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#Post#: 2--------------------------------------------------
Mgr.Charles Pope excerpts. Musings and Concerns on the Synod.
DIR By: Pearlh
Date: October 11, 2014, 9:39 am
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Musings and Concerns on the Synod
We are seeing in Rome a rather unusual unfolding of the Synod,
wherein cardinals and bishops with very different points of view
are airing those differences quite publicly. Even prior to the
Synod there was the publication of various competing books.
To be fair to the bishops and cardinals, it would seem that Pope
Francis himself has largely encouraged this. It is more typical
at synods for the sparring and debates to take place more
privately, and press conferences usually just issue summaries of
things discussed. Time will tell of the wisdom (or lack thereof)
of such public airings, but if the permission for frank
discussion may extend to a lowly parish priest, I will say that
it concerns me greatly. It is never pretty to see how the
sausage is made and some who are less familiar with the internal
debates may well be discouraged, while others will be
inappropriately heartened. Again, though, to be fair, vigorous
debates in Church Synods and Councils extend all the way back to
the first one described in Acts 15.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, what I think about the
matter of Holy Communion to those in invalid matrimonial states
and other irregular situations is no secret. I simply cannot see
how it is possible for us to extend Holy Communion to Catholics
living in invalid marriages unless they are willing to live as
brother and sister. Rather than restate all the reasons, I’ll
just refer you to earlier posts I wrote: HERE and HERE.
And while the pastoral solution of living as brother and sister
may not seem a “pastoral” or reasonable solution to many, it
does remain a solution if Holy Communion is sought. Of course it
is not a perfect solution. There is still the possibility of
scandal, since not everyone will know or understand that an
individual who is coming forward is not sexually intimate with
his or her current “spouse” from a second union. But if celibacy
is generally known as a possibility, others could presume good
will and a large degree of scandal could be avoided.
I was speaking of this matter recently on the phone with someone
(not a parishioner) and she scoffed at the notion of asking
celibacy of people in these situations. She shifted the terms
and asked me somewhat rhetorically,
How can you go on denying something as important as Holy
Communion to people just because they are in what you consider a
bad marriage?
I told her that I would answer her question if she would answer
mine:
How is it that many have come to regard having sexual intimacy
as more important or necessary than receiving Holy Communion?
I went on to add:
While Holy Communion is important (and I surely think that it
is), I wonder why the people you describe as seeing it as so
important wouldn’t choose to live celibately in order to be able
to receive our Lord. You suggest I’m being cruel by denying it,
but it isn’t really I who is making the choice here. The choice
is really theirs. I am not the master of the Eucharist; I am His
servant. Given Jesus’ description of second marriages as
adulterous (Matt 19), and Paul’s clear warning against receiving
Communion in an ongoing state of serious sin (1 Cor 11), it
doesn’t seem that I have any choice. The choice is and remains
theirs: either to so value Holy Communion and intimacy with the
Lord that they are willing to forego sexual intimacy, or to seek
solutions in the annulment process, or to continue refraining
from Holy Communion.
Though I was being accused of somehow denying Holy Communion, I
am not really doing any such thing. I celebrate Holy Communion
every day for God’s faithful who are not impeded to receive. If
they are somehow impeded, I will do what I can to help them
overcome this impediment. If at the end of the process there can
be no way to address the impediments, then the choice returns to
them: live celibately and receive Communion, or choose not to
and refrain from Communion. I am not denying anyone Communion;
some choose to exclude themselves.
I realize that some people are in difficult and complex
situations, but I cannot simply overrule the Lord or what He
said to St. Paul. At the end of the day there is a choice for
those who desperately seek Communion but are in second unions.
That choice is celibacy. I realize that this is difficult and
some conclude that this would be unjust to the second “spouse.”
But it is ultimately their choice, not mine. I am respectful of
the fact that some do not think they can reasonably choose to
live celibately in their second union. However, it is not fair
to say that just because other avenues have been exhausted,
those in these situations have absolutely no choice. They do. It
is difficult, but it is their choice to make.
It is sad that the Synod on the family has seemingly become a
synod on divorce. I do hope and pray that some discussion is
being had about the grace of living according to the Lord’s plan
for matrimony and family. Surely the agenda will expand!
HTML http://blog.adw.org/2014/10/musings-and-concerns-on-the-synod/
.
#Post#: 3--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mgr.Charles Pope excerpts. Musings and Concerns on the
Synod.
DIR By: Pearlh
Date: October 11, 2014, 9:45 am
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Jesus Rejected Unlawful and Unchaste Marriages in His Own Day –
Here’s Why and Where
By: Msgr. Charles Pope
HTML http://blog.adw.org/wp-content/uploads/442_JesusAndElevenDuccio.jpg
Monday’s decision by the Supreme Court not to take up numerous
state appeals regarding same-sex unions pretty much signals that
the secular redefinition is here to stay. This is really no
surprise given the rather deep confusion about sexuality and
marriage in our culture. The polygamists and any number of other
groups demanding recognition for their aberrant notions of
marriage are sure to follow with all due haste. And what is to
stop them, legally, at this point? The word “marriage” is now
largely meaningless since, if marriage can mean anything,
marriage means nothing, in the linguistic sense. At my parish,
we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and are retooling
our documents with this new designation wherever possible.
