Friday, May 31, 2013
Would Your Bishop Declare You A Catholic In Good Standing?
Are you a Catholic in good standing? Or would you perhaps be
the subject of uncharitable and unjust treatment by the gang at “Church of Nice”
[hint: Liberal modernist, etc.]?
Letter to Canadian Archbishop: Why Don`t Bishops, Priests Heed Canon 915?
Recently I posted
a letter written to an Archbishop prior to the legalization of same sex marriage
in Canada in 2005. Other letters were exchanged at the same time on related
subjects. The following is one such letter, dealing primarily with Canon 915,
and has been edited only slightly, with some personal details removed, in order
to make it suitable for this posting.
-------------------------------------------------
May
2005
Dear
Archbishop,
I
appreciate your response to my two previous letters of concern. I can only say
that I am deeply disappointed to hear that your continued approach with Prime
Minister Paul Martin and other scandal generating Catholic politicians is simply
one of ‘patient dialogue.’
Much
could be said about Church teaching on this matter and I am quite confident
that you are fully informed on these matters. You referred to the means of
‘canonical sanctions’ yet you did not respond to the more basic issue of
defense of the Holy Eucharist. As a Catholic I am realizing more and more the
central importance and significance of the Holy Eucharist to the life of the
Catholic. As John Paul II reminded Catholics, the Eucharist is the source and summit
of Christian experience. Could it not be said then that the unworthy reception
of the same is the basest and most defiling action the Christian can take? Who
will defend Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist from such defilement (and the
sinner from further condemnation)?
Canon
915 is a sacramental law that refers to the Eucharist and how not to suffer
scandal; it is not a penal law. Bishops are called to govern and correct
and an unworthy act of Holy Communion, willfully chosen by an obstinate,
persistent sinner, is a most grave matter. A conscientious faithful bishop in
such a situation would not be putting 'sanction' on the person in question; the
offender has, in fact, fallen under the canon 915 sacramental prohibition
themselves.
Paul
Martin is an aggressively pro-abortion, pro-gay ‘marriage’ Catholic politician
who continues to scandalize the Catholic community in a most acute persistent
manner. The Vatican has spoken repeatedly on who may or may not be admitted to
Holy Communion:
“there
should be no such refusal to any Catholic who presents himself for Holy Communion
at Mass, except in cases presenting a danger of grave scandal to other
believers arising out of the person's unrepented public sin or obstinate heresy
or schism, publicly professed or declared."
Canon
915 places the responsibility on the minister should he unlawfully administer
the sacrament with the consequent danger of scandal for the rest of the
faithful.
Very
soon now, if nothing is placed in his way, Martin intends to force same sex
‘marriage’ on all Canadians, persisting in his grave sin and risking what the
Vatican states as “wide-reaching and profound influence” and resulting “in changes to the entire organization of
society, contrary to the common good.”
Is
the Church’s sacramental law simply words on a paper somewhere in the Vatican,
and without substance or force? Does it apply at all to any other Catholic
anywhere else outside the Vatican? If so, then it must surely apply to Paul
Martin and other Catholic politicians (no doubt to scores of other Catholics
living in mortal sin as well) who willfully sin by holding vital Church
teachings in contempt, and then present themselves as “good” Catholics wishing
to receive the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ who paid the supreme
price of His Life because of the sin of mankind. What an insufferable outrage!
If
bishops and priests don’t respect and honour Church teaching, (and the Most
Holy Eucharist) how can it be expected that Catholics in the pews or in
politics will show respect? What a heartbreak it is to see all these offenses
occurring with impunity in full view of Canadian bishops!
It
makes my heart break further when I see at Sunday Mass the little children who
are being greeted with smiles, prayers and words of good will and blessing just
prior to being sent off for Christian catechesis. They will learn far more from
the example and legacy of their leaders and teachers than they will from any
formal catechesis. In a few short years they will be amongst the thousands
(even millions) of victims of the corruption and evil that took root and
flourished in Canadian society because Church leaders were too weak, faithless
and disobedient to Church teaching to take every precaution possible to protect
them and the rest of society. Is this not the gravest kind of offense to the
little ones that Jesus spoke of?
