Astana, Kazakhstan, Jan 2, 2018 / 12:42 pm (CNA).- Three Kazakhstani bishops signed a statement on Sunday confirming that it is not licit to admit to sacramental communion Catholics who are divorced and illictly remarried, if they are not living according to the long-standing teachings of the Church.
The statement was released in response to norms issued by several groups of bishops since the promulgation of Amoris laetitia.
“It is not licit (non licet) to justify, approve, or legitimize either directly or indirectly divorce and a non-conjugal stable sexual relationship through the sacramental discipline of the admission of so-called ‘divorced and remarried’ to Holy Communion, in this case a discipline alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith,” read the Dec. 31, 2017 letter of the bishops.
“By making this public profession before our conscience and before God who will judge us, we are sincerely convinced that we have provided a service of charity in truth to the Church of our day and to the Supreme Pontiff, Successor of Saint Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth.”
The statement was signed by Archbishop Tomash Peta of Maria Santissima in Astana; his auxiliary, Bishop Athanasius Schneider; and Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop Emeritus of Karaganda.
It comes nearly a year after the same bishops issued an appeal to prayer that Pope Francis would confirm the Church’s constant practice regarding the indissolubility of marriage.
The three bishops noted that some bishops around the world – such as those of Malta and Sicily – have issued norms allowing for the divorced-and-remarried who have a living spouse yet who are in “stable cohabitation more uxorio” with a third person to “receive the sacrament of Penance and Holy Communion, while continuing to live habitually and intentionally more uxorio with a person who is not their legitimate spouse.” Those norms have qualified that such permissions are limited to individual cases, at the discretion of a confessor, pastor, or bishop.
More uxorio, which means “in the mode of marriage,” refers in this context to cohabitation and a sexual relationship between those who are not validly married.
“These pastoral norms have received approval from various hierarchical authorities. Some of these norms have received approval even from the supreme authority of the Church,” they noted. Pope Francis had, in 2016, sent a letter approving of norms from the bishops of the Buenos Aires region of Argentina, which seemed to permit reception of holy communion in particular cases.
The Pope’s letter, and the Buenos Aires norms, were then promulgated in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, a fact made known last month.
“The spread of these ecclesiastically approved pastoral norms has caused a considerable and ever increasing confusion among the faithful and the clergy, a confusion that touches the central manifestations of the life of the Church, such as sacramental marriage with the family, the domestic church, and the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist,” the Kazakh bishops stated.
They said that to admit the divorced-and-remarried to Communion “means in practice a way of approving or legitimizing divorce, and in this meaning a kind of introduction of divorce in the life of the Church.”
Such pastoral norms “are revealed in practice and in time” as a way of spreading the “plague of divorce”, they said, quoting from the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et spes.
The bishops maintained that the Church should be, rather, “a bulwark and an unmistakable sign of contradiction against the plague of divorce … because of her unconditional fidelity to the doctrine of Christ.”
“An approval or legitimation of the violation of the sacredness of the marriage bond, even indirectly through the mentioned new sacramental discipline, seriously contradicts God’s express will and His commandment,” the Kazakh bishops wrote.
They stated that sexual acts between those who are not married are “always contrary to God’s will and constitute a grave offense”’ and that no circumstance, including diminished guilt, can make such a sexual relationship “a positive moral reality.”
The bishops also emphasized that although the Church cannot judge the internal state of grace of any person, sacramental discipline is not based on this but on their “visible and objective situation”; and that is it morally illicit “to engage in sexual relations with a person who is not one’s legitimate spouse supposedly to avoid another sin.”
They also affirmed that the divorced-and-remarried may be admitted to Communion “only when they with the help of God’s grace and a patient and individual pastoral accompaniment make a sincere intention to cease from now on the habit of such sexual relations and to avoid scandal. It is in this way that true discernment and authentic pastoral accompaniment were always expressed in the Church.”
