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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Pope Francis' Extraordinary Synod Oct 2014
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PaulTH*
Shipmate
# 320
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Posted
In this artice, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, head of Pope Francis' so called kitchen cabinet urges Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to be more flexible in his approach to possible reforms in the Church. He described Archbishop Mueller as "a classic German theology professor who thought too much in rigid black-and-white terms." From the article:
quote:
In an article in the Vatican daily last October, Mueller firmly rejected growing demands for divorced and remarried Catholics to be reinstated as full members of the Church
With divorce on the rise, more Catholics are asking Rome to show mercy for them.
The Vatican is due to consider reforming its rules on divorce at a worldwide synod of bishops next October.
As we come close to the end of Pope Francis' first year in office, he has come across as a pope who put mercy above judgement, devotion above doctrine and people above institutions, even the institution of the Church itself. This has endeared him to many people, even non-Catholics. He clearly thinks that the present arrangements following failed marriages aren't working, and that generations are being lost to the Church as a result. His purpose in calling the Extraordinary Synod is because he wants change on this issue.
But how much room for manoeuvre does he have? Anything which looks like a watering down of centuries of Church teaching would be met with absolute horror by traditionalists, to the point where schism could be possible. Yet he knows that the present position needs reform of some sort or another. So what is Pope Francis hoping to achieve from this?
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Yours in Christ
Paul
Posts: 6387 | From: White Cliffs Country | Registered: May 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
He described Archbishop Mueller as "a classic German theology professor who thought too much in rigid black-and-white terms."
The attentive reader would be wondering to what extent His Eminence was shooting his mouth off about a fellow Cardinal (Elect), head of the Congregation in charge of these matters - which would be just seriously bad form - or having an implied dig at another German theology professor, who now is an Emeritus - which would be backstabbingly vicious.
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
But how much room for manoeuvre does he have?
I doubt that there is much. And this has nothing to do with the trads, other perhaps than that they still remember what the Church has been teaching for ages. 1. Is marriage not indissoluble? 2. Is adultery not a mortal sin? 3. While habitual sin may reduce culpability, is it not the duty of the Church to alert people to sinful habits and of people to repent of them? 4. Is it not forbidden and indeed detrimental to receive communion while in mortal sin? The only point with some give here (for the RCC) is 3, so I expect that it will feature strongly. Yet the potential for disaster is all too obvious if one creates a precedent there.
[ 22. January 2014, 01:05: Message edited by: IngoB ]
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
I had a couple come to me, before Christmas, who wanted to get married - she had been married previously and the husband had left her some years ago. She and the chap had a child together and they wanted to sort themselves out with God and get married and have unBaptised family members Baptised and so forth. Now being C of E I am allowed to say yes in these circumstances. If they had been Catholic they would have had to dwell outwith the pale of the Church for evermore unless they knew their way around the annulment process - based on the available data I am pretty sure that the previous husband had not intended to contract Holy Matrimony in the sense that God and His Blessed Mother intended.
Now Catholics in this position have to prove this to the satisfaction of a Canon Lawyer and I think that it is fair to say that the application of the rules is somewhat uneven. In one Diocese a wronged woman can be branded an impenitent adulteress for trying to pick the pieces of her life up when her husband has swanned off with some floozy. In another Diocese a serial adulterer can have his misdeeds written off - I point the interested reader to the case of Mr Newton Gingrich.
Now I am not a Canon Lawyer but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that there is no conceivable reform of the annulment process that might redress some of these issues without leaving the substantive teaching of the Church intact.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dogwalker
Shipmate
# 14135
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Posted
Gildas, I had the same thoughts about the annulment process. I've seen the wreckage of it in our TEC parish, and I'm a lay person.
And, since you named a Republican, I give you the Kennedys in the interest of political equal time.
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If God had meant for us to fly, he wouldn't have given us the railways. - Unknown
Posts: 155 | From: Milford, MA, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Generally, if a rich and powerful person wants an annulment they can have one. Unless the Holy Roman Empire has conquered Italy, in which case all bets are off. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
From the article referred to in the OP
quote:
The Vatican is due to consider reforming its rules on divorce at a worldwide synod of bishops next October.
As a non-Catholic, looking at this from outside the RCC, I would have thought that:-
a. This is one of the biggest, if not perhaps the biggest, pastoral problem facing the RCC at the moment; and
B. There is no scope for dealing with this by seeing it as a matter of 'reforming its rules'.
So long as this is seen as merely a matter of whether to allow a bit more flexibility in the RCC's rules, there's very little basis for making any change that will either deal with the pastoral crisis or improve the credibility of RCC theology or practice on marriage.
Either RCC theology on marriage and divorce is 100% right, a reflection of the unchanging view of God or it is not. If it is, then if anything, the rules should be tightened, the nonsense of psychological annulment should be abandoned, the sinful, fleshly world should be told what's what, and that's it. Nobody can disagree that the world today is awash in a tide of ethical looseness. If the RCC' interpretation of the reasons is right, it needs to proclaim the truth as it sees it, from the rooftops. Hard luck on the sort of people Gildas is talking about. The purity of true doctrine and the blighted lives that might result are the cross his unfortunate parishioners are called upon to bear. To the correctly enlightened Catholic, they have presumably demonstrated their spiritual benightedness by seeking pastoral counsel from heretic and schismatic clergy.
Alternatively, though, suppose one asks the question terrible. Could neat, rational, legal theology end up being broken on the wheel of pastoral reality? If 'correct' theology doesn't work, is that just because people aren't trying hard enough? Or might it be that the theology is, wrong, inadequate or even not fit for purpose?
The tragic fact is that marriages do break down. We all, I hope, believe that people shouldn't commit adultery and shouldn't walk out on marriages. We all, I hope, agree that any Christian ecclesial community should have disciplines and practices which encourage people to be faithful to one another, and warn them of the dire spiritual damage that they can do to themselves and each other by not being.
I am sure someone like Archbishop Gerhard Mueller would say that I am refusing to see this problem with the eye of faith, how God sees it rather than how man does. Nevertheless, saying that divorce cannot be, rather than should not be, is denying the evidence of one's eyes. Pretending that a marriage continues to exist in some ideal, theological world, when one or both of the couple has married someone else or lives with and has children by someone else, is so unreal, so much spiritual self-deception that it cannot be good theology.
I've said on these boards before that denying that adultery does break marriages, diminishes quite how bad and destructive a sin it is.
I would say, unequivocally, that what the RCC needs to get itself out of its present pastoral hole, is not a 'reform of its rules' on a divorce. I don't think it can do that with any credibility. What it needs is a root and branch review of its theology of marriage and what happens when a marriage breaks down.
To put this a different way, it needs a theology that has something to say to those affected where they are, rather than where the Church thinks they ought to have been before they got into the mess.
Another change that would greatly help it, IMHO, would be to break the assumption that 'if marriage is a sacrament, it must be indissoluble'. Why is it assumed the second must be follow on from the first? Why not 'if marriage is a sacrament, it shows how serious and terrible a thing it is to break it'?
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I am sure someone like Archbishop Gerhard Mueller would say that I am refusing to see this problem with the eye of faith, how God sees it rather than how man does. Nevertheless, saying that divorce cannot be, rather than should not be, is denying the evidence of one's eyes. Pretending that a marriage continues to exist in some ideal, theological world, when one or both of the couple has married someone else or lives with and has children by someone else, is so unreal, so much spiritual self-deception that it cannot be good theology.