While
reading an article just this week I was struck by a startling statement made
years ago by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, in an address to the Knights of
Columbus, who said:
"Who
is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It
is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the
Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops
like bishops and your religious act like religious."
Startling,
but also immensely sobering. What sort of actions can the ordinary Catholic
undertake to accomplish such a task? God Himself must provide the answer individually
for each one asking, but then rise to the task one must.
The
grace of God be with you.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Michael Voris: Catholic Bishops In The USA Off The Rails
On The Intrinsic Evil Of Contraception Part 3 of a Series
Father Lino Ciccone, C.M.
Professor of Moral Theology
Lugano, Switzerland
The problem dealt with here is not a new question.
Vigorously debated in the years immediately following the publication of the
Encyclical Humanae Vitae (25 July
1968), it is still raised occasionally by some theologians, and in current
pastoral practice it has not been resolved in a way everyone accepts. There is
significant confusion even with regard to the Magisterium. It is precisely on
this point that the present study wishes to shed some light, limiting itself to
a question which could be formulated in this way:
In the Church's
universal Magisterium, is the sinfulness of contraception considered grave or
light matter?
It might be unnecessary but still helpful to recall that
"universal Magisterium" means only that of the Supreme Pontiff and of
an Ecumenical Council. I will refer only to this Magisterium.
According to many scholars, the judgement that contraception
is gravely sinful matter goes back to the Encyclical Casti Connubii, where we find its most solemn and clear-cut
formulation. The essentials of this teaching are expressed in these words:
No reason, however grave, can make what is intrinsically contrary to
nature to be in conformity with nature and morally right. And since the
conjugal act by its very nature is destined for the begetting of children,
those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose
are acting against nature, and are doing something that is base and
intrinsically immoral.
Up to this point we are dealing with the "intrinsic
immorality" of contraception. A little further on its seriousness is
discussed:
The Catholic Church ... raises her voice as a sign of her divine
mission, and through Our mouth proclaims anew. any use of marriage exercised in
such a way that through human effort the act is deprived of its natural power
to procreate human life violates the law of God and of nature, and those who
commit such an action are stained with the guilt of grave sin. [Endnote 1]
Many maintain that in its later documents the Magisterium
clearly kept the first part of that doctrine, i.e., the intrinsic immorality of
contraception, but did not retain the second, i.e., the gravity of the sin. In
this "silence" of the Magisterium, these same scholars see a
sufficient reason for asserting that the moral gravity of contraception is no
longer part of the Church's teaching on the matter. As a result, the use of
contraception is not to be considered gravely sinful matter and, therefore,
using contraceptives is not a mortal sin.
In my opinion, however, the problem should be dealt with
more carefully. It must be determined whether the Magisterium has really
dropped the substance of that teaching, or whether it has merely given it a
different formulation. In other words: it is a question of determining whether
or not the gravity of the immorality constituted by contraception is still
asserted by the Magisterium in different but substantially equivalent terms.
The first thing to be noted is that the Magisterium's
alleged "shelving" of the Encyclical Casti connubii on this point is anything but obvious. On the
contrary, it was explicitly confirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In n. 51
of Gaudium Et Spes the statement that
"In questions of birth regulation the sons of the Church ... are
forbidden to use methods disapproved by the Magisterium"
refers, in its famous note 14, to the documents containing
this condemnation. The first one mentioned is "Pius XI, Litt. Encycl. Casti Connubii: AAS 22 (1930), pp.
559-561; Denz. 2239-2241 (3716-3718)", i.e., the passage quoted above in
its essentials, where contraception is declared a grave sin. It is hard to
imagine a more authoritative and solemn confirmation. It is hardly
"silence" or the abandoning of this teaching of Casti connubii by the later Magisterium! The point of departure for
the theory proposed by these scholars, however few or many, is anything but
solid.
