to know beyond the porn aspect a link ‘tween all these..care to share?

          • @skojec in his video [start 23:25] My Followup to the Fox & Friends Interview and Amoris Laetitia speaks of the satanic Agenda that he doesn’t grasp too well. Standby for a future comment that will have my understanding of this agenda = the War that broke out in heaven | Our Time = Mystery of Iniquity. From it you will be able to see that the Saudi’s and the Western leaders, etc., are but puppets of and aiders and abettors of this agenda. Cf. https://onepeterfive.wpengine.com/my-visit-to-fox-news/#comment-2617057245

          • who are you referring to here when you say …”speaks of the satanic Agenda that he doesn’t grasp to well.” Do you mean Steve—-who doesn’t get it to well?

          • Note: removed comments like this were what helped me piece things together. Why would a Catholic Newspaper remove a comment from Catholic that contained a personal first-hand testimony from a ex-satanist now turned Catholic, unless they did not want the truth to come out or that Catholic Newpaper was only catholic in name, a tool in the hands of those who are part of the satanic agenda [in a couple of posts here i have commented on how in America all media is controlled by just 6 corporations]. Somewhere here Steve has posted he was approached by a benefactor and if I recall correctly, there were strings attached. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7ee43d8fd7b071aec219699e503c4a91f3e8c0d347122a2ce7a1039426e2bda.jpg

          • I think he is an Amish dude, for sure, man. Look at the beard and the hat…he’s just gotta be Amish….but they don’t control media outlets, do they?

    • Priests are expected to remain continent and celibate too notwithstanding certain expressions of intimacy are lacking for them.

      Is this the veiled rationale, i.e. lack of intimate expression, for something later?

      Reply
      • I believe so – elsewhere in the document it mentions about drawing on the oriental experience of a married priesthood. Cue the next revolution.

        Reply
        • What of St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin living together as man and wife in perfect continence?

          Is there no accounting for God’s Grace and Mercy with which those who find themselves in irregular unions can strive to live together in holy chastity and continence (Familiaris Consortio)?

          No ‘eunuchs’ as witnesses for the sake of the Kingdom? Where is Faith to be found in such an abysmal appraisal of human relationships? Man is higher than the beasts and can overcome anything, including concupiscence of the flesh, with the Grace of God. For nothing is impossible for God.

          “there was given me a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me; For which thing thrice I besought the Lord, that it might depart from me; And he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee: for power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” 2 Corinthians 12:7-9

          What a travesty this is.

          Reply
          • As Cardinal Kasper said, ordinary Catholics are not expected to live lives of heroic virtue. This is reflected in the EA which is thoroughly anthropo-pessimist in its world view. Early on, in an otherwise good section, it sets up the aunt Sally of the norm being in fact an “abstract idea” which will later be expanded as an unattainable goal:

            “22. In this brief review, we can see that the word of God is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering.”

            Who brought “abstract idea” into the “dialogue”? Only him. His tactic is to create a false dichotomy between Reality as it is given by God and “reality” as it is lived out on the ground. By transferring a philosophic Realism, which is intrinsic to Catholicism, to the realm of Idealism, it allows him to attack ideas as being unreal for the man in the pew. Thus what is simply sinful in a Realist paradigm suddenly becomes a gradual step on a journey to an unattainable ideal in an Idealist paradigm.

            Belief that justified man has been made a new creation by grace, who is thus able to observe the commandments, is completely lacking from this paper. It is an apology for a worldview devoid of grace, it offers no hope of grace, and it leaves us rotting in our sins for lack of grace. It is an anti-gospel.

          • ……’between the Church and the Anti Church, the Gospel and the Anti Gospel, the Christ and the Anti Christ’…….
            Pope John Paul ll. We are now in the midst of living his prophecy.

          • The idea that modern man is incapable of following the precepts of the teachings of Christ became the central factor in the transformation of the Catholic religion in the Second Vatican Counil into a new religion.

            From John XXIII’s opening remarks to the writing and acceptance of all of its documents to the closing remarks of Paul VI, this is the theme or the reality of the last 50 years. Every pope, every bishops conference, every meeting of the various Pontifical councils, every synod and every yearly proclamation (such as the year of mercy) have all been instituted to confirm in the Catholic mind and heart this false and damaging to the soul ideology. It is the ideology of the revolution against Christ and His Church.

            This false ideology was presented as a “pastoral” response to the conditions of modernity. In truth, it was the vehicle the enemies of Christ within the Church used to introduce their errors and heresies into its teachings. The Francis exhortation is a natural result of this transformation as the branch separated from the true vine bears no good fruit.

        • …the oriental experience of a married priesthood

          was a scandalous aberration of orthodox and traditional praxis that, not unexpectedly, has become institutionalised to the point of praise.

          The devil has worked endlessly to destroy the sacred continent priesthood and his gains are ever more observable

          Reply
          • I am Ukrainian Greek Catholic and my pastor is a married priest. To be specific, this is how it goes:

            If a married man wants to become a priest, he MUST ask his wife for permission to enter the seminary. If she says NO, that’s the end of it. He cannot coerce her to give permission.

            If she says yes, then BOTH husband and wife must go through formation.

            Also, if a priest’ wife dies, THAT is when celibacy takes effect. Christ has one Spouse, and that is the Church (cf. Eph. 5).

            When the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was underground, it was the married priests who provided the faithful with the Liturgy and the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments). The bishops and celibate priests were sent to the Gulag (plus married priests who were discovered).

            Lord, have mercy!

          • Satan hates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the priesthood and primacy of the pope, and women. All of them have been devastated since Vatican II.

        • Perhaps, but that would not be a truly big deal as marriage for priests is a disciplinary norm which the Church has chosen to follow, but which could be otherwise should she wish it to be so. Personally (as a celibate religious priest) I don’t see how it would work very well in praxis nor would I choose it for myself, but it is not an impossibility should the Holy Spirit choose to move us in the that direction. I doubt it though.

          Reply
      • You are on to something cf. the question during Interview with the Pope on his return flight from Mexico [http://www.news.va/en/news/interview-with-the-pope-on-his-return-flight-from]

        Question: “The media have referred to the intense correspondence John Paul II and the American philosopher, Ana Teresa Tymieniecka. … According to His Holiness, can a Pope have such an intimate relationship with a woman?” (My emphasis)

        A very disturbing and insinuating question that:

        1) Wanted to besmirch the memory of the great and saintly Pope.

        2) Appeared contrived.
        *
        They are distorting the great and saintly pope in all the ways they can.

        Reply
        • Yet they can’t distort the fact that he was a prolific, public idolater, as Benedict XVI and Francis also have done.

          That they sin against the First Commandment and by doing so deny the consistent teaching of the Church that Catholics who pray with non-Catholics or worship false gods commit a mortal sin.

          Somehow, this fact is of no concern to even those Catholics who claim they defend the Truths of the Catholic religion.

          Reply
      • As a celibate religious I would note that no it is not an opening for anything else. A proper part of the marital vocation, given by God, is the sexual relationship. That is not part of the celibate vocation and hence no.

        Reply
      • Pardon me, but I am a little confused about the pertainance of this argument to the discussion. Can you context your comment?

        Reply
    • Haven’t read the document.

      tl;dr.

      It sounds like John Paul’s teachings on the moral code are being placed in conflict with this document.

      I am prepared to wait for further commentary from Catholic theologians who are solidly, well, Catholic.

      Reply
    • “The end justifies the means after all? If he is teaching this then he is a heretic.”

      Luckily, he isn’t. So that’s a relief – “Confirmed: Pope NOT a heretic”.

      Reply
    • No, he is saying that these people point this problem i.e. that one or both will commit further adultery and creates a even greater sin and domestic trouble that harm the children. Seeing as this whole debate is over the meaning of a footnote–yes, a FOOTNOTE–I find it immeasurably silly.

      Reply
    • Well…..?? Yes, he is. But not quite. He is expressing a private opinion. He would need to be admonished by his peers and then persist and then a declaration would have to be made. You and I can call him a heretic all we want and never for any of that is he a heretic.

      Reply
    • If he were saying that the end justifies the means then you would be most right. However, that would seem to be both a literary and philosophically deficient reading of the passage. Here it seems we are assuming without premise that “intimacy” means sexual relationships which is a very reductive understanding of a much wider term. If we wish to demand philosophical rigour in terminology from the document we must also provide philosophical rigour in our own argumentation. Can you profer an argument for the interpretation of “intimacy” as sexual relations?

      Reply
      • The interpretation of “intimacy” as sexual relations is pretty obvious if one bothers to check out the context of the reference (GS 51) which is discussing the conjugal act:

        “This council realizes that certain modern conditions often keep couples from arranging their married lives harmoniously, and that they find themselves in circumstances where at least temporarily the size of their families should not be increased. As a result, the faithful exercise of love and the full intimacy of their lives is hard to maintain. But where the intimacy of married life is broken off, its faithfulness can sometimes be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness ruined, for then the upbringing of the children and the courage to accept new ones are both endangered.

        To these problems there are those who presume to offer dishonorable solutions indeed; they do not recoil even from the taking of life. But the Church issues the reminder that a true contradiction cannot exist between the divine laws pertaining to the transmission of life and those pertaining to authentic conjugal love.”

        Reply
  6. And some thought he would leave it up to the Bishops. It is even worse, it is now between the person in an irregular union [according to AL, the distinction between “irregular” and “regular” is now blurred] and their pastor in the internal forum. Hell is on the loose.

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  7. Completely sick of this. This and the celebration of the protestant revolt.

    I have little doubt that the terrorists, which Turkey keeps vomiting up, hidden among the immigrants housed on Church property in Italy will be used as a reality check for those prelates who have wavered to come back to the true faith.

    Reply
        • Islam!!! Don`t get me started! Haha. Ah ye I understand your frustrations. Tough times to be living in. And tougher times ahead. Keep fighting the good fight. God bless you.

          Reply
        • Islam is being used as the battering ram to bring down Europe and the west/US/Canada/Australia and elsewhere. Why do you think the US conference of Bishops and Vatican agree to take millions of dollars (our tax dollars btw) for the virtuous/NOT, act of bringing in head-choppers. Not a day goes by now that I am hoping that the Good Lord flings another planet into our earth to end it all and have the good times, ‘er, end times arrive. Bama and Vatican and PTB/NWO (new world ODOR folks) all collude in changing the face of the earth. I cannot walk into a store anymore especially west of Boston but I often find myself the only white woman among dark skinned men, be they Mexican, Arab, Indian, Sikh and loads of African or Brazilian.
          It alarms me that the PTB including the Pope actually believes that using people from other cultures and speaking other languages is a good thing in the quest to destroy our borders. I see no good coming from this present chaos which will serve any good, other than whites having to work harder to pay for those on welfare…and 90% of those refugees never get off of welfare. This is where I think a good dose of birth control would be a good thing. The moes coming here often come with 2-4 wives and a passle of kids. Yes, I know that God works in mysterious ways, but now it looks like it isn’t God in charge but major demons.

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    • Well said. That’s why he’ll (Francis) be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the abomination (sorry,Reformation).

      Reply
    • Yep the Turks are bad news as I taught teen boys in 2008 and could write a book on that subject. BUT the Belgian prelates for several years now, have appeased the moes by allowing them to set up shop, ‘er, homes within their Cathedrals. There the moes find the statues of BVM and Christ offensive so they cover them. All the meanwhile feeling entitled to the largesse of said bishop. Which makes it all the more insane of why Francis plays kissy foot with moes thinking he will win them over by so doing..in the meantime they all ltao at appeasers. We watch in real time as Europe is inundated with infiltrators wanting to take Europe over…and the pope plays kissy foot..does it get any more insane than that?

      Reply
  8. This man (Francis) is a complete disgrace. We must pray for all of these evil men, hard as it may be, to be released from the grip of Satan. Very disturbing.