I've said on these boards before that denying that adultery does break marriages, diminishes quite how bad and destructive a sin it is.
I'm pretty sure that what the Prefect of the CDF would say is that if the Church is right then the bond of marriage is - as a matter of revealed fact - indissoluble, and that therefore the obligations on the partners remain even when discarded. Of course divorce actually happens and adultery "breaks" marriages - it's just that that in itself changes nothing about objective bindingness of the sacrament and the obligation the spouses have towards one another.
Catholic teaching, as far as I can see, isn't denying the obvious or the real. Rather, Catholic teaching insists on acknowledging an aspect of the reality of marriage - its objective bindingness - that it would be so much easier to ignore. It's an attempt to be faithful to the truth.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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PaulTH*
Shipmate
# 320
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
To put this a different way, it needs a theology that has something to say to those affected where they are, rather than where the Church thinks they ought to have been before they got into the mess.
I agree with this. The problem I have with some of the ideas being floated, such as streamlining the annulment process, is that it doesn't answer the problem. The annulment process is already stretched to the point of corruption in order to deal with what has become the Church's biggest pastoral headache. To keep it on such a legalistic level, as I suspect IngoB would advocate, though I can't speak for him can't be combined with any pastoral considerations.
If extra ecclesiam, nulla salus were true, those divorcees who remarry legally and thus render themselves excommunicate are entirely extra ecclesiam. Their adultery puts them in mortal sin, and their inability to receive any absolution, being denied the Sacrament of Reconcilaition renders them automatically consigned to eternal damnation. The honest policy of a Church which really believes that is to banish them until they can truly repent, perhaps on the death of one of their spouses, or if aging renders them beyond a sexual age. To say, as the hierarchy today says, that such people should still be involved in the life of the Church and treated with pastoral sensitivity is absurd. How does a priest behave pastorally to a person with a one way ticket to eternal torment?
Also there are different degrees of culpability. A manwho leaves his wife and children for another woman commits a grave sin, though I doubt he's necessarily irredeemable. Two people who meet years later and find comfort in each other after their long struggle don't commmit any discernable sin if judged by the two great commandments or the golden rule, only by a very legalistic rule.
Rather than try to alter Christian teaching about the indissolubility of marriage, which would be impossible anyway, or bend the rules of annulment to fit the reality of today's situation, I would rather see an admission that indissoluble marriage is an ideal which, like many other Christian ideals, people don't always live up to. That if forgiveness, reconciliation and readmittance to the Church is open to murderers and rapists who repent, it should also be so for adulterers who failed to live the perfect lives we are called upon to live.
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Yours in Christ
Paul
Posts: 6387 | From: White Cliffs Country | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Thank God for the God of 4,900 'chances'.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Barefoot Friar
Ship's Shoeless Brother
# 13100
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Posted
Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the distinct impression that Jesus said that divorce on the grounds of adultery was permissible. In which case the Church has no business going behind his back and trying to undo it. Or am I missing the point?
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Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu
Posts: 1621 | From: Warrior Mountains | Registered: Oct 2007
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barefoot Friar:
Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the distinct impression that Jesus said that divorce on the grounds of adultery was permissible.
If this is a reference to porneia, that's an old chestnut indeed - but there has never been anything like a consensus that it is equivalent to adultery.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
I can't find a copy online but I can recall reading a C of E publication (title "Indissoluble?" or something like that) which had a profound impact on me. As best I recall, the argument, which was very biblical, pointed to a paradox. That a marriage in which love had died could not truly be described any more as a Christian marriage since it had lost completely any reflection of the love between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5).
The Catholic understanding does I believe reflect that and there is sorrow that the unbreakable sacramental bond remains even when love does not. But there is nothing to be done about that without a departure from the truth of the Tradition. I think Chesterbelloc confirms that here.
I am simply not sure that the Tradition has this right. But even if it has I think there is scope for recognising the other truth, that the "hardness of heart" - the belief by one or both partners that the loss of love is irrevocable - may be completely realistic, that attempts to rekindle the flame by means of reconciliation have become as valueless as flogging a dead horse. In short, that the "hardness of heart" is a recognition that it is the marriage itself which has died, and that is the death which is causing the parting. Perhaps if folks were more perfectly loving, something could be done? But they are not, and therefore what needs to be recognised is the death of the marriage itself. The couple are parted by a death.
Now I do not know what scope there is within Catholic theology for using that kind of understanding, but it seems to me to represent an undeniable reality about marriages as they are, rather than as they should be.
Perhaps something could be made of that, perhaps something is already being made of that?
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
Oddly enough, I heard a story on PBS this morning about the charismatic movement in the US Catholic church. It is particularly strong in the Hispanic community, which is more or less acknowledged as the "future" of the US church, in the sense that they will continue to be a significantly growing percentage of the US faithful.
Something like 1 in 3 is very active with a charismatic group, where women often lead worship and preach.
This has little to do with the topic of this thread, of course, but I think it does illustrate that the church is changing and will change, in ways that horrify and terrify some of the faithful. In many ways, it does seem that the Catholic Church in Latin America does not have the same "set in stone" theology and praxis that the Catholic Church in Europe has (at least, as represented by a few of our good Shipmates).
My point would be this: it is impossible to know what will come out of this Synod, but someone is going to be extremely surprised. It just might be the theologically traditional, inasmuch as the Latin American church has often had a very strong pastoral tradition.
What will you do then? Will you acknowledge that the Church has erred? Will you join one of the old Catholic splinter groups? Will you recognize that perhaps you were previously a little harsh?
As much as some of our Shipmates love Thomist theology, the Church survived its first 1200 years or so without it--more than half its total history. Things changed in the thirteenth century, and they may change again.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
[x-p'd with organ builder]
Again though, Barnabas, one can acknowledge the "death" of a marriage in one sense without abandoning the bindingness of the promises.
It seems to me that so much of the opposition to the Catholic teaching on marriage is based on an idea that the constitutive component of marriage is a special feeling between the partners - an ability to be romantically/sexually engaged with one another - without which the marriage does not exists or has ceased to exist.
But no one promises on their wedding day to feel something about their partner for ever -because such things cannot be commanded or promised. So this cannot be the essence of the marriage bond, any more than feeling fond affection for one's neighbour is what we are commanded to when we are exhorted to love our neighbour.
[ 23. January 2014, 22:15: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
What will you do then? Will you acknowledge that the Church has erred? Will you join one of the old Catholic splinter groups? Will you recognize that perhaps you were previously a little harsh?
Speaking personally and frankly, as someone who believes that the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage is infallible, if that teaching were formally reversed I would cease to be a Catholic altogether. But, as it happens, I believe this eventuality is quite literally impossible - because Christ has promised otherwise.
However, it would take considerably more than a Synod recommending that remarried divorcees without annulments should on occasion be able to receive Holy Communion to establish any such reversal of teaching.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It seems to me that so much of the opposition to the Catholic teaching on marriage is based on an idea that the constitutive component of marriage is a special feeling between the partners - an ability to be romantically/sexually engaged with one another - without which the marriage does not exists or has ceased to exist.