Pope Paul VI
Let us go further, however, in the examination we have
proposed. In this study, great weight must be put on the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (25 July 1968) and its
author, Paul VI. This document is constantly referred to, in fact, by later
documents, including the most authoritative one, the Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (22
November 1981 ). [Endnote
2] Obviously, no one knows better than Paul VI what he meant to
teach with the Encyclical he published.
For the problem we are concerned with there are several
helpful statements that he made a few years prior with regard to the problem
that would be the theme of the Encyclical, whose title is De propagatione humanae prolis recte ordinanda, or "The correct regulation of human
birth". On 23 June 1964, using the opportunity presented to him by the
offering of name-day wishes by the Cardinals and the Roman Curia, Paul VI
announced that a pontifical study commission had been set up by his predecessor
John XXIII and he made a few clarifications about the problem of birth
regulation. Our interest here is how the Pope described the problem, which
clearly concerned the moral evaluation of the ways or means for properly
regulating births:
"an extremely serious problem: it concerns the sources of human life;
... It is an extremely complex and delicate problem ". [Endnote 3]
Scarcely had the Encyclical been published on 29-30 July
1968 in L'Osservatore Romano, when
the Pope devoted his General Audience of 31 July to it, offering valuable
interpretive keys to reading the document. [Endnote 4] For our problem several passages are of
particular interest; there we can clearly see the importance that the Pope puts
on the problem and on the solution given to it:
"It clarifies a fundamental chapter in the personal, married,
family and social life of man".
He says this at the beginning of the address, and towards
the end he insists:
"it is a question that deals with an extremely delicate and
important aspect of human existence".
Thus the same idea expressed in the address of 23 June 1964
is stated again in other words.
A preliminary conclusion is clear: one of the most important
issues is this problem and the solution given to it by the Magisterium, an
essential part of which includes the moral condemnation of contraception.
A significant confirmation of this judgement, also contained
in the address of 31 July 1968, is the Pope's dramatic and painful seriousness
in confiding that he spent four years of reflection, study, consultation and
prayer to reach the certitude of giving the Church and the entire human race
the confirmation of a moral truth guaranteed by its conformity with "God's plan for human life".
Extended passages of the address should be quoted here. But I have to restrict
myself to a few sentences.
"The first feeling was that of a very grave responsibility... We
confide to you that this feeling caused us much spiritual suffering. Never
before have We felt so heavily, as in this situation, the burden of Our
office".
And further on:
"How often have We felt almost overwhelmed.... How -many times,
humanly speaking, have We felt the inadequacy of Our poor person to cope with
the formidable apostolic obligation of having to make a pronouncement on this
matter! How many times We trembled before the alternatives of an easy
condescension to current opinions, or of a decision that modern society would
find difficult to accept, or that might be arbitrarily too burdensome for
married life!"
Nothing could be clearer than the fact that for Paul VI the
problem and its solution had such weight and importance that one cannot accept
the hypothesis that a slight moral disorder, on the lines of "venial
sin", is at stake. It is clear then, merely on the basis of these few
points, that for the Magisterium contraception
is such a morally disordered form of behaviour that it constitutes gravely
sinful matter.
We must ask, however, what grounds does the Magisterium
offer for this sort of position. But before moving in this direction, I think
it would be helpful to clarify a few things about "grave matter". In
every form of human behaviour, one or more values are at stake, for example,
life, love, fidelity, solidarity, etc. When important values are at stake, and
a given way of acting seriously compromises them, this serious compromise of an
important value is what constitutes gravely sinful matter. Therefore, we will
find an answer to the question we raised, if we gather from the teaching of the
Magisterium an indication of the important values at stake in the conjugal act
and the serious way they are compromised by the use of contraceptives.
