Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 6:49pm

PopeWatch: Magisterium

 

 

Hattip to commenter Greg Mockeridge.  The feathers have well and truly hit the fan, and Steve Skojec at One Peter Five gives us the details:

A letter from Pope Francis praising episcopal guidelines that would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion in some cases while living in a state of objective grave sin has now been added to the official acts of the Apostolic See, conferring official status on what was formerly considered by many to be merely private communication — and raising the stakes on the Amoris Laetitia debate significantly.

Of the guidelines issued by the bishops of the Buenos Aires region that would open “the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist” in “complex circumstances” where “limitations that lessen the responsibility and guilt” of couples who will not make the commitment to “live in continence” despite living in an objectively adulterous situation, the pope said in his letter that “The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.”

In August of this year, this letter was added to the Vatican website as a papal document available for public reference. Concerns were raised that what had previously been viewed as only private correspondence — and thus, completely outside the realm of papal magisterium — was being given the appearance of an official papal act.

Others were quick to point out that the presence of such a letter on the Vatican website, while troubling in itself, did not grant the document any status, but only publicity. The concern, as I speculated at the time, was that the letter seemed likely therefore to find its way into the Acta Apostolicae Sedis  (AAS) — the journal of the official acts of the Apostolic See. Such a move would confer an official, and at least quasi-authoritative status to the document, in as much as the AAS “contains all the principal decrees, encyclical letters, decisions of Roman congregations, and notices of ecclesiastical appointments. The contents are to be considered promulgated when published, and effective three months from date of issue.”

Go here to read the rest.  When the Vicar of Christ contradicts Christ, go with Christ.  We have come to a dire time in the life of the Church when all Catholics need to be quite familiar with these words of Blessed Cardinal Newman:

 

I end with an extract from the Pastoral of the Swiss Bishops, a Pastoral which has received the Pope’s approbation.

“It in no way depends upon the caprice of the Pope, or upon his good pleasure, to make such and such a doctrine, the object of a dogmatic definition. He is tied up and limited to the divine revelation, and to the truths which that revelation contains. He is tied up and limited by the Creeds, already in existence, and by the preceding definitions of the Church. He is tied up and limited by the divine law, and by the constitution of the Church. Lastly, he is tied up and limited by that doctrine, divinely revealed, which affirms that alongside religious society there is civil society, that alongside the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy there is the power of temporal Magistrates, invested in their own domain with a full sovereignty, and to whom we owe in conscience obedience and respect in all things morally permitted, and belonging to the domain of civil society.”

 

 

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Mary De Voe
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 7:37am

Francis believes as did Luther that when an individual in mortal sin receives the Sacred Species, the Sacred Species, ceases to be, instead of the other way around, that the individual in mortal sin goes to hell.

Frank @txtradcatholic
Frank @txtradcatholic
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 7:55am

Well, there it is. At least the head-in-the-sand types can no longer claim PF is not actively trying to insinuate situational ethics into the official teaching of the Church, denying and replacing the entire understanding of immutable Divine Truth. But we still have two big obstacles to any general uprising of the laity: 1. As a good and holy priest Tweeted the other day, “progressives” don’t care if they are called heretics or dissenters or whatever. They consider those terms badges of honor. It is their mission, of which they are proud, to destroy the deposit of faith and replace it with subjective secular humanism. 2. The vast majority of lay people, even those who regularly attend Mass and consider themselves practicing Catholics, respond to any and all criticism of PF either with blank stares or with “But, he’s the POPE!” There is no cutting through these walls of ignorance and/or papolatry. If the Cardinals and Bishops will not revolt, and I am convinced they will not, then we are stuck with this mockery of a pontificate for the duration. Pray, fast, hope, and receive the Sacraments. We can’t pretend nothing is wrong; I do think we have a duty to try to win hearts and minds when we have the chance, but don’t expect a miracle. God is allowing this for some reason.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 10:05am

Never underestimate the power of denial, Frank.

But I think the greater problem is going to be the bowing-and-scraping salutes to the pontiff’s officially-sealed novelty, and the flinging of anathemas at the “rigid” who still insist that 2 + 2 is 4.

ken
ken
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 4:42pm

Has anyone provided a concrete example of when two people living in adultery may avail themselves to the Eucharist, i.e. that their particular circumstance mitigates the gravity of their actions? It all seems to be circular talk without any specifics. Surely the Argentine document refutes the notion put forth by the bishops of Malta and Cdl. Cupich that all one needs to do is feel comfortable with their conscience?
Or is it all an exercise in mental masturbation and what PF and the innovators want is for everyone to receive the Eucharist, but they just won’t flatly state this?

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Tuesday, December 5, AD 2017 4:15am

The most recent seeds of heresy in the Catholic Church began with Modernism, became the teaching of the Church with Vatican II, and now has produced it’s flowers of evil in the person of Pope Francis.

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