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  9. “I would also point out that the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” – I absolutely loathe this non sequitur of this false premise. No faithful Catholic ever implied (much less stated) that the Eucharist is a “prize” (that we merit it) – nor that “perfection” were EVER possible for ANYONE.

    On the contrary: This Bergoglio sophistry DOES clearly imply that the Holy Eucharist should be a prize for the self-centered, unrepentant, irresponsible heretics who clearly choose their own emotional comfort OVER the complete surrender to Our Lord’s will.

    The Eucharist IS a powerful medicine. And like ALL powerful medications – it comes with a STRICT PRESCRIPTION of guidelines and limitations. Lest the proud sinfulness of the “patient” turns this “medicine” into a deadly spiritual poison by desecrating this Sacrament into a sacrilege.

    This pope is a scourge from Hell.

    Reply
  10. The Exhortation as written is morally irresponsible in the most grave sense, and its official author, the Pope, merits a formal rebuke by he entire episcopacy for it, and a demand that its be withdrawn or corrected, regardless of whether it is authoritative or magisterial or merely pastoral, because in any case it is contrary to the Divine, Moral and Evangelical Law and also gravely scandalous formaly, in that it leads to and induces to formal sin and its near occasion.

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  11. Is there an actuarial analysis available that would suggest how much more time Pope Francis has remaining in the Petrine office? … asking for a friend.

    Reply
    • According to Sacred Scripture, the standard time of persecution is three and a half years or 1260 days. Obviously I can’t tell when the beginning nor the end is [I now know we are in it] nor how much time Pope Francis has left. The consolation we have is that the persecution is intense but short.

      Reply
  12. Wow, they just came right out and endorsed the Kasper Proposal in footnote 351. Paragraph 305, to which this footnote refers, states plainly that the pope is speaking about those living “Irregular situations” — which, for all but the most willfully obtuse, AT LEAST means civilly divorced individuals now living in adulterous relationships.

    Thus, when the pope states the following in footnote 351, he is affirmatively teaching the Kasper Proposal; namely, that in certain unspecified cases of divorced individuals living in adulterous relationships, the sacraments, up to an including the Eucharist, may be administered vis-à-vis the internal forum:

    “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid., 47: 1039).”

    That’s pretty much the farm folks.

    EDIT: To be fair, I should have written, “which, for all but the most willfully obtuse, AT LEAST means civilly divorced individuals now living in adulterous relationships, but who are not culpable for those relationships because of a variety of mitigating defects.”

    Reply
    • As another person stated yesterday in the comments, I can’t remember the blog or article, and I am paraphrasing: ‘Just as you cannot shove bread into a dead mans body, putting the Body of Christ in a body dead to mortal sin will not make it alive again’.

      Reply
    • So question becomes, just what are these mitigating defects and how prolific are they? Following the CCC, AL 302 reads as follows:

      “imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors” (1735). In another paragraph, the Catechism refers once again to circumstances which mitigate moral responsibility, and mentions at length “affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability” (2352).”

      But in addition to all this, recall all of the NEW criteria by which Francis now permits one to become eligible for a fast-track annulment:

      “- lack of faith that results in simulation of consent or an error that determines the will;

      – brevity of married life;

      – abortion procured to prevent procreation;

      – stubborn persistence in an extramarital affair at the time of or just after the wedding;

      – improper concealment of sterility or of a serious and contagious disease;

      – concealment of children from a previous relationship;

      – concealment of incarceration;

      – entering marriage for reasons completely foreign to married life;

      – unplanned pregnancy of the woman;

      – physical violence inflicted to extort consent;

      – lack of use of reason proved by medical documents;

      – and so on”

      In other words, especially considering that “and so on” is actually a valid criteria (not making this up, folks), effectively every civilly divorced person now living in an adulterous relationship can claim that the relationship is not adulterous by appealing to a seemingly endless list of psychological and social factors.
      And thus the moral prohibition against divorce and remarriage is rendered meaningless.

      Reply
  13. I yearn for the day when Francis is formally declared to be the heretic that he is. That is the only logical outcome of this.

    Reply
    • It will come but it may take 100 years. All of the heterodox bishops will have to be long dead before our time will be looked at objectively. Or not – the coming chastisement may do the trick.

      Reply
      • Francis had lost all credibility for me some time ago, yet, I hoped, by some miracle, the prayers and fasting by the faithful, he would be led by the Holy Spirit.
        Now…..I see fully.

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  14. An acquaintance e-mailed me: “Okay, I admit I’m kind of stupid, but in this ‘exhortation,’ the pope seems to be saying what American comedians were saying in the 1970s – ‘if it feels good, do it,’ and don’t worry about the consequences if the ‘internal forum’ tells you everything is all right. So sometimes, when it comes to the Church, I’m almost in despair. I know I shouldn’t be, because Christ promised that the Gates of Hell could not prevail against the Church. But He never promised that Pope Francis could not prevail against it.”

    Reply
    • I know how you feel but don’t despair… this is a necessary punishment we must all face for our infidelity to God. It will pass but in the meantime keep the Faith, seek out the Traditional Catholic refuges of the FSSP etc. Keep strong! These are troubling times yet there is much potential for great feats of heroism and Our Lord will reward these faithful beyond their wildest imaginations.

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  15. I am going to be, try to be, patient. Not Pollyanna, delusional, “let’s wait and see what this really means” patient. Patient as in suffering. I am going to try to suffer this and to not lose my peace. I am going to try not to get sinfully angry.

    Yesterday I watched parts of an interview that Church Militant had with a bishop from Texas and the bishop called on Catholics to “speak up” against the falsehood. I know many Catholics who have in one way or another. I have to some degree, on the Internet, which isn’t saying much at all, and also to some family and to a few priests whom I have considered spiritual guides. The priests eventually gave some acknowledgement of the unease, of “the problem,” though not nearly enough in my opinion. I think that, more than three years in, those who have ears ought to hear by now. If you don’t see “the problem,” then I sincerely doubt your sensus fidelium. And if you are quick to explain it away superficially, then I doubt your sincerity.

    However, when it comes down to it, I really don’t think any of this matters much at all. I think the souls who were already unfaithful to Christ will find their justification where they can. That’s all that it is, largely. The truly confused few, I pray, will find their way. They will stumble upon the right book or simply receive the necessary grace from God to discern their way through this charade. Those who seek will find.

    I am not going to go home tonight, divorce my wife, abandon my child and live in peace because of the “unconditional mercy” that is now seemingly dogma in the Church. I am sure many other Catholics won’t either. I am going to suffer this. I am going to try to double up my efforts on my own soul and on being a holy husband and father. To go on getting worked up about all of this seems to me to be futile because this isn’t a sincere debate. If Vatican II was rigged, which evidence strongly suggests, then this all the more so. And even if it wasn’t, what has been “handed down” is so laughably shallow and ideological and at the same time mystifying in its breadth that one could well lose all of their spiritual energy on this ‘fight’. As a husband and father and as a weak soul, I don’t have that energy to spare.

    I have learned, I think, that you don’t attempt to converse with Modernism. You endure and outlast it, like the wild party next door that is disturbing your rest. Your drunk and belligerent neighbors who party week in and out simply are not interested in the kind of civil behavior that you are. Likewise, the Modernist is not interested in Truth like you are. They’re Pilate, at best, feigning interest while maintaining their devotion to expediency, and at worst they’re outright destroyers who explicitly seek to undermine what they do not want to hear or accept. Their whole method is one seemingly clever way of avoiding Truth completely. Endure. Suffer. It’s an ecclesial dark night. Be polished in the fire that is the noise from all of this insanity. Those who know His voice, know how to follow Him. We do and we can.

    Reply
    • Good comment. I agree that when we try to engage in discussion with modernists or those truly ill-taught, we are not speaking the same language. We can only thank God, with trembling lips, wondering how and why we have been given such graces to understand. And as you say, beg for these graces for our families. God does give enough grace for every man, woman and child to be saved. That is something to be grateful for.

      Reply
    • I wish you could copy and paste your heart felt and quite frankly, blessed thoughts here on every Catholic website possible.
      You have really spoken with such Peace, a peace that only Christ can provide.
      God bless you.

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    • This came from the Holy Spirit! Please, if you can, would you post this on other Catholic websites? I believe it will be of great help to many faithful Catholics.
      Well written dear man.

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    • We are not just observers called to sit on the sidelines, which is why we are asked to pray the Divine Mercy chaplet for’ our sins and those of the whole world.’ We offer up Christ’s precious Body and Blood soul and Divinity to the Father on behalf of all who need conversion. Christ tells us to immerse sinners in the ocean of His Mercy.( And how many days I remember that I am first on the list of these sinners.) That is our hidden contribution , our holy work, our marching orders while all of this heresy, relativism, confusion, division and chaos swirls around us. It is our oasis wherein we can remain docile to Christ’s requests. How often, over these months have many had to leave behind the noise and the din to go back into the quiet of prayer for our return to serenity. Prayer, the Eucharist, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament are our food in this battle. As Catholics we must never lose sight of the reality that Christ is our Head and we are parts of His Mystical Body, sharing in his mission as we, too, are immolated along with him in this great persecution that is tearing at the Body of Christ.. God bless you ATDP

      Reply
      • I cannot pray the Divine Mercy chaplet for these reasons:

        Pope Pius XII placed this devotion, including the apparitions and the writings of Sr. Faustina on the Index of Prohibited Books (abolished by the Modernist Paul VI). Then, during the pontificate of John XIII, the Holy Office issued condemnations of the Divine Mercy writings-twice.

        These condemnations were made because no evidence of the supernatural origin of these revelations could be found. This means that the members of the Holy Office examined the content and decided that there was nothing there to indicate the apparitions were supernatural.

        In an authentic apparition-Our Lady of Lourdes or Our Lady of Fatima, for example-you can look at the content and affirm there is enough evidence to say that it is possible they were of supernatural origin.

        The central error of the Divine Mercy is that it promises lots of spiritual rewards with no requirement of penance, no mention of reparation, no mention of any condition.
        However, it does fit in nicely with the false mercy Francis promotes.

        I pray the Litany of The Sacred Heart whose history goes back to the 17th century:

        Lord, have mercy on us.

        Christ have mercy on us.

        Lord, have mercy on us.

        Christ, hear us.

        Christ, graciously hear us.

        God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.

        God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

        God the Holy Ghost,

        Holy Trinity, one God,

        Heart of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father,

        womb of the Virgin Mother,

        Heart of Jesus, hypostatically united to the Word of God,

        Heart of Jesus, infinite in Majesty,

        Heart of Jesus, holy temple of God,

        Heart of Jesus, tabernacle of the Most High,

        Heart of Jesus, house of God and gate of Heaven,

        Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity,

        Heart of Jesus, abode of justice and love,

        Heart of Jesus, full of kindness and love,

        Heart of Jesus, abyss of all virtues,

        Heart of Jesus, most worthy of all praise,

        Heart of Jesus, King and centre of all hearts,

        Heart of Jesus, wherein are all the treasurers of wisdom and knowledge,

        Heart of Jesus, wherein abides the fullness of the Godhead,

        Heart of Jesus, in which the Father is well pleased,

        Heart of Jesus, of whose fullness we have all received,

        Heart of Jesus, desire of the everlasting hills,

        Heart of Jesus, patient and abounding in mercy,

        Heart of Jesus, rich unto all who call upon Thee,

        Heart of Jesus, source of life and holiness,

        Heart of Jesus, propitiation for our sins,

        Heart of Jesus, overwhelmed with insults,

        Heart of Jesus, bruised for our sins,

        Heart of Jesus, made obedient even unto death,

        Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance,

        Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation,

        Heart of Jesus, our life and our resurrection,

        Heart of Jesus, our peace and our reconciliation,

        Heart of Jesus, Victim for sinners,

        Heart of Jesus, salvation of all who trust in Thee,

        Heart of Jesus, hope of all who die in Thee,

        Heart of Jesus, delight of all the Saints,

        Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,

        Spare us, O Lord.

        Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,

        Graciously hear us, O Lord.

        Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,

        Have mercy on us.

        V. Jesus, meek and humble of heart,

        R. Make our hearts like unto Thine.

        Let us pray. – O almighty and eternal God, look upon the Heart of Thy dearly beloved Son, and upon the praise and satisfaction He offers Thee on behalf of sinners, and being appeased, grant pardon to those who seek Thy mercy, in the name of the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.

        Reply
        • Hi lwhite,
          My understanding of the condemnation of the Divine Mercy devotion, is that it was done because it was presented to the proper authorities through a faulty Italian translation, not the Polish translation.
          The devotion was very popular in Poland during and especially right after WWII.
          (Saint Faustina prophesied that Warsaw was going to be punished for its sins. Within a short time after her death(1938), Germany leveled the city of Warsaw while the Russians stood by and let it happen. One in six Poles died in Warsaw. – Warsaw allowed abortion and it is said that people would travel from other European countries to ‘vacation there’ to get their abortions done.-)
          The Poles were much suprised at the supression of the devotion to the Divine Mercy. This decision led Karol Wojtyla to lead the effort to collect the authentic writings and do the prescribed investigations in order to present to the proper authorities the primary sources in order for them to be able to make an authentic judgement. About a year before he was elected Pope, the condemnation of the devotion was reversed. Later in his pontificate, he not only canonized the visionary, but fulfilled Jesus’ request for the feast of His Divine Mercy to be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter… making it a liturgical feast for the entire Church.

          I have to say to your claim above, ‘the central error of the Divine Mercy is that it promises lots of spiritual rewards with no requirement of penance, no mention of raparation, no mention of any condition.’ , that you might be basing these claims on hearsay rather than having read the primary sources including the Diary of Saint Faustina : Divine Mercy in My Soul… as all of your objections are continually refuted through-out, in her diary.
          ~in caritas, TR1

          Reply
          • The Modernist’s never neglect to try to come up with what seems to be a reasonable explanation to their reversals of many of the prior pronouncements, teachings and condemnations of popes prior to Vatican II. That is their modus operandi.

        • I am wondering where you were all these years that Pope John Paul was our Vicar of Christ? All that you state is long put away in the light of Pope JP11 promoting and defending Divine Mercy and promulgating a Feast of Divine Mercy long before Francis became Pope. JP11’s first encyclical was on Mercy and he never tired of speaking about it. His favourite gospel reading was the parable of the Prodigal son. In that scripture, the son, eating corn husks, repented of his squandered life and went back to the father’s house ( the image of God the Father ) to ask for forgiveness. Do you not see the connection?
          The whole premise of Divine Mercy is about forgiveness. If there was no need to repent, Christ would not need to show his compassion or mercy.
          We just completed a Divine Mercy novena that began on Good Friday. Each day Jesus gave Faustina a different group of souls to pray for. If you read them you will see very clearly the agony that Christ suffered for those who would not return to him and repent of their sins.
          I understand what you are saying about your concerns about those who speak mercy, mercy , mercy, but not about the need to cry out in sorrow for your sins. I went through some similar anxieties after the two synods.In fact I worried about that for months. Then I read a great little pamphlet by Ralph Martin and it helped me a great deal.
          He states:”The message of Divine Mercy is that no sinner should be afraid to approach the Lord who is infinitely merciful and eager to forgive sin. But mercy cannot be applied to souls unless they acknowledge that they need mercy and respond to the offer of mercy with humility, repentance and faith. ”
          And the Catechism #1864: There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit.”
          What you say about the DM devotion not mentioning the need for reparation is completely wrong. This devotion is crucial to our time, when souls are lost by the thousands but for our prayers for them.”Eternal Father I offer you the Body, Blood ,Soul and Divinity of your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. We are participating in the conversion of hearts in these prayers. I know we all wonder about what is going on with Francis, but I was struck one day, after we were given the doors of mercy for our parish. Jesus’ words to St. Faustina came to mind. ” WALK THROUGH THE DOORS OF MY MERCY BEFORE YOU HAVE TO WALK THROUGH THE DOORS OF MY JUSTICE.” Doesn’t that strike you as chilling as we approach the Fatima anniversary and Sister Lucia’s words to Cardinal Caffara that the final reign of Satan will be over marriage and the family. Everything seems to be aligning. God bless you.

          Reply
          • I’ll stick with the time-honored devotions the Church has approved which were approved by those known to be orthodox and faithful to the teachings of the Church.

          • It sounds like you do not believe that St. John Paul 11 was orthodox and faithful. Wow. If you weren’t happy with him, who COULD make you happy? There is not much more one can say.

          • It isn’t a matter of what makes me happy. It is a matter of what God has revealed to be true which we must believe. It is a matter of following the perennial and consistent teachings of the Church who is the Bride of Christ.
            JPII sinned against the First Commandment of God through his prolific, public acts of idolatry, scandalizing Christ and denying the perennial and consistent teaching of the Church that it is a mortal sin for Catholics to pray with non-Catholics and worship with them, as though false gods and false religions should be “respected” (as one of the heresies of Vatican II claims.)
            That act alone proves he was not faithful to the Catholic Church.

          • Sorry, there is nothing more I can say to one who is rooted in that false thinking that every pope since Vatican 11 is not part of the apostolic succession. That is a very dark place to be and how much you have lost in his writings, his brilliance, his rich patrimony, his deep humility, his mission to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. What a waste, what a waste. So I guess in your eyes he is not a saint at all? How tedious and agonizing it is to hear of souls who are lost in the hell hole of not giving assent to these past few holy popes .There are those who have swung so fat to the left as to be in heresy and there are those who have swung so far to the right that they too, are in grave error. You can take John Paul’s status up with Jesus Christ and tell him where they have all gone wrong when you come into His presence, that is, if he allows you to speak.

          • If you prefer to reject Sacred Scripture and the true teachings of the Catholic Church that is your choice.

          • Raphael.. if you want the real scoop on all the popes going back to the sixties I highly recommend you visit Ann Barnhardt on her brilliant website. She is actually more catholic than the pope and probably more on the side of Iwhite….sorry about that but your glowing remarks of ALL popes since then falls short of the truth.

          • RE: “That act alone proves he was not faithful to the Catholic Church.” Of course for it was decades ago that the RC church was infiltrated by the commie/homosexualists. I find it more than a bit loony that each pope can, if he so chooses, just willy nilly change what was taught before…this has led to that great big restaurant in the sky known as cafeteria Catholicism where one can munch on the softest of foods like pablum.

            Also is the reason why over 70 million have left the church. Truth is truth no matter, that is, UNLESS it was wrong from the get go…..and it is possible to argue that just from the Old Testament viewpoint…slavery allowed, stoning of women okay until Christ arrived…Jewish men could clap their hands three times and it meant mama had to leave HIS home if the falalfel was not baked just right. Anyone who believes that nonsense can find a coconut tree in Alaska.

            Not hard to see where the moes get their godawful ideations of women….they looked to the Jews first…as for the whole head chopping thingy, I’ve read that they know of the BVM stepping on the head…so that legitimizes that action. Further I’ve known muslim women who say their wearing a veil makes them similar to the BVM for she wore it back in the day. My retort to that is we didn’t have dentists back then either and folks walked around with a mouthful of rotten teeth. Does that mean we should not see a dentist today? The islime stupid just continues to grow! Along with the irrational aspect of so many clergy who never question what they were taught. Let alone feel they can altar what might be real and truthful.

            It is obvious to anyone with a brain that much of what was in the OT was concocted by mere men, not any higher power. The OT actually presents more of an alasux type god than a loving one. So knowing the OT was the foundation on which the latter grew it does make one wonder who is on first?

          • Not only are we not to pray with non-catholics if you really believe in scripture we are told to go to our silent room alone, so as to not puff ourselves up in front of others. Speak with the Lord alone! It is found in Matthew 6:5-6— “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” I say amen to that, actually 1,000 Amens.

          • This passage doesn’t forbid public prayer. Jesus went up to the temple for public prayer. It means do not pray in public as a hypocrite would do-for attention to yourself.

    • Here on the East coast a town called Worcester is a half hour west of Boston. Today’s Telegram Gazette offers much of the aforesaid commentary here. But I find other interesting points not brought up on this blog today. I was stunned by the last paragraph wherein the pontiff offers this viewpoint…”But women will find much to appreciate in the document. Francis condemns at length the “verbal, physical and sexual violence” many women endure in marriages, rejects “sexual submission” and the “reprehensible” practice of genital mutilation. And he says the belief that feminism is to blame for the crisis in families today is completely invalid.”

      This last sentence on feminism is a total 180 from what another pope said about 20 years ago..I recall that pope saying the church apologized to women for a myriad of sins the church had inflicted on women per se, BUT that he felt that the feminist movement had gone way to far in their pursuit of changes. That always stuck with me and I am not, nor ever was any fan of feminism. However I saw it as a calculated threat against women should they advance in such thinking. Now the above says a totally different story..so what to believe out of the Vatican??

      I find that many of the feedbackers above have a totally different take on the Pope’s latest…to read it all check out the Telegram and Gazette of Worcester.

      http://www.telegram.com/zz/shareable/20160408/pope-insists-conscience-not-rules-must-lead-faithful-video#loadComment

      Reply
  16. Without trying to come across as overdramatic and bitter, the last thing I feel after stumbling through page upon page of gobbledygook and weasel words is any sense of “joy” or “love”. Rather, I am close to despair at what has happened today because, in essence, we—we few Catholics who have tried to remain faithful to the teachings of our Mother the Church—have been given the proverbial middle finger by the man who is supposed to be our shepherd and our Holy Father.

    As others have stated so eloquently, by the time one reaches the end of paragraph 350, it is clear that we faithful Catholics have lost. If, in fact, “. . . it is possible that in an objective situation of sin—which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such—a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end,” which, as footnote 351 makes clear, “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments,” then what is the point? If someone who is mired in mortal sin can somehow still be living in the grace of the Almighty—a non sequitur; no, an impossibility!—then everything we have been taught for centuries, everything the apostles and martyrs died for is meaningless!

    Repentance? Bah! Sincere contrition? Unnecessary! Firm purpose of amendment? A nice idea, perhaps, but completely unrealistic for Modern Man™. Work it out with your pastor—not your bishop, your pastor!—in the internal forum, and do what your conscience (however malformed) tells you is permissible. “Irregular union”? Who cares, so long as you believe you can find the Almighty’s grace in your defiance of Christ’s specific, unequivocal teaching?

    April 8, 2016 will be remembered as the day objective Truth and natural law ceased to have any meaning whatsoever. Because in Francis’s New Church of Mercy™, all that matters apparently is feelings and individual determinations of what one perceives to be their version of the Truth. It will also be remembered as the day we few Catholics who have tried for years to convince others of the truth of the Church’s teaching on marriage were left with nothing more than egg on our faces.

    No, there is very little joy in my heart today at all.

    Reply
    • They’ve been giving us the proverbial middle finger for decades now, just not in public.Ignore and continue to pray. Hold fast to the Faith which has been handed down for over 1900 years.

      Reply
    • Yes! This is what I don’t understand! So we can commit an objective sin, but if we’re doing well in the situation, say, happily remarried outside the Church, then we’re in a state of grace? So… it’s not adultery anymore? Or committing adultery isn’t a sin anymore? I also don’t get why he’s not suggesting applying for an annulment. There already is a path to getting back in with the Church. Use it! It’s already pretty lax here in the US, and the Pope has made it even “laxer”. It’s as if Pope Francis thinks we are all too dumb to know that annulments exist, so he doesn’t want to bother us here with the topic. I just don’t get it.