Furthermore, they said that those who violate their marriage bond with their legitimate spouse may not participate in Communion, and that “the fulfillment of God’s will … constitutes the true spiritual good of the people here on earth and will lead them to the true joy of love in the salvation of eternal life.”
The bishops called the recently proposed pastoral norms “a substantial alteration” of the Church’s 2,000 year discipline, and added: “a substantially altered discipline will eventually lead to an alteration in the corresponding doctrine.”
“The constant Magisterium of the Church … has preserved and faithfully transmitted both in the doctrine (in theory) and in the sacramental discipline (in practice) in an unequivocal way, without any shadow of doubt and always in the same sense and in the same meaning (eodem sensu eademque sententia), the crystalline teaching of Christ concerning the indissolubility of marriage.”
The bishops said that the indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage is “the revealed word of God and the faith of the Church,” and that sacramental discipline cannot contradict this, “because of its Divinely established nature.”
The faith naturally “excludes a formal contradiction between the faith professed on the one hand and the life and practice of the sacraments on the other,” they said, citing Vatican II and the writings of St. John Paul II.
“In view of the vital importance that the doctrine and discipline of marriage and the Eucharist constitute, the Church is obliged to speak with the same voice. The pastoral norms regarding the indissolubility of marriage must not, therefore, be contradicted between one diocese and another, between one country and another,” they added, citing St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Thomas Aquinas.
The bishops provided ample citations for the existing teaching and practice regarding the indissolubility of marriage, including Bl. Pius IX, Ven. Pius XII, Bl. Paul VI, St. John Paul II, and the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
“As Catholic bishops, who … must defend the unity of faith and the common discipline of the Church, and take care that the light of the full truth should arise for all men we are forced in conscience to profess in the face of the current rampant confusion the unchanging truth and the equally immutable sacramental discipline regarding the indissolubility of marriage according to the bimillennial and unaltered teaching of the Magisterium of the Church,” they wrote.
“Being bishops in the pastoral office those, who promote the Catholic and Apostolic faith, we are aware of this grave responsibility and our duty before the faithful who await from us a public and unequivocal profession of the truth and the immutable discipline of the Church regarding the indissolubility of marriage. For this reason we are not allowed to be silent,” stated the Kazakh bishops.
They made their affirmation in the spirit of Ss. John the Baptist, John Fisher, and Thomas More, who were martyred for upholding the indissolubility of marriage, and of Bl. Laura Vicuna, who offered her life for the conversion of her mother, who was living in concubinage.
[…]
So what was once the Synod of Bishops will now be Synods of Bishops, Priests, Sisters, Car Salesmen, Teachers, Financial Advisors, HR Directors, Assistant Principals, Cashiers and Truck Drivers…
Remind me. Is this the Catholic Church we’re talking about, or the Rotary Club?
Agreed brineyman. Synodaling is not Catholic. Synodaling abuses the God-given authority of the hierarchy to destroy the God-given authority of the hierarchy. As such, Synodaling is a suicidal form of clericalism.
Synodal Superlodge.
Indeed. But why so negative?
After all, the geographic “contexts” of new-layer regional and continental bureaucracies will surely polyhedralize the merely diocesan bishops who, however, are a higher kind of “context” as successors of the Apostles.
But, still, “we” might converge globally on a very unifying theological question. And even a Q & A query updated from the rigid Baltimore Catechism…That is:…who the hell are all these people, and “from whence have they come and whither are they synodalling?”
Mark Twain held that the only folks justified in using the editorial “we” are newspaper editors and people with tapeworms.
You forgot the person in the pew. What the heck! They have opinions too I just came from a Mass where the choristers occupied the major pert of what used to be the Sanctuary and gave us virtually non-stop pop entertainment. The Eucharist was in a niche on the side altar. Attendees passed within five feet of the tabernacle. Not one person genuflected of even nodded their head. The applause and cheering at the end was huge. It was the last regular performance in a Parish that is closing. Not enough priests or regular Parishioners to keep it going. I wonder why.
what state or country, if you don’t mind?