But no one promises on their wedding day to feel something about their partner for ever -because such things cannot be commanded or promised. So this cannot be the essence of the marriage bond, any more than feeling fond affection for one's neighbour is what we are commanded to when we are exhorted to love our neighbour.
Yes and no!
I agree entirely that the equation of eros-love and agape-love is a serious error and that it is responsible for much confusion over love within a marriage.
But I hope I may be absolved by you of having any such confusion myself. I bang on a lot on Ship of Fools about the central importance of agape-love. I have no doubt either that the writers of the C of E publication knew all of that too.
Just as an ilustration, in Ephesians 5 the love that husbands are exhorted to show their wives is agape-love "as Christ loved the church". Properly understood, Eph 5 is an encouragement to mutual agape-love, husband for wife, wife for husband.
Many have written well about the distinction between falling in love and loving. Eros moves from being the most important thing to something better. The joyful and sometimes healing celebration of the growing agape and the challenges it brings to love like that. In our culture, that is a more difficult and dangerous journey than it would be if we did not have this eros/agape confusion.
But we agape-love as imperfectly as we eros-love, even if we know the difference. The agape-love of God never fails. Ours sometimes does; it is a reflection even at its best. Sometimes the reflecting mirror just gets broken - and all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put it back together again.
I've been married once and the marriage is 45+ years young and going strong. The bond is far stronger than when it was more eros-based than agape-based. We made the journey. We are very fortunate in that. We've never lost the eros either; it harmonises with the agape which grew and keeps on growing. But many, many others, some of whom we know very well, have not been so fortunate, despite in a number of cases the most sacrificial efforts.
Whatever doctrinal positions we adopt, we show a good deal less than the agape-love we have learned if we don't cut folks who have been less fortunate some slack. I've seen more than enough adults and children hurt by marriages in which eros and agape have died to know that sometimes a decent burial is a far better option than pretending the dead horse can be flogged.
What I'm asking is this. Where is the agape-love of the Catholic Church in response to these realities? You can't just hold up a doctrine of an indissoluble marriage bond and say, sorry that's the best we can do? Surely not? I'm sure you must do more than that.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Other denominations have liberalised more slowly; I think the RCC would be risking a great deal by trying to implement all the various doctrinal changes that various commentators would like to see it adopt. It could create a lot of disillusionment and anger among faithful Catholics, with no guarantee of bringing back many of those who've drifted away.
Becoming more tolerant of divorce, for example, risks alienating all of the couples who have, perhaps at deep personal cost to themselves, spent their lives trying to be faithful to what the RCC currently teaches. They might end up feeling abandoned by the Church whose teachings they were trying to obey.
Maybe the RCC simply isn't the right religion for modern mankind. If it has to wither away, maybe it should do so while remaining distinctive rather than as a grander version of liberal high church Protestantism.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
Traditional Catholics feeling abandoned by Pope Francis would not be new. But before you buy into a scenario where the Pope announces theological reform of marriage to allow divorce and traditional sorts have to decide if they leave the Church and start packing their bags, wait and see what the Synod actually does. It's just as likely that all the hopeful liberal Catholics are disappointed that nothing changes.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
She and the chap had a child together and they wanted to sort themselves out with God and get married and have unBaptised family members Baptised and so forth. Now being C of E I am allowed to say yes in these circumstances. If they had been Catholic they would have had to dwell outwith the pale of the Church for evermore unless they knew their way around the annulment process - based on the available data I am pretty sure that the previous husband had not intended to contract Holy Matrimony in the sense that God and His Blessed Mother intended.
Not being admitted to communion is not the same as being excommunicated. If RCs are having unresolved sin issues, then the RCC quite generally asks them to refrain from taking communion until the issues have been resolved. This does not put people "beyond the pale" otherwise. For example, they not only can but ought to participate in mass on Sunday, just like any other RC. The difference here is simply that the Church knows that there are unresolved sin issues, and does not have to rely solely on the individuals doing the right thing. There would not generally be an issue with performing baptisms. And if there is good reason to doubt that a marriage has not been contracted, then I see no excuse for not attempting to annul the marriage. Marriage is not just a personal affair, but rather a public declaration to the (Church) community, and consequently the question of its nullity is not simply something up to individuals. This no different from the state requiring a process to obtain divorce. The mere fact that you believe to not be married any longer is not enough for either state or Church, since this is a matter of communal concern not just a private act. And annulment simply is not a process comparable to a secular lawsuit (e.g., a divorce) in expense or difficulty.
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
Now Catholics in this position have to prove this to the satisfaction of a Canon Lawyer and I think that it is fair to say that the application of the rules is somewhat uneven. In one Diocese a wronged woman can be branded an impenitent adulteress for trying to pick the pieces of her life up when her husband has swanned off with some floozy. In another Diocese a serial adulterer can have his misdeeds written off - I point the interested reader to the case of Mr Newton Gingrich.
No, it is not at all fair to say that. Just as it would not be fair to pick some miscarriage of justice in say the UK, and to conclude from it that law and justice in the UK are failing. There is actually quite a bit of work involved in making general pronouncements about the state of justice in any particular domain. And you are not willing to put in that work - and why would you, since insinuation works perfectly fine for your rhetorical purposes here...
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
Now I am not a Canon Lawyer but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that there is no conceivable reform of the annulment process that might redress some of these issues without leaving the substantive teaching of the Church intact.
Let's see. "I'm not an engineer but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that nuclear power plants could not be made totally safe without breaking the laws of physics." or "I'm not a doctor but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that a cure of cancer could not be found based on well-known human physiology." or "I'm not a sportsman but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that one cannot run the 100 meters in nine seconds with regular training." Interesting, the world really could be transformed instantly into paradise according to ignorance. Thanks for pointing that out.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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*Leon*
Shipmate
# 3377
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
But how much room for manoeuvre does he have?
I doubt that there is much. And this has nothing to do with the trads, other perhaps than that they still remember what the Church has been teaching for ages. 1. Is marriage not indissoluble?
Non-Catholics are wondering exactly why the catholic church teaches that ending a marriage is logically impossible (rather than just something really bad that it disapproves of), and whether they could downgrade it from impossible to very sinful.
As a related question, how come it is possible to defrock a priest (which presumably involves reverting the immutable change that happened at the sacrament of ordination), but not possible to end a marriage?
[code]
[ 24. January 2014, 09:38: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posts: 831 | From: london | Registered: Oct 2002
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
... No, it is not at all fair to say that. Just as it would not be fair to pick some miscarriage of justice in say the UK, and to conclude from it that law and justice in the UK are failing. ...
Sorry IngoB but that is fair. I agree that occasional and relatively random miscarriages of justice do not enable us to conclude that law and justice are failing. But Gildas is talking of a general, across the board jurisprudence that doesn't operate consistently from one diocese to another or between important people and the rest of us, and which is founded on theoretical principles that large numbers of people don't respect. That indicates that there is at least a possibility that the tradition, however venerable, may have got it wrong.
You may disagree with his criticism. You may feel inspired to defend your ecclesial community's position. But that does not make his criticism unfair.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Leon
I think I know the answer to that from previous discussions here. A defrocked priest is still a priest. Since the Sacrament of Holy Orders can't be undone, a priest is always a priest. An ontological change, a permanent change in being, has occurred. The Church forbids him from administering the Sacraments, except in cases of emergency. That is a matter of Church discipline, it doesn't change what he has become.