Pope John Paul II
It is inevitable in this research that more attention should
be focused on the Magisterium of John Paul II, without disregarding, of course,
that of Paul VI. It is actually the current Pope, who, thanks to the
developments gradually made by anthropology and the human sciences regarding
the meanings and values of human sexuality, has been able to give a broad,
systematic development to the anthropological and theological foundations of
the Church's moral doctrine in this area. He has done so in many addresses, and
more extensively and systematically in the last part of his well-known Wednesday
catechesis on Human Love in the Divine
Plan.
A detailed analysis of all this material is simply
unthinkable in this essay. I will have to limit myself to a few essential
elements, with some quotations among the many that could be adduced, but which
I hope will be sufficient for our purpose.
I would first like to stress that Paul VI, the Council, but
even more John Paul II have clearly shown that they have accepted and utilized
the recent advances in the conception of human sexuality as language, i.e., as
the sensible expression of the person's interior realities in an interpersonal
relationship. In this perspective, the discovery and presentation of the
ethical demands inherent in the exercise of sexuality becomes clearer and more
persuasive, when its genital component is also involved in this exercise, as
occurs in the conjugal act. These demands, in fact, follow the pattern of those
required for interpersonal communication that corresponds to the dignity of
each of the two partners.
In Gaudium Et Spes,
the conjugal act is seen as the privileged and characteristic expression of
conjugal love (n. 49), and in its turn, conjugal love is said to be
constitutionally ordered to the transmission of life, or procreation (n. 50). "Love" and "Life" are thus the two
essential values at stake in the conjugal act - values obviously of primary
importance.
Paul VI says basically the same thing when he makes the
"meanings" of the conjugal act the focal point and bases its ethical
demands on the principle of the inseparability of the two meanings contained
structurally in the act, the unitive meaning and the procreative:
"This particular doctrine ... is based on the inseparable
connection ... between the unitive significance and the procreative significance....
The marriage act, because of its fundamental structure, while it unites husband
and wife in the closest intimacy, also brings into operation laws written into
the actual nature of man and of woman for the generation of new life. And if
each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is
preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and
its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is
called" (Humanae Vitae, n. 12).
The Pope had already stressed the profound link between love
and life by including "totality" and "fruitfulness" among
the essential, undeniable qualities that love must have if it is to be
authentically conjugal. Totality, in fact, does not allow exceptions or reservations
of any sort; fruitfulness is directed to transmitting life (cf. Humanae Vitae, n. 9).
Following this line in Familiaris
Consortio, John Paul II goes on to state:
"'The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the
sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person ...
is present if the person were to withhold something..., by this very fact he or
she would not be giving totally" (n. 11).
Then with compelling logic, when he goes on in the same
document to discuss the subject of contraception, the Pope offers in a complex
paragraph an illuminating panorama of the values destroyed by contraception. It
bears repeating here in its entirety:
"When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate
these two meanings that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and
woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as 'arbiters' of
the divine plan and they 'manipulate' and degrade human sexuality - and with it
themselves and their married partner - by altering its value of 'total'
self-giving. Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal
self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an
objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally
to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but
also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called
upon to give itself in personal totality" (n. 32).
For greater clarity it would help to outline the series of
values objectively destroyed by contraception:
1) the refusal to be recognized as God's
"ministers" and "collaborators" in the transmission of
life;
2) the claim to be the "arbiters" of the divine
plan; [Endnote
5]
3) the degradation of human sexuality and, thus, of one's
own person and of one's spouse;
4) falsification of sexual language to the point of making
it objectively contradictory;
5) elimination of any reference to the value of life;
6) a mortal wound ("falsification
of the inner truth") of conjugal love itself.