Baltimore, MD is the site. They are shuttering some 30+ parishes in the City. The Church I was in will now have a Mass on a rotating basis with about 6 others. I raised my family around that Parish for nearly 50 years. All my children went to the school. The Whoopie Mass I attended would have been unintelligible back then. Demographic change is a part of the Parish problems/issues, but a ‘modern Protestantish worship’ service overlaying the ‘new’ liturgy surely cant help.
Bernard, that blasphemous mockery of the mass was perhaps your last? We all have a breaking point at which we seek Traditional Latin Mass and wonder why we waited so long…
When Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury (ca. 1533) and the chief architect of the nascent Anglican Church he forced worshipers to receive Communion in the hand and he hoped thereby to destroy belief in the Real Presence in one generation. (see The Life of Newman by Velez). It is about one generation since the practice began in today’s Catholic Church. Enough said.
That wouldn’t be as bad as inclusiveness including the unrepentant traffikers, drug dealers, pimps, abortionists, depraved theologians, and corrupt politicians, oh, sorry, I already said pimps.
We read: “The pontiff added that the general secretariat of the synod and the Vatican’s dicasteries will assist him in this task [‘listening, convening, discerning, deciding, and evaluating’].”
With due and genuine respect in these complex times, this is a most challenging next task—now from the focus group recommendations—to precisely lift out the baby, yes, from the bathwater, also yes, so as to not contradict other elements of the existing ordinary Magisterium.
Recalling in another and interreligious context that it’s only an Islamic principle to actually “abrogate” what came before by what comes afterward. Listening, too, to the Catholic layman St. Thomas More, speaking in yet another context only of king’s and laity: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?”
That “quote” is from A Man For All Seasons, and not actually from St. Thomas More. There is no question whatsoever (based upon overwhelming scholarly evidence) that in the entire West during his era, and even the two millennia preceding his time, that the roundness of the Earth was common and universally-accepted everyday knowledge as understood by all of society. Since the opposite claim (which is pure nonsense) is so commonly mobilized for anti-Catholic historical propaganda purposes today (“stupid backwards Medieval Catholics”), I just wanted to get that out there.
Yes, Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” 1960). Also, this, possibly referring today to a few heroic backwardists:
“If we lived in a State [etc.] where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all…why then perhaps we must stand fast a little–even at the risk of heroes.”
Well, my deed will be to conclude this was all a fraudulent waste of time and money.
My opinion of this Vatican can’t get much lower. Sad.
But like all communist governments, the Vatican will declare it a great success.
Thank God it’s over. The People of God can now attend to their collective headache which this papacy has no difficulty at all provoking.
The choices of the Pontiff Francis and his “synod-cultists-of-apostasy-and-queer-neo-pagan-Rupnik-abuser-church” do not involve the whole Church, they pertain only to their own hermetically sealed cult.
I am not as optimistic. Although the authors of the document (which I forced myself to read in its entirety) refer to the Vatican II and make themselves its heirs, to me they are the heirs of the so-called “spirit of the Vatican II” about which pope Benedict discoursed in his ‘Milestones’. He wrote with a palpable astonishment about what was going on: a theological madness, triumphant denial of an apostolic tradition, destruction of beauty, chaos in minds – in a word, a phenomenon which he and his collaborators had never envisaged. I will add to this a disregard of “people of God” under the mask of doing it for them (this is what is happening now as well). I truly believe that what we have now is a legalization of that “Vatican II spirit” and nothing else. If before one could try to appeal to a tradition, Church’s life as it was before now it is impossible because only “synodality” matters. And anyone can call “synodality” anything he wants, as long as it fits into a general vague agenda of a mutual petting of the ego. Being stripped of all verbal fluff, “synodality” boils down to a motto “if you see me as nice, I will see you as nice and will glorify you and you will glorify me”. It is easy to see that God (who is to be adored and glorified) must go because He is in the way of the cult of self-adoration.