I do not know if he can become a "refrocked" priest. Perhaps he can, with suitable repentance? It would seem consistent to me.
By extension, an apparently irretrievably broken marriage is still a marriage. Against all the odds, all the evidence, it too may be retrieved.
Catholicism is invariably consistent on these matters. Sacraments produce ontological change. That applies to both priesthood and the marriage bond. That is where, I think, the mind is closed.
My view of marriage as a sacrament is different, which is where I differ from Catholicism. Essentially, I believe that people marry one another, following Genesis 2. There is a leaving and a cleaving and a setting up of a new home, a new priority. Churches solemnise, registrars legalise, but the essential human bond is the commitment between the two people. In Christian marriage, God is the vital third strand in that binding chord because He chooses to be. Properly joined together, that chord is not easily broken. Marriages may thrive with promised support of God, a very present help in time of trouble.
But the support does not turn the chord into a pair of handcuffs. That seems to miss the point that the true nature of the binding is agape love. There is pain in the heart of God when things are not as they were "from the beginning" as Jesus said. But I am sure it is seen for what it is. I would love for the "permanent ontological change" to be a permanent ontological state of being in the hearts and minds of the couple who committed themselves to one another. But it is simply not so, in far too many case. The issue for me is simple. Where is the mercy? Are handcuffs merciful to those being handcuffed in these circumstances? Or simply a warning to others of what happens when you cross certain lines?
Of course that is not Catholic theology. But perhaps it helps to explain where I am coming from?
[ 24. January 2014, 09:47: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
Now I am not a Canon Lawyer but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that there is no conceivable reform of the annulment process that might redress some of these issues without leaving the substantive teaching of the Church intact.
Let's see. "I'm not an engineer but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that nuclear power plants could not be made totally safe without breaking the laws of physics." or "I'm not a doctor but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that a cure of cancer could not be found based on well-known human physiology." or "I'm not a sportsman but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that one cannot run the 100 meters in nine seconds with regular training." Interesting, the world really could be transformed instantly into paradise according to ignorance. Thanks for pointing that out.
What, really, there are no failures of natural justice whatsoever in the way that annulments in the Catholic Church are handled? Who knew? I suppose everything in the safeguarding department is tickety-fucking-boo as well.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Not one of your better analogies, IngoB. Of course I got your point. But pooh-poohing Gildas's point in that way came across as a bit sniffy, didn't it?
At what point does better Administration become a threat to Tradition? Shouldn't the answer to that be 'never', provided the Administration sits under the Tradition?
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Barnabas, I'm not sure I'd go as far as you in founding the subsistence of a marriage in the presence or absence of agape. That makes it far too easy for a person to say 'we just don't love each other any more; so I should be entitled to run off with' my secretary, Clarke Gable or whoever. Or 'we have no true relationship' or even 'my wife/husband doesn't understand me'.
If we are going to found our understanding of marriage in words from biblical languages, ISTM, a better word than agape is ḥesed, faithfulness, steadfastness rather than lerve. What brings marriage to an end is usually one or both the partners repudiating ḥesed, committing apostasy on the union. Where, I think, the RCC falls down, is ultimately traced back to its determination not to recognise this, to pretend it has not happened.
I could see the theoretical argument, that since God has ḥesed for us, even though we have rejected him, we should hold a spouse to ḥesed even towards a partner who has repudiated him or her. However, we are not God, and I am not an idealist. Sadly as humans, we are capable of repudiating ḥesed. Imposing an ideal theology on people in this context is punishing the victim. It would be particularly unpersuasive if it were this argument rather than the legal indissoluble one, that the compulsorily celibate were proclaiming, those required to have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Sorry, Enoch, I misspoke. It is the commitment to leave, cleave, become one by means of the practice of agape, the promises made in this respect, which is essential to the bond. Lots of issues here. Because of the confusion over what agape love actually means in the context of commitment , there is danger that way. Folks get into marriage with their eyes wide shut. Even if open, they will get into difficulties. I believe in marriage prep and marriage enrichment support for folks planning to marry, or already married. Mrs B and I have been doing both of those for about a quarter of a century now.
If you really 'get' agape, you don't just 'fall out of agape'. The loss of it in a marriage is a painful, tearing experience. Break up is too clean a word to describe the ripping apart effects.
But I'm clear that the exhortation to agape, and the obedient outworking of that, are the central human characteristics of Christian marriage. That's the heart of the covenant God chooses to bless support, and uphold. When that goes, what is left?
I think faithfulness is vital. Personally, I see it as a consequence of agape. If we are faithless, He remains faithful, because He cannot deny himself. And who is this He. He is Love (agape of course).
[ 24. January 2014, 12:54: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Let's see. "I'm not an engineer but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that nuclear power plants could not be made totally safe without breaking the laws of physics." or "I'm not a doctor but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that a cure of cancer could not be found based on well-known human physiology." or "I'm not a sportsman but on the face of it, I find it hard to imagine that one cannot run the 100 meters in nine seconds with regular training." Interesting, the world really could be transformed instantly into paradise according to ignorance. Thanks for pointing that out.
Better analogies would be the lay public wondering if adequate scrutiny is being given to nuclear reactors in the aftermath of Fukushima... or the non-doctor wondering about drug regulation after thalidomide... or the non-sportsman wondering about doping in the olympics... all legitimate thoughts for the non-specialist, and the specialist club does sometimes need holding to account.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
If it is, then if anything, the rules should be tightened, the nonsense of psychological annulment should be abandoned, the sinful, fleshly world should be told what's what, and that's it.
I have no idea what you consider as a "psychological annulment", but there is no reason why psychological issues should not be able to invalidate the contraction of marriage, and hence the sacrament.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Could neat, rational, legal theology end up being broken on the wheel of pastoral reality?
Nope. RC theology is about truth. It's a "factual" faith, not a "conceptual" one. If there is a draught, then you could as well ask whether the dry spell could be broken by the wheel of pastoral reality. After all, people are really suffering under the heat, which hence has an obligation to change to nicer weather. But if you talk like that, then people will think that you've been too long out in the sun yourself. The draught just is fact. Facts do not change because one wishes them to be otherwise. One can try to limit the negative impact of the draught, but precisely only by dealing with the facts as they are.
Likewise, if you are sacramentally married (and the marriage has been consummated), then that marriage is indissoluble. Period. And if you have sex outside of marriage, then that is gravely sinful. Period. Neither pope nor pastoral reality can change anything about that.
Incidentally, we are not talking just about some special "RC marriage" here. Every marriage between a baptised man and a baptised woman is a sacrament (unless there is some specific impediment). We can assume that the culpability of people unaware of the nature of sacramental marriage will be reduced accordingly, but to what extent someone like Gildas can claim ignorance before God for his blessing of unacknowledged adultery remains to be seen.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Nevertheless, saying that divorce cannot be, rather than should not be, is denying the evidence of one's eyes.
The RCC does not say that secular divorce does not exist. It even accepts it as licit response to a severe relationship breakdown. What it denies is simply that the contracted marriage bond can be broken by this, or anything else but death. In consequence, having sex with anybody else then becomes sinful.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Pretending that a marriage continues to exist in some ideal, theological world, when one or both of the couple has married someone else or lives with and has children by someone else, is so unreal, so much spiritual self-deception that it cannot be good theology.