      Reply
      • Don’t try to make sense of the myriad of contradictions and inconsistencies in the exhortation, Sharon; you have better things to do with your time. I’ve tried, but it only leaves me feeling depressed and tempted to down an entire fifth of bourbon in order to become intoxicated enough that Amoris actually seems like well-written prose. The reality is that you CAN’T commit a mortal sin—even if you don’t know it’s a mortal sin—and still remain in a state of grace; that’s absolutely ludicrous . . . or at least we all thought it was until today.

        I’m not the first to say this (I can’t remember where I read this), but it sure as hell seems as if the hierarchy’s strategy is to keep as many people ignorant of Church teaching as possible so that they may be saved through invincible ignorance. I can’t think of another possible explanation (other than maybe—probably?—they just don’t give a damn and think the whole Gospel is a bunch of BS).

        I can’t think of any other field or situation where keeping people in the dark is an optimal strategy for success. But then again, what do I know? (sarcasm)

        Reply
        • LB…..Is it not the church’s teaching that in order to commit a mortal sin , one of the factors is that you must KNOW that it is a grievous or mortal sin? Does the church not teach that the soul is less culpable if that factor is present ?

          Reply
          • Less culpable, yes. But to make the case that one who is objectively in mortal sin can still be in a state of grace, even if they are truly unaware that they have committed a sin, is something I have never read or heard; if I’m wrong, I will accept correction.

            The more pressing matter, from my perspective, is why are our pastors not informing the truly-ignorant that they ARE in states of mortal sin and doing their part to solve the problem, rather than looking the other way? Hence my point about this culture of ignorance that the hierarchy seem to want to foster.

          • Ah……the 64 million dollar question: Indeed, why are our Pastors NOT informing us of the truths of the Church? This is really perfect timing for the modernists to step in and finish the ‘reformation’ of the Church. They now, after 50 years of bad catechesis and even NO catechesis, have dummied the poor sheep down to the point that Catholics (at least a good number) have no idea what the Church really teaches. Not saying that the laity has no responsibility to teach themselves or their children, but how many still rely on what ‘Fr. says’. And how many, like me, have fought the NO Parishes and Religious Ed, and even Catholic schools who were teaching my children errors that I have had to raise holy h _ _ _ about? And for these children, when they are old enough, it’s more convenient to listen to Fr. than to Mom and Dad, if it’s to their sinful advantage.

            This dissent didn’t start with Francis and his ‘Exhortation’, it started with Vatican ll, and they are now finalizing the deal. I like to say they are ‘formalizing’ the heresy that has been wreaking havoc in our Church for 50 years, and it has been no ‘accident’. I do believe this has been their plan for decades now.

    • .
      I was a teen in the sex saturated 60’s and lived in mortal sin for some years but one thing I always knew…… I could never approach the altar of the Lord to receive Holy Communion until I was ready to make changes to my behaviors and my living condition and seek God’s mercy in confession. I found myself being drawn back slowly. It was the merciful Jesus who kept tugging at my heart. I would sit in the back of church when it was empty and weep. Sometimes I showed up after a few drinks and sat there and listened . One day I was drawn ( again ) to the church on a Sunday late afternoon and there happened to be a baptism going on. When I heard the words that the priest spoke, once again I wept. It was as if the Holy Spirit shone His Light and opened up my hardness of heart and I was touched by the reality of God’s truth and love and it filled me with the desire to be good.
      I can understand the concept of our being brought back in stages as we attempt to repeatedly detach ourselves from mortal sin. In St. Faustina’s diary Christ tells us that even if our sins be as scarlet, if we come to Him, he will forgive us. What we seemed to hear a great deal of at the synod was a misperception that there was no repentance needed to receive Christ’s mercy.
      I was and I have deep compassion for those who are lost, tumbling about in the darkness. I was graced with a strong foundation in my childhood and I knew that how I was living was a sin without a doubt. Had a priest told me that I could approach the Altar, I would have known that he was in error, even in spite of my sins. So what am I saying? I think I benefited from the holy Catholic Church’s clear teachings. I never saw them as harsh or judgemental. I saw them as the ideal of Christ’s teachings to be striven for and to be looked up to. They are within reach of EVERY man of good will with God’s grace which will never be lacking for those with deep sincerity and repentance.

      Reply
  17. Pastoral sensitivity! Is there ANYTHING it can’t do!?! Let’s recount:

    First, it eroded Church doctrine vis-à-vis ecumenism and religious liberty; then it diminished her sacraments with the Novus Ordo & Co. Is it any surprise then that it has now succeeded in compromising her moral teaching?

    A pastoral trifecta!

    Reply
    • Which begs the question of just how the Church flourished for century upon century if her pastors were so damn insensitive up until the last 50 years. Maybe we should go back to a model that actually worked and abandon modernity’s obsession with “sensitivity” and making sure everyone feels “welcome” and concentrate on—I don’t know—actually teaching the Faith . . .

      Oh. I forgot. That’s crazy talk in the New Church of Mercy™. Silly, silly me . . .

      Reply
    • The moral teaching and the monarchical governing structure of the Church are the last two foundations of the Catholic religion that haven’t been smashed. They are working on both.

      Reply
  18. By their fruits ye shall know them.

    When the branch is separated from the True vine, the branch bears no fruit. It withers and dies.
    This is the reality of the last 50 years. It isn’t new with Francis.

    Ecumenism. Religious liberty. Forbidden to teach and preach the Gospel to the Jews. The mission of the Church is not to save souls. The Catholic Church is not the only Christian church. Collegiality. Praying with non-believers and worshipping false gods. A Protestant/Pantheistic liturgy.

    Catholic?

    Reply
  19. It has been foretold that the Church would face a great and terrible Apostasy. We have now opened the door wide to it, I believe and each and every one of us in the Church will have our faith shaken and many will turn away. Jesus Himself poses the question: “When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth!”. Make no mistake: this documents undermines the entire Faith and calks into question the veracity of the Church and that ofTruth Himself, Jesus Christ. It is a very dark time of testing indeed for each one of us and for the Church.

    Reply
  20. “Among other mitigating factors in this regard, the pope mentions “affective immaturity” and “force of acquired habit” and “conditions of anxiety,” as well as other “psychological or social factors” that would alleviate a person’s culpability.” That comes literally from the Catechism in paragraph 2352.

    Reply
    • There was no ‘would’ in the paragraph, only lesson or reduce. Also, it was only dealing with masturbation.

      Reply
      • And besides there is plenty of novelty and ambiguity in that Catechism. Better go back to an older one, and also get some older spiritual guidance books written by holy priests. All of these sexual issues have been written about with sensitivity but clarity way long ago.

        Reply
    • The same Catechism also condemns divorce and civil remarriage as continual public adultery and says persons in such a state cannot receive Communion.

      Reply
  21. In Paragraph 298, Pope Francis countenances a “second union” where one or both partners (or their pastor?) discerns “the great difficulty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins.”

    What would these “new sins” be? In what sense would they be “new”?

    St. Paul speaks of marriage as a cure for concupiscence (1 Cor. 7:9). But here we are offered adultery as a cure for concupiscence? Maddening.

    Reply
      • Well, didn’t the synod include some mention of the ‘goodness’ in long-term homosexual ‘unions’? I know Cardinal Schonborn has elaborated on this. Will we be told that same-sex unions that are ‘committed’ and ‘lifelong’ in intent are far better than the casual, promiscuous affairs that so often characterize this sinful lifestyle? Considered in that light, will those ‘unions’ now be praised by the Church as a positive alternative to “going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins.”? Are liturgical “blessings” to soon follow? What a slippery slope indeed!

        Reply
        • We certainly are on the slippery slope & if someone doesn’t call out this Papacy soon Hell will be overflowing in no time. Children are being adopted by many of these unions and I read recently where there were problems when the “marriage” broke down shortly afterwards which caused legal difficulties that hadn’t been encountered before. If the CC starts to bless these unions they leave themselves open to huge criticism and maybe even labelled perverts.

          Reply
  22. Francis’ logic:
    “We can’t live as ‘brother and sister’; I have to have sex with my live-in mistress in order to (wait for it)…avoid being unfaithful to her”.

    You just can’t make this stuff up, people.

    #ipreferaquinas

    Reply
    • Yep, that is exactly what Francis suggests, hiding it in a footnote which disparages the teaching of Familiaris consortio 84.

      Reply
      • And I should not be ‘unfaithful’ to the woman with whom I am cohabiting… “for the sake of the kids”…[that we now have together]. That they might be brought up properly in the faith. Beautiful. And not a word about ceasing to commit the adultery. Surely that would be to fall into that gravest of all sins: ‘judgmentalism’. It’s a ‘Brave New Church’, I’m afraid.

        Reply
  23. “As far as discernment with regard to “irregular” situations is concerned, the Pope states: “There is a need ‘to avoid judgements which do not take into account the complexity of various situations’ and to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition’”

    “He reaffirms what Christian marriage is and adds that “some forms of union radically contradict this ideal, while others realize it in at least a partial and analogous way”. The Church therefore “does not disregard the constructive elements in those situations which do not yet or no longer correspond to her teaching on marriage” (AL 292). (New Dogma)

    “Regarding families with members with homosexual tendencies, it reaffirms the necessity to respect them and to refrain from any unjust discrimination and every form of aggression or violence.” (omit CCC 2359, New Dogma)

    Here is the teaching of The Catholc Church:
    “2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.” (Our desire to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, is what helps us to overcome our disordered disires.)

    “On the “logic of pastoral mercy”, Pope Francis emphasizes: “At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel” (AL 311).” (New Dogma)

    “As physical appearance alters, the loving attraction does not lessen but changes as sexual desire can be transformed over time into the desire for togetherness and mutuality.” (new dogma on the essence of Love)

    “Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.”

    Reply
  24. This post of mine will likely be deleted since you Radtrads don’t debate or justify your nonsense and like your liberal counterparts wish to hide in your safe spaces. But I’m going to have a go at you anyway.

    Madam I’ve read your nonsense & it is self evident there is nothing heterodox in this letter and your are merely reading into it what you want it to say in the most heterodox way possible”.
    Taken at face value and read in light of the Tradition of the Church there is nothing wrong with this document.

    You are no better than the Protestant heretic who reads the Sola Fide error into the writings of Paul. You read all these modernist errors here and there simply are none except in your fevered imagination.

    Apparently not everybody shares your silly reading of this document.

    From the fair minded secular.

    Pope Francis Shatters Reformers’ Dreams with ‘Modern Family’ Document

    http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/04/08/pope-francis-shatters-reformers-dreams-modern-family-document/

    To the faithful.

    Amoris Laetitia: Pope Francis’ “1968 Moment”

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/04/amoris-laetitia-pope-francis-1968-moment.html

    Go ahead delete this post. Prove me right about your kind. Traditionalist? HA!! try Protestants with Rosary beads!

    Reply
    • It’s neat how you, as the decade-long King of the Catholic Internet Trolls, try to pre-emptively create a scenario where deleting your babble somehow proves something.

      If you devoted nearly as much time to improving your reading comprehension as to displaying your ignorance in every comment box that will take you, you might actually understand what this document is, and what it’s saying.

      Reply
      • >It’s neat how you, as the decade-long King of the Catholic Internet Trolls, try to pre-emptively create a scenario where deleting your babble somehow proves something.

        That is my tactic & I think I will be rewarded for it & as I told Miles in 24 hours I will concede you might have some guts leaving my post up.

        We shall see.

        >If you devoted nearly as much time to improving your reading comprehension as to displaying your ignorance in every comment box that will take you, you might actually understand what this document is, and what it’s saying.

        I have and I hold to Armstrong’s evaluation and I reject yours. Ball is in your court to show me why he is wrong.

        Reply
        • You mistake me for someone who cares about your opinion. But since I desperately want you to be right about something for once, I’m going to give you that small victory. Buh-bye.