Thus, the whole thing is very insidious and very far from being “sealed”. “The things” will find a response in people’s ego and will go on. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for improving interpersonal relationships within the Church (Rupnik’s case being a symbol of wrong models of interpersonal relationships), throwing away misogyny or any disrespect of others but it is not what is happening. Paradoxically, they throw away the only measure which can help in that, Jesus Christ. You are against misogyny? – Good on you, write an encyclical which is drawn on how Our Lord had dealt with women. Make theological-psychological treatise and oblige all to implement it, in their own minds and parishes. Make study groups. I am sure it is done, there will be no need to throw in populist “empowering women” whatever.
Anna –
You are certainly correct about my words saying that “Pontiff Francis and his synod-cult” are “hemertically sealed.” That was poorly stated by me.
And I, like you, see no reason to be optimistic about the faithfulness of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. I believe that the intention of most of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the Pontiff Francis, and it seems most Cardinals and Bishops and “Team-Francis-celebrities” I can observe in Europe, North America and South America) is to apostasize and de-capitate the Body of Christ (I am using the decapitation metaphor employed by Fr. Robert Imbelli).
I guess the only thing I can say is that I am not an apostate, and that since they are, they are excommunicating themselves from the Body of Christ. Where that leaves people like me (and you and others) is I guess where the men and women of the Ordinariate are: they have not apostasized, but their Church, the Church of England, has already formally apostasized, and they (the Ordinariate) are the dwindling remnant of the faithful who sought refuge in the CAtholic Church under Pope Benedict XVI.
My only hope is in the one who desrves our hope: Christ our King. And my only communion is with those who worship and obey and profess him as the head of his Church, the Body of Christ.
Chris, I share your position fully.
Years ago I began noticing the utmost banality in what was happening so the words “the banality of evil” kept popping up in my mind.
What can be more banal (and absurd) than swapping theosis (man to become God, to be with Christ in love) with an inflated reflection of oneself in a narcissistic mirror held by others, a pathetic attempt to become a little god! The New Banal Church is, in essence, a place where each person holds a flattering mirror for the other and vice versa endlessly; altogether they create a maze of reflections, an endless corridor in which they “journey” in perfect “mutuality”. Those reflections merge and this is their “unity” which exists only in a mirror, instead of true unity via Christ.
Even when I was an atheist in my youth, who did not identify with the concept of sin, I still recognized personal evil, which is self-evidently self-worship. It was a mystery to me that the religious people I met did not seem to grasp such an easy concept. I realized their “religion” had to have declined to a place of systematically reinforced disassociation from the principles they claimed.
Thank you Anna.
Among the petitions of the Anima Christi, one resounds in these days: “Passion of Christ…strengthen me.”
The Holy Spirit strengthen you, and me, and all of us, as one Body, with the mind and heart of Christ our King.
Anna, There are a great many astute comments posted here at CWR.
Congratulations on posting one of the all time best.
The “spirit of Vatican 2” is often an excuse to not really knowing and doing the truth of Vatican 2 – and often rejecting the latter out of a genuine caution towards “fundamentalism.’ The Democrats often attempt to not follow the Constitution by appealing to doing the “spirit of the Constitution” as well for the same reasons. And so the pendulum swings too far towards “spirit.” How about we do both the spirit of Vatican 2 and the substance of Vatican 2, but if the spirit contradicts the substance, let go of one’s interpretation of “spirit” because we could be following the wrong spirit. Forget pendulum swinging. We are supposed to walk the middle path.
Dear Fred
I think you’ll find the term “Freemasonic Spirit of Vatican II” explains everything.
Kind regards
Mr C.N.
Yeah, that’s right up there with “Babylonian mysticism”. Sigh.
Which is it?
“I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.””