Seriously, what on earth are you talking about? You make a specific vow before God. The Church holds you to it. This is really quite independent of anything other than the vow itself, and there's nothing terribly mysterious about that. If there is something that could be questioned, then that the RCC requires a specific vow, before a man and a woman can become sexual partners. But no, you want to keep the vow as it is, but then fudge it if necessary, compromising its very content. That is bullshit. You should marry not "until death does us part" but "until we do not feel like living together any longer". Then your 'yes' would be a 'yes', and your 'no' a 'no'. But now your 'yes' is a 'maybe' and you feel that this speaks of great sophistication. However, you are not really vowing yourself, but merely declaring your intentions. As sincere and heartfelt intentions may be, they cannot replace a vow.
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
The annulment process is already stretched to the point of corruption in order to deal with what has become the Church's biggest pastoral headache. To keep it on such a legalistic level, as I suspect IngoB would advocate, though I can't speak for him can't be combined with any pastoral considerations.
The biggest pastoral headache of the RCC in the modern West is that it is collapsing in numbers (although typically somewhat slower than other churches). Her second biggest pastoral headache is that it is shot through with Protestant and secular ideologies. Her third biggest pastoral headache is that her fear of accelerating the first issue compromises her ability to deal appropriately with the second issue.
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
If extra ecclesiam, nulla salus were true, those divorcees who remarry legally and thus render themselves excommunicate are entirely extra ecclesiam. Their adultery puts them in mortal sin, and their inability to receive any absolution, being denied the Sacrament of Reconcilaition renders them automatically consigned to eternal damnation. The honest policy of a Church which really believes that is to banish them until they can truly repent, perhaps on the death of one of their spouses, or if aging renders them beyond a sexual age. To say, as the hierarchy today says, that such people should still be involved in the life of the Church and treated with pastoral sensitivity is absurd. How does a priest behave pastorally to a person with a one way ticket to eternal torment?
Inform yourself in order to avoid spouting nonsense. The remarried are not excommunicated, they are excluded from Holy Communion according to canon 915 due to "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin". Namely, unless they have declared their relationship to be "like brother and sister", they must be assumed to have sexual relations, which are adulterous if at least one of them is still (sacramentally) married to someone else. That is the "manifest grave sin". However, just because a sin is grave, its effect on someone does not have to be mortal. The comment in the Catechism (2352) concerning masturbation also applies here: "To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability." Hence the remarried are not obviously hell-bound. However, they objectively manifest grave sin and are hence excluded from communion.
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
That if forgiveness, reconciliation and readmittance to the Church is open to murderers and rapists who repent, it should also be so for adulterers who failed to live the perfect lives we are called upon to live.
The Church has never refused forgiveness and reconciliation to a repentant adulterer. The remarried are - usually - unrepentant in their adultery. Most of them will not cease having sexual relations. And the Church, like Christ, requires sincere repentance before providing Divine forgiveness in the name of God.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
But they are not, and therefore what needs to be recognised is the death of the marriage itself. The couple are parted by a death.
I have no respect whatsoever for such sophistry. One does not vow "till death does us part" to marriage, but to one's partner. Consequently, their death and only their death can end marriage. The marriage contract - through the direct intervention of Jesus restoring the original order of nature by imposition of law - involves the exchange of marital rights between the spouses but the promise of exclusivity to God. Certain actions of a spouse may mean that the former can be revoked justly, but not the latter.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Now I do not know what scope there is within Catholic theology for using that kind of understanding, but it seems to me to represent an undeniable reality about marriages as they are, rather than as they should be.
This undeniable reality is fully acknowledged by the RCC already, which allows for the (secular) divorce and complete separation of spouses for just cause. However, you cannot give away what you have no longer. And if you have married sacramentally, then you have given away marital rights exclusively before God. That you can still give away your body does not mean that you can give your marital rights to someone new. Just like sex before marriage is fornication, not the establishment of a marriage bond.
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
Will you acknowledge that the Church has erred? Will you join one of the old Catholic splinter groups? Will you recognize that perhaps you were previously a little harsh?
If I come to the conclusion that the RCC has officially and fundamentally changed her teaching on sacramental marriage, then I will of course leave her immediately. Anything less would not be a faithful but a worldly response.
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
As much as some of our Shipmates love Thomist theology, the Church survived its first 1200 years or so without it--more than half its total history. Things changed in the thirteenth century, and they may change again.
Like all Catholic change through the ages, that induced by Thomism is like the change of an acorn into an oak tree, not of a cat into a dog.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
But many, many others, some of whom we know very well, have not been so fortunate, despite in a number of cases the most sacrificial efforts. Whatever doctrinal positions we adopt, we show a good deal less than the agape-love we have learned if we don't cut folks who have been less fortunate some slack.
First, there is no possibility of success without the possibility of failure. In an ideal world nobody fails, but this is not an ideal world. Some, indeed many, people will fail at marriage. So what, precisely? So they failed. That does not change what is allowed by moral and Divine law. If you fail to convince a member of the opposite sex to marry you, then you cannot licitly have sex and (biological) children. What slack are we supposed to cut there then? And if you say that premarital sex and fathering illegitimate children is OK, if it helps out people in their sexual desires, then where do you exactly stop? For any moral or Divine law you can find some person who will fail it, and you can always try to excuse laxity by their plight. Maybe my neighbour was really, really annoying, intolerable, hence it is understandable that I murdered him. A loving estimation of my failures would say that I shouldn't have, but oh well, such things happen. Yeah? No, that's not right. Why then the sudden hesitation about murder? Because you think that murder is really important. Whereas wrongful sex, not so much. That's what really underlies this easy shifting of moral boundaries. So the real question is - just how hung up is God about sex? I think God is really hung up about sex. No, not the bible writers or bronze age communities, which usually get blamed. God. He is really serious about the importance of sex. To the point that Jesus openly contradicts Moses over this, a singular event in scripture. So we do not get to move around the boundaries as we see fit.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
What I'm asking is this. Where is the agape-love of the Catholic Church in response to these realities? You can't just hold up a doctrine of an indissoluble marriage bond and say, sorry that's the best we can do? Surely not? I'm sure you must do more than that.
Of course. For just cause, you are allowed to have a secular divorce and separate entirely from your spouse. That is a massive pastoral accommodation, since it basically negates the mutual exchange of marital rights that is the point of marriage. You can even live together with another partner "like brother and sister". None of this would impede your ability to participate in Catholic life, including communion. What you do not get to do is to have sex outside of your marriage. Nobody is allowed to have sex outside of marriage, and everybody can and should be denied communion if it becomes manifest that they have gravely sinned this way.
A much, much better question would be why the remarried are denied communion, while your run-of-the-mill fornicating unmarried Catholic couple gets to have communion without problems. The excuse that in the case of the remarried there is paperwork that "proves" the misdeed is really quite thin. In the same way the absence of paperwork "proves" the fornication of many Catholic couples. If the synod did something about this obvious injustice and unfairness, I would be delighted. Either point out to unmarried couples that they should explain when and how they will get married, in a time frame where one can reasonably expect sexual continence for people romantically engaged, if they wish to continue taking communion. Or extend to the remarried the same "charitable" but mostly unrealistic assumption that they would not dare presenting themselves for communion unless they are abstaining from sex.
quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:
Non-Catholics are wondering exactly why the catholic church teaches that ending a marriage is logically impossible (rather than just something really bad that it disapproves of), and whether they could downgrade it from impossible to very sinful.