While Jesus did not directly address the issue of same-sex
“marriage” (since such a bizarre notion would not even have
occurred to anyone in the Jewish world of his day), he did
address the notion of illicit or unchaste unions. He did this in
the “Matthean exception” (Matt 19 and Matt 5). While Jesus
forbade divorce, He set aside or excluded certain unions that
were illicit or unchaste and indicated that these were not
unions to which one should cling. In effect, He said that they
are not marriages at all so the term “divorce” does not apply to
them and they should be set aside.
Consider the text from Matthew 19. Let me first present the text
itself and then provide some background and interpretation. (I
am using the Catholic NABRE translation.)
[Jesus said], I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless
the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery
(Matt 19:9).
The RSV (Catholic Edition) translates the passage this way:
whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries
another, commits adultery.
Now the phrases, “unless the marriage is unlawful” and “except
for unchastity,” are translations of the Greek phrase
μὴ ἐπὶ
πορνείᾳ (me epi porneia).
The usual meaning of the word porneia is “fornication” (i.e.,
sex between two unmarried people). However, depending on the
context, porneia can also refer to other forms of sexual contact
that are illicit or irregular by biblical standards. For
example, many Greek lexicons (e.g., Strongs and Thayer & Smith)
define porneia broadly as “illicit sexual intercourse” and then
go on to define porneia to include fornication, homosexual
activity, lesbian activity, sexual intercourse with animals,
sexual intercourse with close relatives (as spelled out in
Leviticus 18), or sexual intercourse with a divorced man or
woman. Protestants tend to include adultery in the definition of
porneia more so than do Catholics. The reason that Catholics in
general do not is that there is another Greek word specifically
for adultery: μοιχᾶται
(moichatai). Therefore we do not consider adultery to be grounds
for divorce based on either Matt 19 or Matt 5.
So, fundamentally, porneia most often means fornication
(pre-marital sex) but can mean other illicit things as well.
Why then does Jesus utter this “exception” to the otherwise
air-tight prohibition of divorce? The answer would seem to lie
in the influence of certain Gentile notions, which the Lord
wanted to be clear to exclude, at least in the settings Matthew
recalled. The Gentile world was a very sexually confused—even
depraved—world. All sorts of strange sexual practices were
tolerated and even tied into some of the pagan religious
practices. Gentile notions of marriage were often at wide
variance with Jewish ones. Gentiles often called “marriage” what
Judeo-Christians would call incest. There were also difficulties
encountered with homosexual behavior and other sexual liaisons
that the Christian Church could not and would not recognize as
legitimate or anything but sinful. (The most thorough discussion
of this background can be found in the Navarre Biblical
Commentary.)
So, in effect, Jesus is declaring that certain so-called
marriages that featured porneia (some form of illicit sexual
union) were not marriages at all, and that His forbiddance of
divorce should not be seen as applying to these illicit unions.
The implication is that since such unions were not considered
marriage at all, one could and should leave them without being
guilty of divorce. The bottom line is this: there was a defined
understanding of marriage that Jesus insisted upon, and He
freely declared that just because someone called something a
“marriage” didn’t make it a marriage.
Many today want to redefine marriage into something other than
one man and one women in a fruitful (child-bearing) relationship
until death do them part. I have little doubt, based on biblical
evidence alone, that Jesus would declare such unions as “not
marriages at all,” since He clearly set aside certain unions of
His day by calling them unlawful, or more specifically,
unchaste.
To those who would argue that Jesus did not specifically mention
homosexual unions, I would point out, as already noted, that the
term porneia can and does include all forms of illicit sexual
unions: incest, fornication, and homosexual acts. Hence His use
of the word here does include an exclusion of unions based on
this form of unchastity.
As an aside, many today argue that Jesus never explicitly
mentioned homosexual acts (though I’d like to point out that
also didn’t explicitly say “Don’t beat your wife,” either) and
they seek to conclude from His “silence” that He therefore would
approve of homosexual acts. But of course Jesus does address the
sinfulness of homosexual acts—through His appointed spokesmen,
the Apostles, to whom He said, “He who hears you hears me” (Luke
10:16). The New Testament teachings of the apostles, who speak
for Jesus, clearly describe homosexual acts as sinful (e.g., Rom
1:18ff, 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:8-11) and contrary to nature
(paraphysin – Romans 1:26).
Hence, the term porneia (here understood widely as unchastity)
surely does include homosexual acts (as any Greek dictionary
will affirm). In the Matthean exception or exclusion, Jesus thus
sets aside unchaste or illicit unions since they are not true
marriages at all. Divorce does not apply to them and such unions
should be discontinued since they are unchaste.
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