Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 2:49am

PopeWatch: Amazon Catholic Church

Julia Meloni at One Peter 5 takes a look at an all too possible future:

 

It’s 2029, and, by necessity, you’re attending a “group-conducted” Mass celebrated by Jerry the bus driver, Charles the bank manager, and Josh the carpenter.

You’re in the Church dreamed up by the Amazon synod’s radical muse, Bishop Fritz Lobinger. After Pope Francis hailed Lobinger’s work, you saw that 2019 synod clinch the ordination of married “elders” — a practice that then spread, predictably, to Germany, the U.S., and elsewhere.

You’d think — to borrow a phrase from Lobinger — that everyone would find it “deeply shocking to suddenly see Mass celebrated by the bank manager, the bus driver, the carpenter.”

But you had been readied for the innovation.

Before they were ordained, Jerry, Charles, and Josh would join Fr. Bob at the altar, dressed in liturgical garb, and conduct as many parts of the liturgy as possible. Now Jerry, Charles, and Josh are celebrating their own group-led Mass because Lobinger says Jesus didn’t “sit isolated” at the Last Supper.

Under Lobinger’s bifurcation of the priesthood, Jerry the bus driver is a distinct kind of priest who was trained through “weekend courses.” He dresses in his usual garb, is addressed by his normal name, and is called an “elder” to distinguish him from the other type of priest. Fr. Bob, meanwhile, has metamorphosed into an “animator” priest, forming all the architects and sandwich artists who now say Mass and hear confessions in his place.

Jerry was ordained in a group because one-person ordinations perpetuate a “providing Church” with a “deplorable passive consumer attitude.” Jerry is there not just to “provide” the sacraments until a “real priest” comes. He and the other part-time priests are there to implement Vatican II–inspired “participation.”

Go here to read the rest.  PopeWatch shudders to imagine the Mass put on by a group of lawyer-priests.

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Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 4:03am

One would be wishing for the days of clown masses in 2029.

These portals created by ambiguity and fueled by pride lead us to a hippie Jesus who has no intention to instruct the ignorant, convert sinners or build paths of forgiveness. Instead we will gleefully meet our obligations by driving through a fast communion box church where we order up the sacraments we wish to receive from the convenience of never having to leave our automobiles. This “St. Wendy’s” to come via the obtuseness of our Holy Father.
(Do you want a blessing of the sick with that combo order today? Were running a special!)

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 5:51am

While I think it foolhardy that Shane Schaetzel regards Pope Francis’ initiative on married clergy in the Amazon as benign (Jorge Bergoglio is up to something heterodox, rest assured), what Shane writes about married clergy is 100% correct:

https://completechristianity.blog/2019/06/16/the-truth-about-married-priests/

Clerical celibacy is a discipline, NOT a doctrine NOR a dogma. St. Peter our first Pope had a wife. St. Paul told St. Timothy that a Πρεσβύτερος (priest or elder) and an επίσκοπος (bishop or overseer) had to be the husband of one wife (in other words, clergy could not have more than one wife). Yes, St. Paul did tell the Church at Corinth:

“I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction.”

And Jesus did say:

“Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept.”

Nevertheless, marriage was NEVER doctrinally NOR dogmatically forbidden, as St. Paul explains:

“If anyone thinks he is behaving improperly toward his virgin, and if a critical moment has come and so it has to be, let him do as he wishes. He is committing no sin; let them get married. The one who stands firm in his resolve, however, who is not under compulsion but has power over his own will, and has made up his mind to keep his virgin, will be doing well. So then, the one who marries his virgin does well; the one who does not marry her will do better.”

It’s important to be clear-headed about this: celibacy is best, celibacy should be preserved in the Roman rite, and making an end round to circumvent the prohibition against female clergy and against sanctifying sodomite unions by introducing married clergy will fail.

ken
ken
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 7:54am

Has there been one initiative put forth by the Church hierarchy in the past 50 that has brought about a second Pentecost? It’s almost like they need to follow the George Costanza principle of doing the opposite of what they decide upon to produce better results.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 8:18am

More and more, ecclesiastical brass remind one of Wile E Coyote.

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 9:05am

Strictly speaking, Pope Peter had a mother in law; we don’t know if he was widowed before he became a pope.

That said, marriage wasn’t unknown– but you were supposed to abstain.
In the first three centuries of Church history, there was no law prohibiting the ordination of married men, and many priests were married; however, marriage was never permitted after ordination. Moreover, all priests—married, single, or widowed—practiced sexual abstinence after ordination. The first recorded Church legislation concerning clerical celibacy in the West was decreed at the Synod of Elvira in Spain around the year 300, and in 385, Pope Siricius (r. 384-399) mandated celibacy for all clergy in the West.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-saint-who-reformed-priestly-purity

ken
ken
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 9:35am

Thanks for pointing that out about St. Peter. When I point that out to people they fairy sputter with anger.

Regarding your second point, a priest friend once said to me that celibacy had to be easier to maintain if you never married versus being married and not engaging in the marital act. It’s like an alcoholic keeping a bottle of booze on the nightstand knowing he’s not supposed to take a drink.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, June 20, AD 2019 2:08pm

To repeat – read this:

https://completechristianity.blog/2019/06/16/the-truth-about-married-priests/

The issue isn’t married priests or no married priests. The issue is the proliferation of heterodoxy and using this change to do that.

Nothing wrong with married priests. But celibacy is better.

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