Ending a (consummated, sacramental) marriage is logically possible, but humanly impossible. Christ made it so, hence it remains so, until He changes this again (as He will at the Second Coming). A Divine decision simply cannot be reversed by humans. Your question is basically as absurd as asking why the RCC does not declare gravity null and void. It has no such power, only God has.
quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:
As a related question, how come it is possible to defrock a priest (which presumably involves reverting the immutable change that happened at the sacrament of ordination), but not possible to end a marriage?
Defrocking a priest does not involve reverting the immutable change of the priestly seal. It involves withdrawing the legitimacy provided by the Church for actions made possible by the priestly state. So this is in analogy to (secular) divorce and the separation of the spouses. If a married couple is so separated, then one side forcing sex on the other would be rape, not a legitimate marital union. Likewise, a defrocked priest still has the power to for example consecrate the host. But this would be a "rape" of this holy rite (unless executed out of charity, e.g. to provide communion to the dying).
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
But Gildas is talking of a general, across the board jurisprudence that doesn't operate consistently from one diocese to another or between important people and the rest of us, and which is founded on theoretical principles that large numbers of people don't respect.
And if he brings forward something resembling serious evidence for his allegations (the first part), then I will withdraw my comment that his rhetorics is unfair. The second part (disagreement on principles) is a separate matter.
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
There is pain in the heart of God when things are not as they were "from the beginning" as Jesus said.
Indeed. And Jesus is very clear that this pain in the heart of God will not be find an excuse in the hardness of the human heart for His followers any longer. You are trying to get back from Christ to Moses, that's all you are doing here. I'm sure that the Jews were very familiar with Genesis and could have written similar essays about ideals and practicalities. Yet their understanding got corrected in the harshest terms, by God.
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
What, really, there are no failures of natural justice whatsoever in the way that annulments in the Catholic Church are handled? Who knew? I suppose everything in the safeguarding department is tickety-fucking-boo as well.
I read your third paragraph as referencing the first and the second paragraph, not just the second. I should have paid closer attention to the qualifier "leaving the substantive teaching of the Church intact". Sorry for that, though since it gave you the opportunity to deliver another cheap shot now, I think we are about even.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
On the death of the marriage, IngoB, you misunderstand me. I am not saying this undoes the marriage vows, that would indeed be sophistry. The marriage has died because the couple have been unable to keep their marriage vows. And so the binding love has disappeared. The covenant has failed.
I didn't think I was arguing back to Moses, as though marriage was a contract. My understanding from the NT is that the Mosaic Law allowed men to divorce women, but not vice versa. It came from a "women as property" outlook which was wrong in itself. It is the hardness of heart of men that Jesus argues against. Ephesians 5 exhorts mutual submission out of reverence for Christ. Either partner can fail in that exhortation. Or both can. What does that do? It kills the marriage, eventually. The marriage becomes a sham, a lie.
The indissoluble position, rightly, argues, this is not what was intended from the beginning. I agree. You can even argue that there is always hardness if heart in the breaking of the covenant promises. I agree that too. I've seen far too much hardness of heart in these situations to ever deny it. I simply deny the reality of the argument that the change is ontological. The one-flesh state is something which is built in a marriage, day by day, not sacramentally imparted on a particular day. It is built by the partners through thick and thin, with the help of God. Or it is not. We are going to have to disagree there. It is one of the reasons why I am not a Catholic.*
But I accept that Catholicism proclaims differently to that. And I did indeed welcome a good deal of what you had to say about mercy. I think you are also right about participation in the Mass. There is something not fair going on there.
What I had in mind was something else. What resources are available to help couples with marriage preparation and with marital difficulties. The Catholic position is very demanding of human beings, particularly given the different attitudes outside. Marriage is under enormous pressure in our culture anyway. What does the practical, pastoral, support look like? How great a priority does it have?
* Late edit. Am I correct in believing that the position over the marriage bond is related to the overarching position that all the sacraments, properly administered, are efficacious. Even when there is human failing? While this makes very great logical sense, it does seem to produce some pretty arcane arguments in its defence. What is Real is used to deny what is real?
[ 24. January 2014, 20:15: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Barefoot Friar:
Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the distinct impression that Jesus said that divorce on the grounds of adultery was permissible.
If this is a reference to porneia, that's an old chestnut indeed - but there has never been anything like a consensus that it is equivalent to adultery.
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable. I don't understand the desire to be holier than Jesus.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable.
Um. Where, precisely?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Seconded, provided it doesn't become a major tangent. I disagree with Catholicism on some major issues of faith, but rather doubt I'll disagree with Chesterbelloc on this one.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Speaking personally and frankly, as someone who believes that the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage is infallible, if that teaching were formally reversed I would cease to be a Catholic altogether. But, as it happens, I believe this eventuality is quite literally impossible - because Christ has promised otherwise.
However, it would take considerably more than a Synod recommending that remarried divorcees without annulments should on occasion be able to receive Holy Communion to establish any such reversal of teaching.
I agree that permission for some remarried divorcees without annulments to receive communion need not be seen as a reversal on the Church's teaching of the indissolubility of marriage. To be honest, I can't imagine that the practical effect of the Synod would go any farther than that if it goes that far.
I find the idea that you would leave the Catholic Church if it formally reversed a teaching you consider infallible rather stunning, however. I will never be a Catholic, and I do not believe the claims your Church makes for itself. It seems to me, though, that if I were Catholic part of the "package" is believing the claims the Church makes for itself as an institution. If it came to the point where such a teaching was formally reversed, I'd be more inclined (like the institution itself) to believe I was previously mistaken--not that I, in my wisdom, was somehow superior to the process that led the Church to that point.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:
Non-Catholics are wondering exactly why the catholic church teaches that ending a marriage is logically impossible (rather than just something really bad that it disapproves of), and whether they could downgrade it from impossible to very sinful.
Well this gay Anglican would say that's because that's what Jesus said. He didn't say divorce was sinful. He said it was impossible. You remained married even if you thought you'd divorced.
Jesus never said anyone needed to get married and no married couples are among his followers in the gospels.
The Christian ideal is living in committed same sex communities, ie monasteries.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
Suppose I were to swear before God that I will kill IngoB if he does that annoying thing one more time... And then he does.
Then of course I have sinned - past tense - and should repent of my vow.
I should not be outcast from the community because every day I sin present tense by not honouring the vow I now regret.
No-one argues that my vow is ontologically indestructible.
We're human, we make mistakes, we need a way to say sorry and move on.
And where there's a will there's a way.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Likewise, if you are sacramentally married (and the marriage has been consummated), then that marriage is indissoluble. Period. And if you have sex outside of marriage, then that is gravely sinful. Period. Neither pope nor pastoral reality can change anything about that.
A question for Catholics (because I don't know enough divorced Catholics well enough to have any idea what the answer is):
Given that this statement by IngoB succinctly describes a very clear and very well known Catholic teaching, does it in fact match up to what ordinary Catholics think they are doing when they marry? Because it seems to me that if they knew from the outset what they were signing up for, and how the Church would respond if they divorced and re-married, the very real sense of being aggrieved by exclusion from communion is a little misplaced. Having willingly chosen to play by those rules, it seems to me that though they might still be hurt by them, it's not really reasonable to feel offended by them. Just as, if my wife ever divorces me, I've no doubt it will hurt like hell, but I hope I won't be blaming the rules of the CofE or the laws of England for consequences which I willingly chose to risk.
