Not So Fast....

A principle used in Catholic moral and pastoral theology of which many Catholics have never even heard of, the “law of gradualness,” has gone viral this week emanating from the Synod on the Family. The law is a principle by which people should be heartened to grow closer to God and his plan for us gradually, rather than hoping to go from an initial conversion to holiness in a single step. We see this in Sacred Scripture in 1 Cor. 3:1-3, 2 Cor. 10:6, and Heb. 5:12-14. Has the idea of the law of gradualness been abused? Looking at its invocation of late, one sees that it is prone to abuse. For example, at the Synod of Bishops on the Family in 1980, bishops called for an interpretation of this law that would permit contracepting married couples to receive absolution and Holy Communion on condition of a firm purpose to gradually stop contracepting. St. John Paul II’s rejected it in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, rejected this proposal:

[Married people] cannot however look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties with constancy. And so what is known as ‘the law of gradualness’ or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with ‘gradualness of the law,’ as if there were different degrees or forms of precept in God’s law for different individuals and situations.

In God’s plan, all husbands and wives are called in marriage to holiness, and this lofty vocation is fulfilled to the extent that the human person is able to respond to God’s command with serene confidence in God’s grace and in his or her own will.

On the same lines, it is part of the Church’s pedagogy that husbands and wives should first of all recognize clearly the teaching of Humanae vitae as indicating the norm for the exercise of their sexuality, and that they should endeavor to establish the conditions necessary for observing that norm [No.34].

At the present Synod in its Relatio post disceptationem (summary what various bishops proposed in discussions) some Bishops seem to be proposing that Catholics who have divorced and entered a subsequent, civil marriage (while the previous spouse is still alive and without an annulment and convalidation) should in some cases be allowed to receive absolution and holy Communion if they intend gradually to bring their situation in line with God’s law.

A closer reading of Familiaris Consortio is needed by those who are on record as holding the aforementioned interpretation of the law. It appears more to reflect the “gradualness of law” that JPII warned against, according to which a decisive break with sin is not obligatory before receiving absolution and Holy Communion, and in which a different standard of what constitutes sin would be applied to some than is applied to others. Other bishops opposed this—but, as it is not a magisterial document, it does nothing to change Church teaching. The fathers will produce a document at the end of the present Synod, which will be discussed in the approaching year. The discussion will then be repeated at the approaching Synod of Bishops on the Family in 2015; Francis will then decide what is to be done with the Synod’s recommendations.

Comments

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Several Hundred people do Not Lie!

At present many Catholics and non-Catholics like have little to no understanding of the emotional causes of homosexual attractions and behavior, largely due to spiritual laziness or lack of will to do extensive research into causes of the disorder. Nor is there an awareness of the powerful role that Catholic spirituality can play in the healing of this disorder. In fairness, the reasons for this state of ignorance include the scant literature available on the value of the Catholic Faith and the sacraments in the resolution of homosexual attractions and acts, this in spite of the hundreds of success stories for those seeking to resolve the disorder--hence this blog post. Furthermore, traditional therapy has failed to resolve homosexual behavior, because by definition there is an all-powerful divine element excluded from the process. Add to this the views within the media and educational, social service, health and political fields, and the matter grows more complex. It is no s...

The Dysfunctional Nations

From time to time a local pastor fires us up with fortitudinal e-blasts, of which this is his latest: Dear Parishioners, Every Catholic should be angry about this. Please take the time to read the editorial below that recently appeared in Investor's Business Daily . Cheers in the Lord, Fr. Tony United Nations Scolds Catholic Church On Human Rights Anti-Religion: Ignoring abhorrences such as China's one-child policy and atrocities condoned by Shariah law, a U.N. committee tells the Vatican to deal with abusive priests and change its teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. That the report issued by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child would mention the instances of abuse of children by priests in the United States is not surprising. What is surprising and unfortunate is that the U.N. would act as if the Catholic Church had done nothing about it and use the report as a ...