The "no"
to life, which the use of contraceptives cries out by its very name, can thus
be seen first and foremost as a "no
to God". This had already been forcefully stressed by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae. This passage also bears
repeating in its entirety:
"... a reciprocal act of love, which jeopardizes the capacity to
transmit life which God the Creator, according to particular laws, inserted
therein, is in contradiction with the design constitutive of marriage, and with
the will of the Author of Life., To use this divine gift while destroying, even
if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both
of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it
is to contradict also the plan of God and his will" (n. 13).
To return to John Paul II, in the final part of the
catechesis mentioned above on Human Love
in the Divine Plan, when the Pope "rereads" the doctrine of Humanae Vitae on contraception, he
magisterially develops its individual points. Thus, regarding the offence to
the dignity of the person, the Pope does not hesitate to say that this dignity
is radically compromised by contraceptive behaviour: the model proper to one's
relationship with things, i.e., a relationship of dominion, is transferred to
the person, who has self-mastery as his "basic constitution", thus
depriving man "of his proper
subjectivity" and making him "an
object of manipulation". [Endnote 6]
John Paul II then goes on to develop his reflections,
focusing his attention on the conjugal act: as "the authentic language of persons" in which "man and woman reciprocally express
themselves in the fullest and deepest way" in their "masculinity and femininity",
the conjugal act "is subject to the
demands of truth". This occurs at two interconnected levels, the
personalistic and the theological.
·
At the personalistic level, the connection
between the two structural meanings of the conjugal act is such that "the one is achieved together with the
other and, in a certain sense, through the other". Therefore,
"lacking its inner truth, because artificially deprived of its procreative
capacity, it also ceases to be an act of love", and consequently, the "bodily union ... does not correspond
to the inner truth and dignity of personal communion". Falsification
thus becomes total, because there is no more truth "of self-mastery, ... of reciprocal giving and of reciprocal
self-acceptance on the part of the person."
·
At the theological level, the demands of truth
are trampled upon inasmuch as the conjugal union must give expression both to "the truth of the sacrament"
understood as the divine plan of which the spouses are ministers and "which 'from the beginning' has been
established in the sign of the 'union of flesh' ", and to the truth of
the sacrament in the stricter sense, which "is
perfected through the conjugal union", in which therefore "man and woman are called to express
that mysterious 'language' of their bodies in all the truth proper to it".
'Persona humana'
As the final element, I think it is wholly correct to apply
to the moral disorder in the sexual field represented by contraception a
general principle recalled in another document of the Magisterium, the
Declaration Persona Humana: On Certain
Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, issued by the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith on 29 December 1975. An entire paragraph, n. 10, is
devoted to how one should evaluate forms of behaviour which represent a moral
disorder in the field of sexuality. The principle is formulated in this way: "the moral order of sexuality involves
such high values of human life that every direct violation of this order is
objectively serious".
That contraception is a direct violation of the moral order
of sexuality is unequivocally a constant teaching of the Magisterium, given the
fact that it is described as "intrinsically immoral". The teaching
recalled in the Declaration Persona Humana
fully applies to contraception.
Limits of space do not allow for additional references. But
those quoted here are more than sufficient to demonstrate that in the Church's
doctrine the conjugal act involves values of enormous moral importance, some of
which are even fundamental, and that contraception compromises them so
seriously as to destroy them. It is evident then that in the doctrine taught by the Magisterium the use of contraceptives in
performing the conjugal act constitutes gravely sinful matter, in addition
to being an "intrinsically immoral" action, and thus is never
permissible for any reason or purpose whatever.
Some concluding
reflections
Further confirmation of the objective moral gravity of
contraception can be seen by looking at some of the aspects that this behaviour
has taken on in our time—something the Magisterium itself has not failed to do.