          Reply
        • Hey, but now that you’re quiet, I want to say that I think it’s neat how you go to an ex-Catholic priest (who left because of an affair that led to a love child while he was wearing the collar) who was the spokesman for the most atrocious sexual predator to ever run a Catholic order for your commentary on a document about things like marriage, sexuality, and family. It’s good that you brought this to the table.

          Reply
        • Thanks for the laughs, Steve. I am feeling pretty down and you’ve put a smile on my face. It is interesting, as you say, to have someone like that pop in and talk. There are millions out there like this fellow – guess we pray for him to?

          Reply
      • I’ll let you know in the next 24 hours if it remains up. Then I will be happy to concede some of you Radtrads have some guts.

        Reply
    • ‘From the fair minded secular’, so I guess we are to interpret Church documents through the secular mind, not a Catholic mind. I guess this does correlate to now interpreting sin with a secular conscience instead of a Catholic conscience.

      Reply
  25. The core message to all faithful Catholics hidden under a ton of melodious caca in this Apostolic Excrementation is …”DROP DEAD!”

    Reply
  26. “Hence it is can no longer simply be said that all those in any “irregular” situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.” (#301)

    This is the most troubling sentence I have come across so far, and I simply can’t reconcile it with Church teaching. Culpability is subjective, and can vary, but the objective reality is that any such situation is mortal sin, full stop. And if you are in mortal sin, sanctifying grace cannot have anything like its full natural effect on you.

    I cannot imagine any previous Pope saying such a thing.

    Reply
    • Yes, to me this is grave. As well, Francis makes some astounding statements about our worthy reception of Holy Communion, and he links it up with how much we do for others and for the poor and more garbage. Very, very, very serious.

      Reply
    • Here how PF attempts to reconcile:

      Following the CCC, AL 302 reads as follows:

      “imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors” (1735). In another paragraph, the Catechism refers once again to circumstances which mitigate moral responsibility, and mentions at length “affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability” (2352).”

      From here the logic goes that if your moral responsibility was sufficiently mitigated you didn’t actually commit, and aren’t actually committing, a mortal sin, and therefore can receive Holy Communion.

      Reply
        • Yes he does in footnote 351: “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid., 47: 1039).”

          Reply
          • Not so.

            Paragraph 305, to which this footnote is attached and appertains, states plainly that the pope is speaking about those living “irregular situations” — which, for all but the most willfully obtuse, AT LEAST means civilly divorced individuals now living in adulterous relationships.

          • “In certain cases” of those in materially “irregular” and adulterous situations. But what cases? And please don’t suggest it can be extended further as some are already doing. This just plays into the hands of modernists. Homosexual relationships, for example, are not “irregular”. They are intrinsically disordered.

          • And yet they are now using this exact language to describe such unions. Any relationship that exists in violation of the 6th commandment could be classed as “irregular.”

            Read the words of Cardinal Shchonborn on this:

            “You can and you must respect the decision of creating a union with the person of the same sex, to seek the instruments in the civil law to protect their coexistence and their situation with laws that assure this protection. But, if we are asked, if you demand that the Church says this is a marriage, well we must say: non possumus (we cannot). It is not a discrimination of people: distinction does not mean to discriminate. This does not absolutely prevent having a great respect, a friendship, or a collaboration with couples who live this type of union, and, above all, to not despise them. No one is obligated it to accept this doctrine, but you cannot expect that the Church does not teach it.

            […]

            I know [a] homosexual person who has lived a series of experiences for years, not with the person in particular or in a coexistence, but frequent experiences with different people. Now he has found a stable relationship. It is an improvement,if only on a human level, no longer passing from one relationship to another, but he is stabilized in a relationship that is not based only on sexuality. He shares his life, they share joys and suffering, there is help for each other. We must recognize that this person has made an important step, for their own good and the good of others, even if, certainly, it is not a situation that the Church can consider as regular. Judgment on these sexual acts as such is necessary, but the Church must not look first into the bedroom, but into the dining room! It is necessary to accompany.”

            “This does not absolutely prevent having a great respect, a friendship, or a collaboration with couples who live this type of UNION…

            …it is not a situation that the Church can consider as REGULAR.”

            The structural, conceptual framework is there. Homosexuality will be classed among other “irregular unions.”

            I might even go so far as to propose that this has been one of the goals all along.

          • While Francis does not define “irregular situations”, Familiaris Consortio does. Paragraph 79-84 list the following examples: trial marriages, de facto free unions, Catholics in civil marriages, separated or divorced persons who have not remarried, and divorced persons who have remarried. Homosexual relationships may fall into the “de facto free union” category.

            As to “what cases” with respect to divorced persons who have remarried, they would be any case where, in keeping with AL, the divorcee and his confessor determine that the divorcee was not morally culpable for his divorce or remarriage due to some defect which renders his responsibility null.

      • And yet the Catechism – which frankly is not as clear on these points as it could be, alas – at each of these cited passages is not denying that it is still a mortal sin, or even that moral culpability is removed. The second passage (CCC 2352) is working in the context of a specific act (self abuse) which would not readily apply to those living in an adulterous union.

        Reply
  27. Sodomy is a Mortal Sin and Pope Francis can not change this absolute Truth. What Pope Frances said is not the Truth.

    Reply
  28. Had the Church has the prescience to know that the “problem” of dropping one’s first wife for another lady was **REALLY, TRULY** okay (according to Francis the First), the whole messy, nasty Henry VII Anglican schism could have been avoided! Silly us!!

    All the handwringing, the martyrs (boy, I’ll bet St. Thomas More is having a good laugh now in paradise!), the family disruption, etc., etc., etc.. Wow! If only Clement VII could have seen how VERY, VERY wrong he was, we could have still been one big happy family!! All those monasteries destroyed, the hurt feelings, the property seized, the families that were slaughtered, the souls lost between1534 and the present…and for what?? If only they had one tenth of Francis’ newly found “wisdom!” This is AMAZING!!! Oh, the JOY OF LOVE and LUST!!!

    Reply
    • Welcome to the New Church of Mercy™ (est. March 19, 2013), friend, where all that old Catholicy stuff that we used to do is no longer applicable. ‘Cause we’ve evolved beyond such medieval superstitious rot; it may have worked for Aquinas and More, but . . . oh, where’d I put my talking points—er, notes . . . Ah, here they are:

      “Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. . . . Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.”

      There, you see? Out with the old, in with the new and all that sort; what’s good for you may not be good for me, and that’s a-okay. Because the New Church of Mercy™ is so merciful that we just chuck away all that mean stuff the Church used to teach about Hell and judgment and repentance, because we now know that Mercy! is the most important thing of all. Mercy for all! Mercy for everyone! Mercy!!!!

      Reply
      • Short of standing up in the middle of a papal Mass and and having a meltdown, I don’t know what to do with Francis. He certainly doesn’t seem to take the council of faithful fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Worse, he seems bent on demoting or replacing them with his little clones. What can stop this man?! Why aren’t groups of fellow bishops willing to stand up and publicly (after private exhortation) say to His Holiness, “You shall not pass!!”

        i have never said this before, but I believe this is more than just being a simpleton or malformed in the Faith, but diabolic influence.

        Reply
        • “Why aren’t groups of fellow bishops willing to stand up and publicly (after private exhortation) say to His Holiness, ‘You shall not pass!!'”

          Because a) they are intimidated or pressured into remaining silent for fear of reprisal, b) don’t care one way or the other about dogma and want to go along with the pontiff’s agenda in order to advance their careers, or c) they’re in on the plan.

          That’s my take, at least.

          Reply
        • Don’t you find it ironic the same can be said could be said of our congressmen caving to the horror show bama’s bringing on us?

          Reply
    • No. The Church, mirroring Obama, has been on a mission of apology. Apologizing to the Jews. Apologizing to the Mohammeds. Apologizing to the heretics and schismatics. It is the fault of the Catholic Church, not her enemies, who have caused all the evil in the world.
      Paul VI even went so far as to return to the Muslim’s the flag of the battle of Lepanto. I suppose he would have preferred the Mohammed’s had been the victors of the Crusades.

      Reply
  29. Not to be nasty to the people in the warehouse in Detroit (I’ve been banned from commenting on their forum, so I can’t post there), but has Church Militant even read the same document we’ve read? Because their interpretation is that everything is AWESOME and that Pope Francis has won a major victory for traditional Catholic teaching on marriage:

    http://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/pope-francis-releases-final-words-on-synod-amoris-laetitia#disqus_thread

    Not a single mention of the problematic passages, especially paragraph 305 and footnote 351. Not. A. One. And they wonder why so many no longer subscribe to their head-in-the-sand, this-Pope-can-do-no-wrong-nothing-is-his-fault approach to journalism.

    I mean, there’s ignorance, and then there’s self-imposed willful blindness.

    Reply
  30. The lack of the emphasis on the word “adultery” is seriously problematic. The word is of course chosen for a specific reason: it signifies that the first marriage is still valid. Its usage is a crucial tool used to communicate the church’s teaching. These other words (“irregular”) are used to deliberately change the understanding of the relationship. Yet more language manipulation…

    Reply
  31. “Otherwise, the pope reasons, their new relationship – and the welfare of the children involved – could be put at risk!”

    But here the pope uses language from the Council that refers to **married couples** who voluntarily abstain for a period of time. It does not refer to adulterers!

    Carl Olson points out this sleight of hand on such a critical point in the pope’s reference to Gaudium et Spes:

    http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/4698/francis_sprawling_exhortation_a_marriage_of_profound_and_muddled.aspx

    Given this fundamental error, does the pope’s assertion retain any remnant of credibility?

    Draw your own conclusions.

    Reply
    • Another analysis here: CATHOLICS CANNOT ACCEPT ELEMENTS OF APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION THAT THREATEN FAITH AND FAMILY, April 8, 2016 | VOF [http://voiceofthefamily.com/catholics-cannot-accept-elements-of-apostolic-exhortation-that-threaten-faith-and-family/]

      Reply
  32. I cannot possibly explain the problems with something like this to less well-versed Catholics in my family or at large. I consider myself very aware and fairly informed on our faith, but this is going to be very problematic for Catholics not paying attention.
    I look to our Cardinals and Bishops for leadership on this exhortation. It contains a departure from authentic Catholic teaching and Scripture, and if our Cardinals/Bishops do not adequately address this, there may well be an exodus. We cannot simply continue on with this level of disruption, nor can we tolerate silence on the part of our leadership. Something must be done.
    God help us.

    Reply
  33. I forgot to thank Ms. Hickson for her summary of the problems. You must have done this so quickly. Well done.

    Reply
  34. One of the most vexing things is that many Catholics, that is those who accept and embrace the Teaching of the Church, remain steadfastly obtuse to the obvious problems that this Pontificate has produced ( I must admit, to my shame, that this reality of the willful blindness of many, has psychologically crippled me for much of the day. Much wind has left the sail…) So, you have well known and intelligent commentators saying that Pope Francis didn’t take the Kasperian solution, even though paragraph 305 and Footnote 351 clearly state otherwise:

    Paragraph 305: For this reason, a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in “irregular” situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives. This would bespeak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Church’s teachings, “sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families”.349 Along these same lines, the International Theological Commission has noted that “natural law could not be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions”.350 *Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.351 * Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God. Let us remember that “a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order, but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties”.352 The practical pastoral care of ministers and of communities must not fail to embrace this reality.

    Footnotes to 305:

    348 In another text, referring to the general knowledge of the rule and the particular knowledge of practical discernment, Saint Thomas states that “if only one of the two is present, it is preferable that it be the knowledge of the particular reality, which is closer to the act”: Sententia libri Ethicorum, VI, 6 (ed. Leonina, t. XLVII, 354.)

    349 Address for the Conclusion of the Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (24 October 2015): L’Osservatore Romano, 26-27 October 2015, p. 13.

    350 InternationalTheologicalCommission, In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at Natural Law (2009), 59.