Is it that Catholics who disagree that marriage is indissoluble enter into it unwillingly, and under pressure, because no other sort of sexual/romantic relationship is socially acceptable? Or that they don't agree with the 'indissoluble' bit in abstract theory, but willingly sign up for it in the belief that as a matter of practice it won't be an issue for them because they won't split up? Or something else?
Whatever it is, is it possible that the heart of the pastoral problem is that a very large number of Catholics don't agree with their Church, and don't intend to commit to what the Church insists they are committing to when they marry?
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:
Non-Catholics are wondering exactly why the catholic church teaches that ending a marriage is logically impossible (rather than just something really bad that it disapproves of), and whether they could downgrade it from impossible to very sinful.
Well this gay Anglican would say that's because that's what Jesus said. He didn't say divorce was sinful. He said it was impossible. You remained married even if you thought you'd divorced.
Jesus never said anyone needed to get married and no married couples are among his followers in the gospels.
The Christian ideal is living in committed same sex communities, ie monasteries.
Given that Peter had a mother in law, he was married at some point. Sure, Jesus never said anyone needed to get married but he never says anyone has to stay single to be one of His followers. The Epistles are full of married couples being part of the church. I think to say that the Christian ideal is the monastic life is a)not defensible from the Gospels or anywhere else in the NT and b) just really unhelpful for any married Christian. They are not lesser Christians.
Why on Earth would being married by harmful for the Christian life?
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable.
Um. Where, precisely?
Matthew 19
Even if porneia is not adultery, it is still a reason for divorce according to Jesus.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable [as a reason for divorce].
Jade, the bit in brackets is my addition. I suspect it is what you meant to say. Without it, though, the meaning is very different.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Russ
Ah, but God did not bless your first vow, Russ, and give you the means to keep it.
In general, of course, I agree with you. I know two very good women who discovered on their wedding nights that each had made the very worst mistake of their lives in their choices of husbands. They had been deceived, big time, about the true nature of the men they married.
They both spent years trying to make the best of a bad job and then both were abandoned by their husbands in favour of a newer model. One remarried eventually, the other never did. Did they regret their marriage vows? Every single day, for years. Did they work at making them work. Every single day, for years. Did that preserve the marriage bond? No, it did not.
These and many other cases are the kinds of realities which help inform my understanding about indissolubility.
[ 24. January 2014, 20:41: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Eliab
I think it's more that people find out more about what they've got into 'after the event'. There is a lot of optimism. The rosy coloured specs of falling in love tend to make folks doubt the reality for them of some of the 'for worse' stuff. There is often a kind of fuzzy haze in the air, certainly in our romanticised culture.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable [as a reason for divorce].
Jade, the bit in brackets is my addition. I suspect it is what you meant to say. Without it, though, the meaning is very different.
Eep - I meant to write that divorce is permissable ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Thanks for the correction!
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
As a single person I do get the impression that maintaining a Christian marriage must be very difficult in such a highly romanticised culture, where expectations are so high, along with the likelihood of disillusionment.
Considering the divorce stats, priests must be well aware that a good proportion of the couples they marry are likely to be facing this problem in the future. So maybe the RCC needs to be investing far more heavily in marriage preparation. But that requires resources and trained advisors, and which church has enough of those? Alternatively, the church could simply marry fewer couples, driving many to get married elsewhere. This would be very controversial of course. But the RCC turns a blind eye to a lot of things (e.g. the use of contraception), so why not to non-catholic weddings? It's a question of weighing up which is the greater sin....
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Given that this statement by IngoB succinctly describes a very clear and very well known Catholic teaching, does it in fact match up to what ordinary Catholics think they are doing when they marry? Because it seems to me that if they knew from the outset what they were signing up for, and how the Church would respond if they divorced and re-married, the very real sense of being aggrieved by exclusion from communion is a little misplaced. Having willingly chosen to play by those rules, it seems to me that though they might still be hurt by them, it's not really reasonable to feel offended by them. Just as, if my wife ever divorces me, I've no doubt it will hurt like hell, but I hope I won't be blaming the rules of the CofE or the laws of England for consequences which I willingly chose to risk.
FWIW, when I was trying to get married in the RCC (in Melbourne, Australia), I had to read and sign something much like this pre-nuptial enquiry form apparently used in the UK, and so did my future wife (well, my future wife concerning the RCC, we were already married civilly). This was in the context of a lengthy chat about marriage with the parish priest which involved both of us, both together as a couple and individually in a one to one with the priest. The key formal bit we signed up for (taken from the above document) was roughly as follows:
quote:
These questions are to be answered after the Church's teaching on marriage has been fully explained. Bride and Groom to be interviewed separately
- How long have you known each other well?
- Do you intend your marriage to be a permanent and exclusive partnership of life and love which only death can dissolve?
- Do you intend your marriage to be an intimate union for the mutual welfare and support of both partners?
- Do you intend your marriage to be for the procreation and education of children?
- Are you under any kind of pressure from your parents, your fiancé/é or anyone else?
- Are you quite sure you wish to give your free consent to this marriage without any reservations?
- Have you entered into or are you intending to enter into any pre-nuptial agreement that sets out conditions that will apply should the marriage be civilly dissolved or a separation agreed?
I DECLARE BEFORE GOD THAT AFTER THINKING CAREFULLY ABOUT THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE, I HAVE ANSWERED ALL THE QUESTIONS ABOVE HONESTLY AND SINCERELY
(All caps shouting is in the document, sorry...) That seemed rather clear to me, at the time, and the priest did explicitly talk to me about these things.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Is it that Catholics who disagree that marriage is indissoluble enter into it unwillingly, and under pressure, because no other sort of sexual/romantic relationship is socially acceptable?
That would be rather uncommon in most Western countries these days, even among Catholics.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Or that they don't agree with the 'indissoluble' bit in abstract theory, but willingly sign up for it in the belief that as a matter of practice it won't be an issue for them because they won't split up? Or something else?
I think most would simply see it as more random noise from the Church that they ignore, while maintaining their "Catholic identity" in a social sense by bothering with a Church wedding at all. The actual problem here is that a key "social marker" of this same identity is still the participation in communion. Of course, only when one feels like it, so perhaps at Christmas and Easter and on the anniversary of Aunt Mary. But then walking up to get the host after surviving the boring sermon is sort of "the point". That the Church not only denies a celebration of the remarriage, but then even communion is like a double strike against the Catholic identity of those who would see themselves as still being rather engaged with the Church. After all, they still want these things, they still want a Catholic wedding and will brave the boredom of Sunday mass for the communion, so how come the Church is so anal and stupid as to withhold them?
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Whatever it is, is it possible that the heart of the pastoral problem is that a very large number of Catholics don't agree with their Church, and don't intend to commit to what the Church insists they are committing to when they marry?