The 21st Century Must Come Into the Church

Continued from September 14.... T hrough the Church’s teachings, God has also revealed his truth on how humanity can live happily. What is so little understood by Catholics and Christians is that doctrinal revelations that come through the Church come out of God’s very Self. They are not tied to culturally constructed norms! Read Vatican II’s Dei Verbum : “by divine revelation God wished to manifest and communicate both himself and the eternal decrees of his will concerning the salvation of humankind.” Our Lord’s Church derives its basic vision not from mere human speculation, which would be tentative and uncertain, but from God’s own testimony—from a historically given divine revelation. Thus Catholics believe that just as God himself is immutable, so, too, are His teachings as revealed through the Church because they come from him. As I discuss in my book, although the Church does not change its central teachings, we do see the theological principle of “devel...

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with Fox News Digital. "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years. Listen to her testimony.

An Important Reflection for Catholics Intending to Vote for Hillary November 8th....

In his recent Crisis article, "Two Newmans and Two Springs," Fr. Rutler offered a brilliant analysis of the current situation facing Catholics loyal to the teachings of Jesus Christ as we approach the November 8th presidential election. I should like to offer a summary of the points he made, which I hope will sober up all but the most tepid of Catholics. On a Tuesday in 1852, at the First Provincial Synod of Westminster at Oscott College, Blessed John Henry Newman delivered a sermon, “The Second Spring, in which he observed:” Have we any right to take it strange, if, in this English land, the spring-time of the Church should turn out to be an English spring, an uncertain, anxious time of hope and fear, of joy and suffering,—of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal, of keen blasts, and cold showers, and sudden storms? Newman might deliver these words in our day, when the Body of Christ seems as divided as the U.S. The issues which confront the American peop...

One of America’s premier orthodox catechists, Fr. Alfred McBride, O. Praem., delivered a talk at the Catholic University of America in the summer of 1969 on the transcendence of God. He noted that his students, budding nuns, priests, seminarians, brothers and laymen, seemed “content rich” but pedagogically destitute. Fr, McBride correctly discerned that a more efficacious catechesis could be had by both an immanent dimension to complement the transcendent dimension, in faithfulness to Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes (and later recommended by John Paul II). As he recalled, Fr. McBride unfortunately assumed that his students had grasped and given consent to Catholic teaching (when they had not), and sensed that worldly thinking had invaded their minds: After three years teaching my human dimensions course, I realized that secularity had intruded into the consciousness of many of these students. A number of them had succumbed to a modernity that rejected history and tradition. What’s ...

From The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God

In our attempt to get a clear understanding of how we arrived at the present crisis of faith, it is instructive to examine the experience of another council peritus , Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, theologian, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, gloriously elevated by the Holy Spirit to the Chair of St. Peter as Pope Benedict XVI in April, 2005. By way of background, from 1930-1950 in response to the pervasive secularism of these years in Europe , a broad intellectual and theological movement emerged among prominent European theologians, among them Frs. Romano Guardini, Karl Adam, Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, Yves Congar, Louis Boyer, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The inspiration for this movement was a belief that the Catholic Faith had to speak more effectively to the modern world, and that to do this a rediscovery of all of the riches of the two-thousand year tradition of the Church was a crucial step. These reform-minded theologians saw that the precursor t...

From Chapter 5 of The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God

When conciliar teaching precluded such deviant “reforms,” an appeal to “the spirit of Vatican II” was made by the defectors. Religious themselves were sent to seminars, conferences, and think-tanks which pressured them to abandon hierarchical structures in favor of the “democratic,” to question traditional doctrinal certainties, and to demand reasons for those things formerly regarded as sacred, the most important of which was the basis for their vocation to the religious life. They became exposed to new anthropologies under the influence of psychology, sociology, and other social sciences, acceptance of which many sisters were naturally compliant under obedience — all this in spite of the obviousness that such changes were not approved by Rome and threatened the existence of their communities. In other words, the desired ressourcement of the council Fathers , rather than providing the guiding atmosphere in which aggiornamento was to occur, was ignored in favor of “updating.” ...

The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God to be published soon!

With the help of God, if it be His will, my work, The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God , excerpts of which have been posted on this blog, will be published and available on Amazon.com Be sure to check back often!

Search This Blog