    *351 In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid., 47: 1039).

    352 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 44: AAS 105 (2013), 1038-1039.

    The above is Cardinal Kasper’s proposal. After all this paragraph falls under the section on Discernment does it not? And it clearly refers to receiving the Sacraments of Penance and Communion while remaining in an Objective “situation of sin” (good grief! We can’t even allow ourselves to say State of Sin!), does it not? And I didn’t even touch on the other nonsense regarding the Natural Law etc…

    Reply
    • Thank you Fr. RP. That’s the spin isn’t it, Fr.? A purposeful misdirection. Even Fr. Z saying on the eve, ‘we have dodged a bullet’, while MSM has drawn the conclusion that should be drawn.
      *
      I can’t believe it that only very few are seeing this cf. The Devil Usually Lurks in the Footnotes: Footnote 351 | The American Catholic [http://the-american-catholic.com/2016/04/08/the-devil-usually-lurks-in-the-footnotes-footnote-351/#comment-281783]

      Reply
    • They will not see the obvious, Father, because, as far as I can tell, they truly believe that to say anything that calls into question the actions of the Supreme Pontiff makes one disloyal to the See of Peter and thus disobedient to Christ Himself. How do you argue with someone who stubbornly maintains, no matter the evidence offered to the contrary, that the following is the case:

      “No rule has been changed here. Those not in a state of grace cannot receive communion. There is nothing in this document that says that has changed.
      If you follow the path of not being loyal to the Pope which master do you think you you are serving?” (comment from a regular poster to a forum from which you, Father, and I have both been banned)

      This poster claims to have read the exhortation, yet refuses to acknowledge the existence of the paragraphs and footnotes you have cited, and then has the audacity to suggest that anyone who questions Francis is serving Satan himself! I post this not to besmirch this commenter (whose inexhaustible comments of a similar vein are a matter of public record), but to demonstrate to anyone who may visit this site just what we are up against. This is the sort of ultramontanism that runs rampant among the “non-traditionalist conservative” crowd.

      Reply
      • Well, that site has already closed the comment section on there report of Amoris Laetitia. I wonder why? Perhaps too many people pointing out the obvious? And for the record, I wasn’t banned, just suspended until I gave proof of my credentials, to which I refused as they have no right to them. They know who I am. And, for what it’s worth, I wish they would realize that we are all on the side of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and therefore on the side of Jesus Christ. I hope they do well and I hope they change their ultramontinist ways. I love the Church and I Love the Papacy and offer my sincere and obligatory obedience to the successor of Peter, but that does not mean that I cannot speak the Truth of the Gospel.

        Reply
          • Is it wrong Father, to seriously question if we are not under the rule of the AntiPope of History?

          • I don’t know if questioning it is wrong, but it isn’t necessary either. If we hold the Faith and live according to it, then we will be saved, no matter what part of History we are in.

          • Im being a little mischievous. What i mean is, do you do weddings? And are you coming to the UK anytime soon?

          • I was aware of that, I was being cheeky in reply. Not to the UK (at least to my knowledge anyway!) anytime soon, and I would need jurisdiction given my by the Pastor of your parish for it to be valid. However, if you want to come to the U.S. to get married, then I could oblige…

          • I did reply to you Father, but it seems to have disappeared. I asked, where are you based in the US?

          • Fairenough. I just sent 50 bucks your way. I plan on giving Sensus Trad files a thorough workout sometime. Can you please remember Mrs Gray next time you say Mass please. Though not Catholic, she is the Mother of a close friend and does not have long left in this veil of tears. Many thanks Father.

          • For the sake of clarity, I am not Fr. Ripperger. I will certainly remember Mrs. Gray in an upcoming Mass.

          • You’re very welcome. I will say my Monday Mass (I keep my day’s off intentions available for what I want to offer the Mass for, so they are not spoken for by my parishioners) for Mrs. Gray (no stipend necessary.) However, Steve could use your donations, as well as donations from all of his readers. So, please be sure to support 1Peter5 with your prayer, your good word of mouth and your $. And, for the sake of clarity, I am not financially remunerated for any of my posts, or articles on 1Peter5. I do everything I do for the sake of the Kingdom of God. However, I am a celibate and have the support I need to eat and live from my Parish ministry. Steve has a wife and children. So, please help him care for them and continue his good work for the Lord. As in, he could use the 50$…monthly if possible 🙂

          • Father i just found out that the lady in question died this morning at 6.50am GMT. Your timing and generosity of spirit was impeccable and heaven sent. Thank you so very much once again.

          • Their words, paragraph 2:

            “The 256-page document affirms Church teaching on homosexuality, marriage and divorce, the Eucharist and discusses many pastoral issues at length, such as the education of children and marriage preparation for young people.”

            Not a single mention of the problematic paragraphs, or footnote 351. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Their story is that it is a great victory for traditional Catholic teaching.

            Oh, and their comment box was closed within half an hour of the story being posted. Which begs the question: If the exhortation was so wonderful, why can’t the com box stay open so it can be discussed? (We all know the answer, of course.)

        • Ironic consideriing that it was the first Pope, St. Peter himself, who taught us how we are to act when faced with such a dilemma:

          19 But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; 20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” 21 And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them, because of the people; for all men praised God for what had happened. – Acts 4:19-21 (RSVCE)

          Reply
        • God be with you Fr. RP! I have been looking for you on CMTV and now understand why I have not read any postings by you. I am sorry for the difficulties.
          You are so correct Father. We all must stay united for we are on the side of Christ and HIs Church.
          Excuse of sin comes in many forms, and this exhortation, in my mind is just another one. Keep preaching the Truth of the Gospel. That is where His Love is found for mankind.

          God bless and protect you.

          Reply
          • For the record they suspended my posting privileges because they didn’t like something I posted abut the Pope proposing contraception in the case of the Zika Virus (which the Holy See’s press office specifically clarified that the Pope was indeed referring to the use of contraceptives) on this site, not on their site. A bit of a problem…George Orwell anyone? Big brother and all…

  35. Two points:

    1. Even if Francis wrote a completely orthodox document, he and the Church as a whole miss one point: the apparent ineffectiveness of Catholic marriage counseling, whether before or after the wedding. The document reflects the Church’s (at least the clergy’s) focus on band-aids rather than cures.

    2. The idea that “the Pope cannot change doctrine” should now fall into history’s grave of discredited notions. Actually, JPII began the push with his arbitrary, revisionist teaching on capital punishment.

    Reply
    • I agree with the bandaid statement in general but not # 2. The idea that the pope cannot change doctrine isn’t an idea, it is fact. He can fall/err on the wrong side of doctrine, but the Doctrine remains the same. And Pope St. John Paul II didn’t call Capital Punishment an intrinsic evil, he stated that he thought it was no longer necessary in the modern world. I disagree with him, as do many others, including the Catechism he released:

      CCC: 2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

      If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

      Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

      The last part in quotes is from Evangelium Vitae, and is Pope St. John Paul’s assessment of the then current situation in the world. It is and was incorrect and the situation has deteriorated considerably since then: however it was never presented as an absolute that abrogated the use of the Death Penalty, as is evidenced by the opening paragraph of CCC 2267.

      Reply
  36. “Apostolic exhortations” fall within the ordinary magisterium?

    If so, does that mean Catholics are obliged to give outward and inward assent to the teachings in this?

    Or is an AE a pep talk not protected by divine grace?

    Reply
    • “Apostolic exhortations” fall within the ordinary magisterium – assent only if in line with Church’s perennial Teaching/Sacred Deposit of the Faith = Sacred Scripture + Holy Tradition.

      Reply
  37. I’ve only read summations throughout the day from the MSM.

    My initial thoughts are that this document basically reflects two things:

    1) Diversity. We all must accept it. 2) Christianity, if it is to survive, must adjust to the fact that the family is dying or dead.

    The family concept in Western civilization has been in its death throes since the Enlightenment began. Feminism, progressive income taxes, the need for constant war to fight the enemies of democracy, the notion of endless revolutionary progress, etc.

    The fact is that family formation collapsed decades ago. How does the Roman Church deal with it?

    It is easy to dismiss Pope Francis on the basis of rules and tradition, but yet, he’s faced with an incredible burden.

    It is an unfortunate fact of male biology that males produce semen every day in their testes and that this creates enormous sexual pressure over time. Time meaning days. We ask young men to wait until they are in their late twenties, when they’ve become educated in careers that make them able to support a family and not have sex or masturbate. The reality is that asking young men especially to remain chaste for well after their sexual peak is a recipe for disaster. Modern industrial capitalistic and democratic societies require extreme levels of education even in the trades from young men. These same young men are tasked with paying down educational debts, buying rings, saving for a house, etc.

    Most Catholic theology got left in the dust by modernity’s demands, so traditional Catholics will complain that the Pope has departed from the tradition. The fact is that there are two clear choices: continue to watch family formation and Christianity collapse because those who have extreme demands put on them will rebel; or, accept the fact that modern life asks extreme positions, from men especially.

    No, asking men to retain their vital fluids for a decade or more past their sexual prime is not realistic. Telling them that they will burn in hell forever and ever if they die after masturbating and before going to a priest… Christianity will continue to shrink.

    It is not realistic to expect men to remain celibate, chaste virgins into their mid-to-late twenties in the West. The problem is that Christianity has become a burden so heavy that no one, no sinner, can carry it.

    This is even without getting into the whole divorce/remarried discussion.

    Reply
    • Oh, for goodness sake. In your mind, the Church should just change Truth—which she can’t, by the way—simply because “it’s too hard”?!

      I seem to recall most of Christ’s followers saying the same thing after He commanded them to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Yet He did not modify His teaching in the slightest, but doubled down instead. Whatever happened to “pick up your cross and follow Me”?

      Nice to know that you think men are slaves to their baser instincts and are incapable of overcoming them. What a depressing outlook you seem to possess.

      Reply
      • I don’t miss youth at all. In one of Socrate’s dialogues, the old men explain that they are happy by the presence of old age because they no longer feel the burn.

        If you are a female, you’ll never understand.

        Catholicism holds out an eternal lake of fire for mortal sins like masturbation and ignores that most young men in Western societies are faced with huge economic obstacles to supporting even just themselves.

        Consider that 51% of young people in their twenties live at home now in the West. What is their future? Robots and automation are even now beginning to gobble up low paying service jobs.

        Your answer? Control your impulses.

        And that is why Christianity will die.

        Reply
        • Nice try. I’m 32 and male. And some of the most masculine men I have the privilege of knowing are celibate priests, who—shockingly to you, I’m sure—are perfectly capable of controlling their impulses.

          I’ve seen the road you’ve proposed of casual hookups and commitment-free sex. Yeah, that’s a good model for life, let alone spiritual sustenance.

          Reply
          • Your last paragraph is just slander. I never proposed it or anything close.

            And slandering people wins hearts to Christ how? Has chastity made you less slanderous?

            This is why Christianity fails. Catholic parents pay and sacrifice to send their kids to parochial schools that build Muslim prayer rooms because they are terrified of being counted “intolerant.” Then, they tell their male children faced with a bleak economic future that they must never ever touch themselves or they will burn for all eternity in a lake of fire prepared for the devil and his fallen angels. And yes, that God loves them and his followers will slander you if you have “problems.”

            Your rock solid clergy. How many of them deal with masturbation or constant sexual thoughts? You’ll never know. You just need to look at yourself and ask whether you see Christianity surviving even another ten years with the rules it lays down on its followers. Sure, it’ll have followers here and there in small ghettoes.

          • No, it’s not slander. It’s the inevitable conclusion to your premise, which is that it’s unreasonable to expect men to remain celibate until marriage; ergo you are at least suggesting that we should welcome sex with anyone whenever they want, as without an expectation that sex and marriage go hand in hand, you have no leg to stand on to counter promiscuous behavior.

