Lamenting Petrine Legerdemain and Traditional Marriage

Robert Royal, the editor of The Catholic Thing, published a scathing critique of Pope Francis' "Bizarre Papal Move" regarding sacramental marriage, particularly the circumstance around the question of receipt of communion by divorced and remarried Catholics.




It is troubling to see how there seems to have been a Kabuki show of holding two Extraordinary Synods on the Family, in which a clear majority of Bishops reaffirmed the traditional teaching, yet that formal process seems to have mooted by unclear footnotes in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia and papal private letters.

In the late 20th Century, the Catholic Church had been blessed by two pontiffs who were extraordinary theologians.  It is not necessary for a successor to the Chair of Peter to be like Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis has a gift of outreach and seems to operate on a more pastoral bent.  Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si (2015) read like a hot mess. In Laudato Si, Pope Francis tried to extol a humane ecology but lapsed into six paragraphs championing Global Climate change politics as well as exhortations to forgo air conditioning and i-pads. Thus it is easy to interpret Pope Francis' quip about those who do not recycle needing to go to a confessional as a pastoral hyperbole colored by his concern for ecology.

However, it is troubling that Pope Francis' apparent will, infused with Mercy, seems to override two millennia of Church teachings on on the Sacramentality of Marriage  as well as established mechanisms for discerning and promulgating God's will for the Church.

As a practical Catholic, I must on occasion explain that everything which the Pope says is not infallible. While I ought to prayerfully consider things which a Pope says, I am not bound unless it is an ex cathedra statement. Dogma must be consistent with the Magisterium and aligned with the bishops.

From the inaccurate 2014 relatio, the footnote foundation and private letter reiteration of Pope Francis' view on Kasperian gradualism  for what were traditionally held as adulterous couples, this new teaching on marriage seems on shaky ecclesiastical grounds.  Moreover, it lends credence to progressive Catholics, like Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), that the Catholic Church will follow his lead to eventually endorse same-sex marriage.

H/T: The Catholic Thing

Discerning the Proper Pastoral Approach in the Extraordinary Synod on the Family

During a February 2014 Consistory in anticipation  for the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, Archbishop Walter Cardinal Kasper (President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council Promoting Christian Unity) suggested that there ought to be some sort of accommodation for Catholics who are civilly divorced and who remarry.  This sort of gradualism would allow such Catholics to receive communion after a period of penance.  Cardinal Kasper's modest proposal received more creedence as the 80 year old Cardinal had been tagged as Pope Francis' theologian, as the Holy Father specifically praised Kasper  in his first Angelus as a clever theologian, especially for his book  Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life (2014).

But as the Synod met at the Vatican, discussions centered around how Natural Law informs cultural challenges to the family.

Archbishop Winfild Cardinal Napier (of the Archdiocese of Durban, South Africa) wondered if German Catholics who are civilly divorced and  remarry receiving the sacrament would be parallel to a man in a polygamous marriage receiving the sacrament.   Napier seemed to support the traditional notion of fortitude or "carrying the cross with Christ". 

This Synod on the Family is merely doing the preparation work for a larger Synod to be held next fall.  Those who hope that there will be a change in doctrine may be quite disappointed as even the liberal National Catholic Reporter  indicates that there will be no change in doctrine.