In a way. I don't think that this typically comes in the form of some conscious and fiery rebellion though. I think a lot of Catholics are genuinely surprised that the Church puts up a fight about something, after they have essentially never been challenged by her before about anything before. "Don't ask, don't tell" has been a RC thing long before the US military adopted it, and one can sail through a "Catholic" life quite untouched by doctrine and discipline.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
My local congo has three couples (we're one of those) who get recommended routinely to young couples associated with the church who are considering marriage. We've also done marriage prep for a number of couples we got to know during a quarter of a century in youth ministries in a wider context. Typically, we'll see the couples for six or seven evenings over a two month period. We use material intended to provide a better understanding of what marriage is really like and provide loads of space for the couple to discuss things on their own.
I suppose we've seen a score of couples through this process over the years. We' remain friends with all of them. I know it sounds labour intensive, but it seems to have been helpful. By the way, our entire approach is to teach the seriousness of marriage as a lifelong commitment in accordance with the Christian ideal of the indissolubility of marriage. The aim is to provide them with practical help in keeping their vows.
So far, none of the couples we've done this with have divorced. That isn't down to us. It is down to them, helped by God as we are sure they have been.
That seems to me to be facing certain realities in advance of marriage. It hasn't happened to us yet, but we reckon that a good marriage course may cause some couples to re-evaluate, realise that the planned marriage may not be such a smart idea. I think that would be a good result.
Not saying this is the only way or even the best way. But it's a thorough and well-intentioned way.
[ 24. January 2014, 21:43: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Suppose I were to swear before God that I will kill IngoB if he does that annoying thing one more time...
I sincerely hope that Jesus never made this kind of vow a sacrament, because then you might have a point. Well, also it would not go well for me.
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Then of course I have sinned - past tense - and should repent of my vow.
You should repent because you have vowed something sinful. Marriage is not something sinful, but holy.
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
We're human, we make mistakes, we need a way to say sorry and move on.
As humans, we can vow our lives. That this could cost us, that it could go wrong, that it might be a mistake considered in hindsight - that is basically the point of such a vow. If one was perfectly certain that one can stay faithful to a spouse till death, then there would be no need to vow that. It would just be the case. With a vow, one precisely sets one's face against fate, one tells the unknown future that at least one thing about it is known, namely what one is going to do. It is putting down a rock on which to build, no matter what may come. Obviously that's risky. But intentionally so.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable.
Um. Where, precisely?
Matthew 19
Even if porneia is not adultery, it is still a reason for divorce according to Jesus.
I hope you won't mind my pointing out that that's very different from your original claim - that Jesus permits adultery as a reason for dispensing with a marriage.
Note that the apostles are aghast at the extreme demandingness of what Jesus is laying down about marriage in this passage. In the absence of a general consensus on what Jesus meant by porneia it would be difficult to build a case that things other than those which the Cathloic Church already accepts as grounds for the nullity of the sacrament of matrimony are indicated by this word.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
As humans, we can vow our lives. That this could cost us, that it could go wrong, that it might be a mistake considered in hindsight - that is basically the point of such a vow. If one was perfectly certain that one can stay faithful to a spouse till death, then there would be no need to vow that. It would just be the case. With a vow, one precisely sets one's face against fate, one tells the unknown future that at least one thing about it is known, namely what one is going to do. It is putting down a rock on which to build, no matter what may come. Obviously that's risky. But intentionally so.
Given the unbreakable nature of the bond within Catholicism, and the costs of breaking the vow, does not that argue for a well-informed vow? A bit like Jesus says about building a tower. First sit down and count the cost? Otherwise the tower doesn't get completed.
A good marriage is something we build, and needs good foundations.
Let me make it clear. Of course folks should be informed clearly about the nature of the vow. But how about the context within which it is to be lived out? There will always be risk and there will always be unknown. There seems to be something to be said for preparing the minds as well as trusting the hearts.
Particularly given the romanticisation of "true love" which is all around, I'm sure there's value in the church trying to provide an antidote to that to help young couples out. However labour intensive it may appear.
IngoB, I'm glad you provided the information about your own preparation and that sounded pretty good to me. I was a bit bothered by the closed nature of most of the questions; it was obvious what the "right" answers were. But if you were prepared thoroughly and well in advance of the declaration by the discussions with the priest, that seems a lot more than many folks get elsewhere.
I guess our "twenty out of twenty" experience with couples doesn't tell you a lot. There was self selection going on; folks with some awareness already that this is a serious commitment are off to a good start. Many couples feel that "love conquers all" and they don't need that sort of work. More important to plan the ceremony, the hen and stag nights, the reception, the honeymoon. Have a day to remember.
It seems mad to me. All that effort for a day, and not always a lot of thought to the lifetime which follows. But as my wife reminds me, we were like that. These days we try to do better for others.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I hope you won't mind my pointing out that that's very different from your original claim - that Jesus permits adultery as a reason for dispensing with a marriage.
Thought we would agree.
quote:
Note that the apostles are aghast at the extreme demandingness of what Jesus is laying down about marriage in this passage. In the absence of a general consensus on what Jesus meant by porneia it would be difficult to build a case that things other than those which the Cathloic Church already accepts as grounds for the nullity of the sacrament of matrimony are indicated by this word.
That's more of a stretch! Catholicism does build a consistent case for its own interpretation, and as I surmised, the Catholic view also (and very importantly) seems to be entirely in keeping with your general understanding of the efficacy of sacraments. But there's more to be said.
Like most nonconformists, my understanding of the sacraments is different. Baptism and Eucharist (Communion) are common ground. There is argument amongst protestants about others. I'm definitely "low" in those arguments. And in any case, there is "Hooker's Trick" (Richard Hooker) to consider.
quote:
However, their "efficacy resteth obscure to our understanding, except we search somewhat more distinctly what grace in particular that is whereunto they are referred and what manner of operation they have towards it". They thus serve to convey sanctification on the individual participating in the sacramental action, but Hooker expressly warns that that "all receive not the grace of God which receive the sacraments of his grace".
The corollary is also true within Protestantism. The Grace of God is not confined to the sacraments, however God may work through them. Actually, I think that is orthodox within Catholicism as well, but qualified by "better be safe than sorry!".
Let me say that I do not expect the Catholic Church to change its position on Sacraments or Indissolubility. I do not see any way in which it can do that without tearing irreparable holes in Holy Tradition. So that ain't going to happen.
Which leaves me with mercy. Which includes wise, practical help and support. In preparation for marriage, in support for marriages in difficulties, in pastoral understanding of those who have suffered the failure of a marriage, and in the administration of the Mass. I am hoping a greater mercy can be found in all of those areas. It would be worth the deal in bridging the gap between the Real and the real.
That's my prayer, anyway for this Extraordinary Synod. I wish it well.
[ 24. January 2014, 23:10: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
But Jesus does still say that adultery is permissable.
Um. Where, precisely?
Matthew 19
Even if porneia is not adultery, it is still a reason for divorce according to Jesus.
I hope you won't mind my pointing out that that's very different from your original claim - that Jesus permits adultery as a reason for dispensing with a marriage.
Note that the apostles are aghast at the extreme demandingness of what Jesus is laying down about marriage in this passage. In the absence of a general consensus on what Jesus meant by porneia it would be difficult to build a case that things other than those which the Cathloic Church already accepts as grounds for the nullity of the sacrament of matrimony are indicated by this word.
It's not *that* different. There is still a permissable reason for divorce. That's still contradicting RC doctrine.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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