            And since you seem to think Christianity has failed, why do you even care? If you don’t like what the Church teaches, fine. Go do your own thing and leave the rest of us be.

          • I care because I still know Jesus Christ is Lord of all creation and that he loves me.

            Getting older means that you are less likely to judge others without due consideration. In a few years, your opinions will be different. Not different, but you will remember that you are a failed follower of Jesus and you will not judge others so harshly. I do not advocate “casual hookups,” but I will never judge someone who performs one and then regrets it. I have mercy because God first showed mercy towards me.

            I think about my mortality a lot. I throw my mercy on God because I believe that God, the Holy Trinity, loves all that it created, from the moment They breathed, “Let there be light.” I believe creation is good and that no one, no thing, can be lost to God except through some really serious effort.

            I’ve failed so many times, every day, in thought and word and deed. I am very reluctant to pass judgment on young men especially who are tasked with very hard things in this age.

            Am I a soft liberal? No. But I choose to believe that God’s great mercy exceeds His holy judgment.

          • “But I choose to believe that God’s great mercy exceeds His holy judgment.”

            Well, that’s rather presumptuous, isn’t it?

            “Getting older means that you are less likely to judge others without due consideration.”

            Can we please stop with the whole “not judging” argument? The reality is that all of us make judgments every single day—we couldn’t function as a society without judgment. My employer judges my performance every day, and if I do not live up to his standards, I will lose my job. Is it wrong of him to judge my performance? Society has laws that place restrictions upon our behavior—is it wrong for a jury to judge that a man is guilty of murder if the evidence suggests he is? Professional sports are governed by judgments—is it wrong for an umpire to judge that a given pitch is a ball rather than a strike? What of the pitcher’s feelings? How is that fair to him?

            I never claimed to judge another man’s soul; nor does the Church. But the Church, as Christ’s spotless Bride, reserves the right to act in His stead and provide teachings on morality—not to punish us, or make us miserable, but rather to free us from our concupiscence and our own selfishness.

          • You were me at 32.

            You’ll get it someday. I don’t mean that in a condescending way either.

          • I wish you the best. Please, don’t let the sun go down on your anger if you have it.

          • “If you don’t like what the Church teaches, fine. Go do your own thing and leave the rest of us to be.”

            Coincidentally, that was my thought after reading the exhortation!

        • “Catholicism holds out an eternal lake of fire for mortal sins.” Have you never thought why Christ instituted the sacrament of reconciliation? This is His Mercy! You do not have to throw your soul into that eternal lake of fire. I know a young man who is in the confession line every week. I admire his courage to face his sins each week and try to triumph over them. We are all poor sinners and our Lord knew this. He gave us this sacrament to conquer our sins. Do not throw this life line away!

          Reply
    • In Short: Wrong. The false societal norm of the West is indeed a burnden that no one can carry, Christianity, as always is the only real solution. You ask young men to remain unmarried until their late twenties, Christianity does not. The incredibly evil mentality of the many of ‘health’ and ‘wealth’ and ‘sexual satisfaction’ is the problem. Men are not animals who cannot restrain themselves for the sake of the Good. Hell, even animals have restrained themselves for the sake of the Good!

      It’s not realistic to expect men to refrain from lust? Welcome to the reasoning for abortion, contraception, adultery and rape. Good luck.

      Reply
      • So what, I burn for eternity? I have so many anger issues that I deal with because I have bosses who treat workers, my friends and colleagues, like they are stupid pieces of poop, not worthy of anything. I am a very well compensated white collar professional. I am also a nationalist. There is nothing that Americans cannot do, regardless of race.

        The problem with eternity is that it is, well, eternal. Catholicism tells people that they can burn forever and ever in a moment. Impulse control. You expect people to love our God how again?

        Please don’t trot out the Hitler arguments.

        It is very, very hard to ask of someone that they do what you’ve not done. Leave it at that. Holy priests deal with sexual impurity, daily, every day.

        I am not “health” and “wealth” obsessed. I live in a remote village where drug addiction is high. My “town” has 950 souls, most of them baked on drugs. I make very good money. I choose to live with the impoverished because of humming birds.

        I spent a weekend writing a letter to explain to my elected officials why we can save rural America and help families prosper. I never sent it because I would get backlash. Or silence. You remind me of why I don’t send the letter. I *never* write anyone in office. Ever. Still, I wrote a decent five or six page letter explaining *how to save rural America” because it’s worth saving.

        Woe to you scribes and pharisees!

        Priests and politicians. It’s a toss up.

        Reply
        • If you embrace a belief that is contradictory to the teaching of Jesus Christ then you cannot expect to be defended or embraced by Him unless you repent of that or those beliefs and the expressions of that or those beliefs.

          Yes, many priests do deal with sexual impurity everyday, that of their parishioners and sometimes that of their own. One person’s failure, or many people’s failures does not negate the Truth of Creation in the Image and Likeness of God. The Church has not bound people to an impossible burden, sexual purity has always been the norm because it is the True Good of Man. Try reading the New Testament as well as the Old.

          I said that Western society’s view of ‘health and wealth and sexual satisfaction’ was the problem, I didn’t say you were health and wealth obsessed, though you did defend the normal expression of it via your post.

          The problem isn’t with the Teaching of JESUS CHRIST, it’s with man refusing to obey Him.

          Once again, good luck with your beliefs, I heartily recommend modifying them. Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, Tomorrow and Forever. Amen. Alleluia.

          Reply
          • Fr. bless!

            Pray for me and all “middle” class Americans. My Protestant, Mormon friends included. No, I do not endorse them in their religious affiliations. Or casual “hook-ups.”

            You say “recommend modifying.” I do not wish to modify anything.

            My life is hard enough!

            I do not and have never defended capitalistic expressions as you have expressed. I live with very… very… poor… people…

            This past week, I unloaded four clips of 9 MM into the air and into my tree(s). Why?

            Because I’ve dealt with drug users over the past few weeks. I unload ammo and leave shell casings, on the front porch, to protect myself. If you do not do “rural,” you will not understand. I live the rural lifestyle and, most days, I love it. Make no mistake though, I am a very decent shot and will kill any creature that threatens me.

            And I hate it. All of it. The drug culture especially.

            I was raised Baptist. I know the OT and the NT. I became Catholic more than twenty years ago.

            I respect the preaching, but I even got a theology degree from a Catholic college.

            “Muh beliefs…”

            Yes indeed.

            And the rules stuff going on now. It’s crazy. Because the clergy and the people are breaking them left and right.

          • I do rural, very, very, rural. And the shell casing policy seems a good one for the urban area’s too…maybe especially those areas.

          • On the one hand.

            Thanks for the good counsel.

            On the other, I think about my own death.

            My own death is scary because it shows up every night in some form whether I want it or not.

            From my heart, I wish only life for the world, now and unto the ages of ages, amen.

            My older brother took his own life last year. I’m tired of death and sin and lake of fire. His b-day was recently. Remember him if you can.

            He took his own life from depression, Iraq and war and his own faults.

          • I will pray for him at Mass tomorrow. I think about my own death as well, and it causes me to beg for mercy for myself and everyone else. My family is in a terrible state, none of them practice the Faith. I pray for them and fear for them. Please pray for my family.

          • Thank you.

            Let no man ever tell me that my older brother is burning in a lake of fire because of the ordeals he went though. I had to watch pop up reminders of my dead brother on my computer this week and it has crushed me.

            I judge no man because I’m empty. My brother was a soldier who made mistakes.

            Remember my brother in your kingdom.

            Thank you Father.

          • I prayed for your brother at the Confirmation Mass I concelebrated with the Bishop this morning, as God would have it I was given the part of the Eucharistic Prayer that remembers and prays for the dead. When we paused and were silent during that part of the prayer I remembered your brother before the Lord. Hold the faith and pray for Him.

        • I don’t understand any of your arguments, Grow your man parts some more. You are not the only one who has to struggle with sin, have faith, pick yourself up, reflect on and respect the wisdom of our elders and ancestors, believe in God, God is encouraging you, he wants you to win, so reject sin….EVERY TIME…never lose faith no matter how many times you fall, always get up…every time no matter what. I recently told a priest in confession that being a committed Catholic sometimes, (Not all the time of course) was like digging in with my fingernails to the back bumper of a pick up truck being drug down a gravel road and refusing to let go…..we both laughed. I’m not letting go no matter how tough it “feels” sometimes….

          The world is drenched in sin and temptation…reject it. Fight…now is the time to Fight! The truth is the truth it does not change….and thank God for this.

          To me when things are going tough, real tough, that is the moment I feel the most alive, most ready to go at it. Must have something to do with clarity….when your opponent, problem or enemy finally and clearly reveals themselves…. its exhilirating to finally know where to punch.

          Reply
    • Then we shall all have much to answer for. Without repentance there can be no Mercy. It’s as simple as that. If we don’t fear the Lord then there can be no Redemption. Christ said if we love him we will keep His Commandments. Keeping His Commandments (an action) is an Act of Love directed at Christ. Yes, we often and do mostly fail. But Christ doesn’t call for Perfection (Thank God). We must at least attempt to keep his commandments and accept the sufferings of when we do not. A couple living in a 2nd marriage that cannot be annulled have to live as brother and sister for the sake of their own souls. If they do on occasion fail, then there is always confession.

      Hell is always a possibility. It appears Pope Francis thinks otherwise.

      Reply
  38. Steve, Church Militant has closed down the Comments section on their article concerning this Exhortation. After reading their take on the document, I wondered if they had read the same document I had. Their take was quite sanguine indeed, pointing out the areas where the pope affirmed Church teaching. Unfortunately, this is done uncritically and so the overall effect is that one is led to believe it is a good [or at least non-offensive] document.

    But, in my opinion, to go on and on about the good points in a fundamentally flawed document is like pointing out how tasty the poisoned tea you’re drinking is. To my mind, if the document is offensive to Catholic teaching, the most charitable thing to do is point that out to people, not pretend that because the pope wrote it it must be fine. Or [worse] agree that it’s not fine, but insist that no one disagree publicly with or criticize the pope. I agree with Maike’s analysis here. My guess is CM shut down the Comments because people were speaking a little too honestly about they felt about the document. And its author.

    Reply
        • If the lie is .000 … 001% and the truth is 99.999 … 999% but will accomplish the deception, he will offer it. I am tired of reading, ‘oh some parts were beautiful, moving, etc.’. How about all of it was unapologetically Catholic in fidelity to the LORD and what the Church has always taught?

          Reply
  39. In addition to the 3 Sacraments listed, were a priest to follow this exhortation he would likely commit sacrilege placing Our Lord on the tongue, or worse still, in the hands of someone he knows to be in a state of mortal sin. He not only sins against Our Lord in this, but the whole history of christendom and causes injury to the impenitent recipient who receives the Body and Blood unworthily. I hope the exhortation’s blatant attack on the moral teaching of the Church is enough to rouse what is left of good bishops to speak up.

    Reply
    • An all out assault on the Church by attacking the sources of grace, the Sacraments, all of them. Priest goes along, sacrilege. Priest refuses, what will happen to the priest?

      Reply
  40. All of this is a great “money making moment” for Jorge’s church. Remember that church’s collections are way down. Cut this guy a slack.

    Reply
    • Yeah, fear of burning for ever and ever and ever in hell… that stock is waaay down.

      Why don’t people go to church more?

      I dunno. Because of the burning… and burning… and burning… and burning… forever. Because you are flawed and, according to Roman Catholicism, God is God and He likes to…

      burn you forever… and forever… and ever… and then ever… and ever… and ever… and then, burn you some more, forever and ever and ever. Demons will poke your gizzard out. Over and over.

      Why? Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

      Why? Because He loves you and you ejaculated once outside of holy matrimony! Back in the ovens with you!

      There’s a reason why people don’t go to Church. It’s the part about God loving you but if you disappoint Him as a mortal, fallible creature… then… He has to….

      burn you forever and ever and ever and ever and ever…

      Tends to make church association on a frequent basis less than optimal.

