By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
(Editor’s Note: Fr. Kevin M. Cusick’s column appears here earlier this week because of its importance and timeliness. Fr. Cusick sets out the serious problems within Amoris Laetitia and also the apostolic exhortation’s dangerous implications.)(comment box is open)
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The false compassion operative in experimentation with souls is a dangerous sport. We don’t explore new and uncharted moral ground with lives and souls through moral or social experiments because neither does God: For Him only the truth is good enough.
God has appeared among us as Truth Incarnate in Jesus Christ. This means that now for our salvation we must never settle for anything less than the truth. Anything less than Jesus Christ and His clear teaching isn’t love or compassion. Any talk for Catholics of experimenting in matters of faith and morals is a betrayal of Christ and a serious sin.
Our Lord was never more strict in His teaching than He was in matters of marriage and chastity. Divorce and remarriage is adultery. Adultery after Baptism removes a state of grace that can be restored only by absolution and by avoiding any further occasion of sin such as adulterous cohabitation.
Giving Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics who are not sorry for the sin of adultery, do not intend to remove themselves from the near occasion of that sin and, therefore, cannot receive the Sacrament of Confession is experimentation and of the very worst kind.
Communion is given to build up grace in those who are in a state of grace, thus giving Communion to such individuals is a failed experiment and a sacrilege as well as useless.
It is the true love and compassion of Jesus Christ which moved our Holy Father Pope Pius XI to promulgate Casti Connubii:
“No difficulty can arise that justifies the putting aside of the law of God which forbids all acts intrinsically evil. There is no possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by the grace of God, fulfill faithfully their duties and preserve in wedlock their chastity unspotted” (Pius XI, Casti Connubii.)
The reaction of many commentators, to include priests whose homilies are available on Audio Sancto website, reveal what is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Pope Francis’ recent exhortation Amoris Laetitia: a pattern of partial quotation from documents of Pope John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas, among others, which seems to be for the purpose of supporting the Pope’s foregone conclusion that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics may be able to receive the Eucharist.
Gone seems to be any mention of Christ’s teaching that divorce and remarriage is adultery. Gone is any support for the option of living together as brother and sister for the sake of supporting any children born of an objectively adulterous union.
The fathers of the Second Vatican Council never intended that the Church should introduce a Protestant option for divorce or anything else. It is up to clerics in the Church, no matter what their rank, to prove that innovations which they introduce are compatible with the depositum fidei. It is not the burden of the sensus fidelium to accept whatever is promoted as being a so-called “fruit” of Vatican II, a pastoral and not a dogmatic council.
Fr. Gerald Murray and Raymond Arroyo showed faithfulness to Mother Angelica’s charism of obedience to Scripture and Tradition within the Church’s Magisterium in a video produced by the EWTN network in reaction to Amoris Laetitia. Practically no one considers either of these men wild-eyed and tousle-haired radicals, but their words are alarming. In the video interview on the exhortation featuring Fr. Murray he cited the natural right of the faithful to voice their concerns as recognized by the Code of Canon Law and concluded:
“Flattery would mean we keep our mouths shut and say nothing. But Gospel frankness . . . calls upon us to say, Holy Father, either you have been poorly advised or you have an incomplete conception of this issue. . . .
“I don’t want to criticize the Pope…but what I will say is when you do something in public that contradicts what your Predecessor did, there has to be an accounting for it and a responsibility to upholding the Gospel, and I think that’s what many bishops, cardinals, and priests will call for.”
For these and other reasons numerous commentators are labeling AL a “subversive” document. What is most disturbing is the pattern in which any portions of John Paul’s documents which contradict anything in the Kasperite proposal are systematically omitted. A team of Spanish diocesan priests has demonstrated meticulously that this tendency to misquote or manipulate the documents of the Church is a pattern among those charged with helping to produce official documents, if not the Pope himself.
Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press, no theologian herself, noted that in Amoris Laetitia Francis is “selectively citing his predecessors” so as to avoid conflict with the settled teachings that don’t advance his innovations:
“ ‘While Francis frequently cited John Paul, whose papacy was characterized by a hard-line insistence on doctrine and sexual morals, he did so selectively. Francis referenced certain parts of John Paul’s 1981 Familius [sic] Consortio, the guiding Vatican document on family life until Friday, but he omitted any reference to its most divisive paragraph 84, which explicitly forbids the sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried’.”
I read the entire document and certainly found some very beautiful portions from which priests and catechists might gain material for teaching. I would not, however, recommend that just anyone read the document and when I have done so I have warned them about chapter 8.
The Pope has decreed that “all who ask will be admitted.” This diktat could create a balkanization within dioceses among priests who gladly choose, if not already doing so, to communicate the divorced and remarried, same-sex marriage impersonators with accessorized children in tow, and anyone else in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.
If a bishop doesn’t start firing pastors who refuse to implement AL parishioners will be afforded the option to make a choice between priests who do turn Communion into a Protestant accessory and those who don’t if they wish to avoid supporting this bizarre rejection of Catholic faith and morals. Parishes may see massive transfers of faithful from one to another when parents decide they don’t want to expose their children to regular and banalized scandal at the Communion rail.
In a recent poll on Twitter I reminded respondents of Pope Francis’ direction that “all who ask will be admitted” and then asked, “Will you stay in a parish where adulterers & fornicators Communicate?” With 86 voting, 19 percent responded “Yes,” 53 percent “No,” and 28 percent chose “It’ll never happen.”
Another effect of this bizarre experimentation: Why do we need a Year of Mercy to encourage Confessions when AL has the end result of making them unnecessary for everyone? If serial adulterers don’t need Confession before receiving Communion why should anyone else? If any one of us forsakes our honesty in confronting this current crisis, we are left with the unwanted alternative of a bewildering mass of contradictions that it is not right to ask anyone to try to follow.
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