“…guide for the mission of the Churches, on the different continents, in the different contexts…”
As the Ordinary Magisterium exercised absent of agreement with pontiff and bishops on a definitive teaching of faith and morals – in this instance it’s not infallible. As Francis says the final document is a guide.
Nevertheless the pronouncement by Pope Francis appears to give the bishops and lay participants an independence in development of guidelines that potentially become doctrine. Whether doctrine can be developed independently of the Roman pontiff and the universal body of bishops [referring to bishops and cardinals who are not participants] is problematic.
A sure sign of intelligence is simple profundity.
So what were once Synods of Bishops will now be Synods of Bishops, Priests, Sisters, Car Salesmen, Teachers, Financial Advisors, HR Directors, Assistant Principals, Cashiers and Truck Drivers…
Remind me. Is this the Catholic Church we’re talking about, or the Rotary Club?
Reform? In what sense? To correct error and sin, or to “re form” into a new entity? Whatever their intent understand “reform” as further mutilation.
These theatrics have no credence.
James, always in delighted agreement with your very succinct comments.
But, eh, about reform and the “new entity,” why be so non-inclusive? If one were to fumigate the termite-infested sectors of the Vatican, surely multiple new infestations would spring up in each of the substitute continental assemblies or entities (plural).
If these up-to-seven mixed-company town hall meetings ever presume synodally to be more than what they are, why surely you could agree that even this polyhedral outcome is still biblical…
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits [!] more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation” (Mt 12:43-45).
QUESTION: Like the Synod on Synodality, now will the “hot-button” study groups also offload their hot-potato themes, geographically?
We are all Protestants now
Am I allowed to protest that comment?
How so are we all Protestants? I am a Catholic who accepts that the Pope is Francis. Pope Francis says make a mess. I say Synodaling is a suicidal form of clericalism. Is that opinion messy enough in your opinion for you to agree that I am being a faithful Catholic?
Note that I never commented during previous pontificates. Should the next Pope return us to clarity on matters of Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and should said Pope ask us to refrain from making a mess, I will gladly cease throwing peanut shells from the upper gallery.
Dear Fool!
Your comments from the peanut gallery are the silver lining of this Synodolytrous Bergoglian fiasco! (Am I right in thinking that “fiasco” is an Italian word?)
And they are amusing enough that I cannot honestly say that I wish there had never been a Bergoglian papacy.
Glad we are together in the peanut gallery. My understanding is that fiasco is the Italian word for flask or wine bottle from medieval Latin. Perhaps the Bergoglio family made wine bottles long ago in Italy? The Asti region where they are from is known for wine. 🍷 So maybe this is how we are supposed to make a mess?
Wikipedia adds to your definition: A fiasco (/fiˈæskoʊ/, Italian: [ˈfjasko]; pl.: fiaschi) is a traditional Italian style of bottle, usually with a round body and bottom, partially or completely covered with a close-fitting straw basket. The basket is typically made of sala, a swamp weed, sun-dried and blanched with sulfur. The basket provides protection during transportation and handling, and also a flat base for the container. Thus the glass bottle can have a round bottom, which is much simpler to make by glassblowing.[1] Fiaschi can be efficiently packed for transport, with the necks of inverted bottles safely tucked into the spaces between the baskets of upright ones.
Note the basket is made from SWAMP WEED, blanched with sulfur. Now we know the origin of the bad smell.
Exercising his atheistic mind as he does affects crimes against humanity. Not a laughing matter. And can a criminal pope retain the papacy?
God’s Fool,
Actually is quite a mess to say that “the Pope is Francis;” the different and less autocratic expression is that “Francis is the Pope.” Hence, the mess of the so-called Francis Magisterium.
As a forwardist, making my own little mess in the year 11 AF, I prefer to acknowledge the illustrious messy autocracy of the personal magisterium of Francis.
Distinctions are so BF (Before Francis).
Happy Halloween!