Preventing the conjugal act from initiating the generative
process has been, until the most recent past, a problem for couples, individual
couples, for particular reasons and situations. In the society and culture
produced by industrialization, through a complex series of factors which cannot
even be noted here, a marked reduction in the birth rate has become the
expectation and practice of almost all couples. While still being a marital problem, it has also become a social problem. Lastly, it is a political problem, both of internal
politics within individual States and of international
politics, especially in relations between developed and developing
countries. At this level the real dimensions of the problem then were cleverly
extended, by raising the spectre of a global catastrophe caused by
overpopulation (the so-called "P-bomb",
i.e., population bomb) and the death of all from hunger. A drastic reduction in
the birth rate has assumed the features of crucial Urgency, beginning with the
developed countries and then with the others, which are soon blamed for the "population explosion",
another emotionally charged term.
With the complicity of governments, international bodies,
beginning with the UN and the WHO, and well-financed private organizations,
there grew that "conspiracy against life" denounced by John Paul II. [Endnote 7]
A conspiracy, the Pope says,
"involving even international institutions, engaged in encouraging
and carrying out actual campaigns to make contraception, sterilization and
abortion widely available. Nor can it be denied that the mass media are often
implicated in this conspiracy, by lending credit to that culture which presents
recourse to contraception, sterilization, abortion and even euthanasia as a
mark of progress and a victory of freedom, while depicting as enemies of
freedom and progress those positions which are unreservedly pro-life".
[Endnote
8]
The mass availability of contraception was the first step on
a path of death. This quickly led to a broad "contraceptive
mentality", i.e., a widespread attitude of rejecting any unwanted child,
thus paving the way to broad social acceptance of sterilization and abortion.
The latter, in turn, is becoming the premise for the social acceptance of
euthanasia and its legalization.
This immensely tragic destruction of paramount human values
in the relations between rich and poor countries does not shrink from cynically
abusive policies imposed on poor countries as a condition for receiving
financial aid, food and medicine, or from requiring the adoption of measures
for quickly achieving zero population growth by every means from contraception
to mandatory abortion after the first or second child. A true and very grave
crime, all of whose revolting brutality can be seen when one discovers that in
many poor countries people have free contraceptives and abortifacients of every
sort in abundance, but there are no medicines to save the lives of millions of
human beings mowed down, for example, by malaria or other easily curable
diseases. The Magisterium's condemnation has been constant and severe. I merely
quote the one stated in Familiaris Consortio:
"Likewise to be denounced as gravely unjust are cases where, in
international relations, economic help given for the advancement of peoples is
made conditional on programmes of contraception, sterilization and procured
abortion." [Endnote 9]
In our contemporary world, therefore, contraception has
played and continues to play a primary role in furthering that rampant
"culture of death" whose victims number in the tens of millions every
year. This culture also debases human sexuality and perverts love even in its
most sublime form of maternal love, when it grants a mother the absurd right to
kill the child she is carrying in her womb. A culture moreover which is
devastating and seeking to destroy those same values among economically poor
and politically defenceless people, who are nevertheless rich in so many human
values that have been widely disregarded for a long time in our wealthy
countries.
Couples who choose contraception, whether consciously or
not, are helping to consolidate and strengthen the roots of this culture. And
this choice can only entail responsibilities whose seriousness and weight are
difficult to assess but certainly enormous.
Notes
1. Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Casti Connubii (30 December 1930), in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 22 (1930), pp. 559-561.
2. See especially n. 29, where the Pope quotes in inverted
commas Proposition 21, formulated by the Synod Fathers themselves.
3. Insegnamenti di
Paolo VI, vol. 11, 1964, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City, p. 420.
4. The text of the address is in Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, vol. VI, 1968, pp. 869-873.
5. On this point, and on several others emphasized here, see
the particularly enlightening developments in the Pope's address to priests
attending a seminar on "responsible procreation" (17 September 1983),
in Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II,
vol. VI/2, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 1984, pp. 561-564.
6. For this and the subsequent quotations, see John Paul II,
Uomo e donna lo creo, pp. 467-469.
7. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, nn. 12, 17, etc.
8. Ibid., n. 17.
9. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, n. 30.
Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
4 December 1996, page 9
L'Osservatore Romano is the newspaper of the Holy See.
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