      Pope Francis wants to fix that. Resistance is there, but it’s futile. The pro-burning party is not winning converts.

      Francis is in a hard spot. Burners, not so much so. Burners believe that they will somehow escape the burning… forever… forever… and… ever… and… ever… in every nerve ending of their soul-bodies. Reunited.

      Francis is more optimistic. Not so much into the endless burning.

      Truth is, most Traditional Catholics ™ have never sat in a comfy chair, with the lights out, no noise, and meditated long and hard on eternal burning in every fiber in their body. Because God loves you.

      If you spent 15 minutes meditating on endless burning for one sexual encounter outside of wedlock…

      Well, then, you wouldn’t be Catholic anymore.

      Francis knows this. The 1.8% of “Traditionalists” faithful know it as well. One party is dishonest. The other is realistic and wants to let God decide, in a really just way.

      Otherwise, it’s

      burning and burning and demons and burning and burning and more demons and burning.

      If only “Trad” Cats really could imagine eternity.

      Reply
      • Aside from your . . . disturbing fixation with the word “burning,” I’m afraid you have it entirely backwards.

        God doesn’t send us to Hell. We are perfectly capable of sending ourselves there on our own, thank you very much. Because every time we decide that we know better than the Almighty, and every time we decide that we are going to sin by consciously violating His precepts and commandments—which, as I stated to you earlier, are not designed to punish us but rather to save us from our own sinfulness—we are essentially saying “f*ck you” to Christ. Do you really think that someone who has spent their lifetime saying “f*ck you” to Christ again and again without a hint of contrition is really going to want to suddenly change their mind when they finally face their judgment?

        Reply
      • I believe Christ mentions Hell 46 times in the Gospels – more than any other person in the New Testament. Here are a few:

        “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. … (St Matthew 7:13)

        “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (St Matthew 10:28)

        Your problem isn’t with the TradCats, but with Christ Himself.

        Reply
      • All that endless burning is God’s love. As experienced by those who have chosen to reject it. No one is compelled to go to heaven. Like hell, it’s a choice, with existential consequences. Free will and therefore the imputability of its exercise are essential to our human dignity in having been created in the image of God. The radical possibility of hell is integral with the radical love of God.

        Reply
      • People don’t go to church or anyplace else whose message to the world is “I dunno. Whatever.”. Whenever the church takes herself seriously, people do also. Francis is shallow, unthinking, ignorant, autocratic, and proud of it. He deserves to be dismissed; unfortunately he causes many to dismiss the church as well.

        Reply
  41. How can we expect PF to adhere to something he knows nothing about, let alone care for? Scripture, Tradition & Magisterium? Quaint subjects for mindless, meaningless discussion over an expensive malt scotch with the soft shoe Jesuits aka Gallery Owners.
    PF has long since passed beyond the “shock” stage. More disturbing is the continuing lack of meaningful courage, confrontation and determined push back from those prelates that know better and are in positions to protect the sheep. The only thing that would shock me from PF is if he were to formally lead the Bishops in consecrating Russia by name.

    Reply
    • Alexander VI, may have had a personal disastrous private life, but he never once publicly uttered heresies.

      Reply
  42. “No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves.”-Pope Francis

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  43. It’s easy to see where the end result will be..the slow trickle of Catholicism dying..my lifetime will see un-married living together normalized and encouraged by the church..the disorder of homosexuality as normal and encouraged by the church (not just by cardinal dolan)..Rome knows this has to be done on two fronts..one by degrading the teachings, and second, to blur Catholicism with heretical Protestanism (which the pope is already doing).

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  44. To anyone familiar with the tortured relationship of Graham Greene with Catholicism, all this would ring disturbingly familiar – the obsession with left leaning social justice, the saintly sinner, the impossibility of ideal Catholic marriages, the antinomial horror of rigid moral rules, the accusations against orthodox believers as pious frauds etc. But at least Greene had the decency to lapse. And he was no Pope.

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  45. This exhortation is also another attack on the monarchical governing structure of the Church, which the revolutionaries hate but its destruction began with the newly created form of “collegiality” in Vatican II.

    Now, according to this exhortation, the parish priest is given authority he never has had. He alone can decide whether or not to hand out Communion. The bishop, the pope, the ordinary and extraordinary Magesterium, have no part in this decision.

    So the destruction of the governing structure of the Church as instituted by Christ takes another hit.

    But I imagine that in the majority of parishes around the world, the priests are, and have been, distributing Communion to anyone who comes forward. After all, the Church has long past ended condemnation of sin, error, and heresy. It isn’t a “pastoral” or “merciful” act to make a person feel ostracized from the community.

    Reply
    • Talk about a demolition job! He has undermined the very bishops he claims to be in college with.
      *
      Not only that, it endagers the priest and the priesthood. The priest goes along and the priest’s own salvation is at take. The priest refuses and now he is tn the crosshairs of those not worthy but want to present themselves for the sacraments, and in the crosshairs of the pope [watch out for the “mercy” club], and the bishops and other the priests who go along.

      Reply
      • The Modernist must always advocate change. If they refute one of their own or one of their past teachings, they do so when they no longer support the Revolution.

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  46. You are nowhere near as bright as you would clearly like to think you are. And you’re quite prescriptively nasty, with it, tbh. If you’d met the woman by the well you’d have probably thrown her down it, rather than taking the time to teach her the error of her ways and set her on the road to redemption.

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  47. Have any of you actually read the thing?

    Or is that an unnecessary step along the road to proclaiming how wrong the Pope is?

    I feel in need of a shower.

    Reply
      • Yes, Steve, I did.

        You make some good points elsewhere to people who have taken issue with either their own (somewhat original, shall we say) interpretation of the Exhortio, or have torn quotes wildly out of context. Or have simply regurgitated the biased and prejudiced conclusions they came to before it was published.

        There’s a lot of it about, unfortunately.

        Reply
        • Here’s the short answer: the ONLY thing that really matters in a document like this are the areas where it tries to affect change. Reiterations of existing teaching, however poetic, are just that. We already know what the Church teaches about marriage and sexuality. On those fronts, there’s nothing new to learn.

          What counts are the bits where, wielding the blurry cudgel of “pastoralism,” the snakes who have taken up residence in the Vatican attempt an end-run around doctrine.

          You don’t need to read 260 pages. You need to read probably 10 or so. The rest is just so much chaff to distract us from the agenda that lies beneath.

          Reply
          • Where, exactly, has it tried to effect change?

            In context, obviously – which requires reading a lot more than just 10 or so pages. Maybe 260 or so – they aren’t very big, after all! And the context of the whole is the CCC and previous publications, such as Familiaris Consortio!

            Sorry, Steve, I really don’t agree with you, nor with the premise of the column.

          • Well, paragraph 3 essentially tries to drive a stake through the heart of the Church’s universal moral authority and doctrinal union with a nice slice of cultural relativism; a good portion of Chapter 8 is absolutely laden with timebombs that will be exploited by the worst elements in the Church.

            I’m sure there’s more, but I need more time with the document. Stay tuned for further analysis.

          • In order that people know what we’re talking about (many have not read it), here is paragraph 3 in its entirety, along with its accompanying footnote, which makes the hermeneutic of continuity clear.

            3. Since “time is greater than space”, I would make it clear that not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium. Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. This will always be the case as the Spirit guides us towards the entire truth (cf. Jn 16:13), until he leads us fully into the mystery of Christ and enables us to see all things as he does. Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. For “cultures are in fact quite diverse and every general principle… needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied”.3

            3 Concluding Address of the Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (24 October 2015): L’Osservatore Romano, 26-27 October 2015, p. 13; cf. ponTificaL bibLicaL commission, Fede e cultura alla luce della Bibbia. Atti della sessione plenaria 1979 della Ponti cia Commissione Biblica, Turin, 1981; second vaTican ecumenicaL counciL, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 44; John pauL II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio (7 December 1990), 52: AAS 83 (1991), 300; Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 69, 117: AAS 105 (2013), 1049, 1068-69.

          • You probably only have to read 1 or 2 pages.

            The fact that these mafia cowards tried to pass this off in a footnote — a footnote !!! — shows you their brazenness and cowardliness at the same time.

            AL is a piece of garbage. Just like Laudato Si.

  48. Awe inspring and amazing providential and apt Third Sunday of Easter Readings (OF) that contain counsels, encouragement, consolations, and warnings. Thanks be to God!
    I recall leading up to and during the Synod on the Family in 2015, some sharp minds noticed this as well.
    Even though the LORD appears asleep, he is telling us not be afraid, he is in charge.
    In the Advent of AL, the Third Sunday of Easter Readings (OF):

    FIRST READING Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41

    To those saying we must assent to Pope Francis’ Exhortation and his novel [as characterized by Card. Schönborn & Fr. Lombardi] teaching, the first Pope, St. Peter gives us the response we are to give, ‘we must obey God rather than men.’ And if we are made to suffer doing so, ‘we are to rejoice for having been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.’

    RESPONSORIAL PSALM 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13

    The whole Psalm is just beautiful and self-explanatory: I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.For his anger lasts but a moment; a lifetime, his good will. At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn, rejoicing.Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me; O LORD, be my helper. You changed my mourning into dancing. …

    SECOND READING Revelation 5:11-14

    Even our enemies [every creature … on earth and under the earth and in the sea] will also cry out: “To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever.”

    GOSPEL (Long Form) John 21:1-19

    1) An examination of conscience [the irony] for Pope Francis:

    Jesus:

    “Pope Francis, do you love me more than these?” If yes, then “Feed my lambs.”

    “Pope Francis, do you love me?” If yes, then “Tend my sheep.”

    “Pope Francis, do you love me?” If yes, then “Feed my sheep.”

    2) And the net is full with 153 large fish and it does not break: despite the defectors, the number of the elect is full [we have to pray to be counted among them] and united in single doctrine [Cf. St. Augustine, Commentary on St. John and St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Matthew, 48]

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  49. The Catholic writer at this website is an excellent source of information, articulated extremely well, on why the Church is in crisis.

    For example, this link to an article on his website http://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/social-teaching/moral-issues/93-social-teaching/moral-issues/485-morality-of-happiness-vs-morality-of-obligation.html

    explains why the moral teachings of the Church are now in question. (The rejection of St. Thomas Aquinas by the Modernists.)

    Reply
  50. Amoris Laetitia and Laudato “save-the-whales” Si should join the “Divine mercy” devotion in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

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  51. JPII’s code of canon law (1983) allows NON-CATHOLICS to receive not only the Eucharist, but the sacraments of penance and the anointing of the sick. Why shouldn’t divorced and remarried Catholics be able to receive the Eucharist when non-Catholics can?

    Canon 844, par.3: “Catholic ministers administer the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick licitly to members of Eastern Churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church if they seek on their own accord and are properly disposed. This is also valid for members of other Churches which in the judgment of the Apostolic See are in the same condition in regard to the sacraments as these Eastern Churches.

    Par. 4: “If the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments licitly also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed.”

    Imagine a non-Catholic on their deathbed being asked by a Catholic minister if they “manifest the Catholic faith in respect to the sacrament of anointing of the sick”, and ensuring they are “properly disposed”. The non-Catholic says “no, I do not believe any of that Catholic nonsense. My own minister is simply not available and I simply want some kind of religious ceremony to ease my mind.” How many “ministers” would turn away from the person? It just would not be “charitable” or “merciful”, would it?

    Reply
  52. That’s funny. I have read before that for a couple in an irregular situation (e.g. divorced and remarried) to live as brother and sister (while waiting to correct the situation) is an INCREDIBLE witness to their LOVE and a valuable example to their children of that love. I don’t think it’s appropriate to say (and it seems the Pope is essentially saying this) that unless the kids know that their parents are having sex, the kids will somehow be damaged.

    Reply

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