The Church Welcomes Cohabitation

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Antonio "Sock-Puppet" Spadaro is at it again, this time with a pro-cohabitation tweet.

Actually, in true Spadaro fashion, the tweet is in fact a retweet of his own original tweet. He realized that the first tweet didn't pick up the evocative photo centered on the "back" of the young women, so he added it on the retweet. I'm not kidding about that. Take a look at the stream.

Don't blame me, man. I didn't even notice it at first. I was looking at the Pope's welcoming expression.

The picture heads a short article in Spadaro's CyberTeologia titled (you guessed it), "The welcoming of those young people who prefer to live together without getting married..." The piece seems to classify cohabitation as a sort of potentially benign stepping stone (made all the more pervasive by the uncertainties caused by modern capitalism or whatever):

And this is why he [Pope Francis] asks for the welcoming of those young people who prefer to live together without getting married.

But the Pope has done nothing more than to repeat what the Synod of Bishops 2016 approved with more than an 80% consensus . . . and that is that one realizes that simply cohabiting is often chosen due to a general mentality against definitive commitments, but also because the couple is waiting for existential security (work and a fixed salary).

All these situations must be addressed in a constructive manner, trying to transform them into an opportunity to journey towards the fullness of marriage and family in the light of the Gospel.

Rather, in many circumstances, the decision to live together is a sign of a relationship that needs to be directed to an outlook of stability to which it is important to focus.

In my experience, living together as a sort of stepping stone is how most cohabitating couples view things anyway: "We're not ready yet." "We're going to try it and see what happens." "He might get transferred." And so on. Very few couples, again in my experience, would brand cohabitation itself as a permanent arrangement.

So, Spadaro's novel interpretation of Church teaching appears to be nothing more than the outlook of the average indecisive twenty-seven year-old.

But of course, it's not simply Spadaro's novel interpretation, but that of Pope Francis. Spadaro's article was no doubt written at the direction or blessing of the Pope, and is taken from an address that the Pope gave to priests on the "new matrimonial process" just the day before:

“At the same time, be neighbours in the style proper to the Gospel, in encounter and welcome, to those young people who prefer to cohabit without getting married”, he said, “because on a spiritual and moral level they are among the poorest and the least, for whom the Church, following in the footsteps of her Master and Lord, wishes to be a mother who does not abandon them, but rather who approaches and cares for them. Christ also loves these people with all His heart. Look upon them with tenderness and compassion. This care for the least, precisely because it emanates from the Gospel, is an essential part of your task of promoting and defending the sacrament of marriage”.

Sorry, I meant to give you the more illuminating shortened version:

welcom(ing) those young people who prefer to cohabit without getting married . . . is an essential part of your task of promoting and defending the sacrament of marriage”.

As to whether Francis/Spadaro believes that cohabitating couples should take communion: based on that photo and the texts, what do you think?

There's a hidden irony here. The photo above is not a recent one. It was taken in the first year of the Pope's pontificate at a "Valentine's Day" audience with "20,000 engaged couples" in St. Peter's Square.

In other words, the unidentified young woman whose un-jacket-covered bum Antonio Spadaro saw fit to appropriate for his religious magazine was not "living together without getting married," but was instead engaged to the young man holding her hand.

Spadaro wrote a book on cyberethics.

Let me end on an obvious but serious point. The Church has always believed that premarital sex is a grave sin. The proper response to grave sin is not "maybe it will develop into something else" but "stop."

The Pope clearly does not believe the Church's teaching. He doesn't want that couple to believe it. He doesn't want you to believe it.

Either he's wrong and this is therefore another example of why he either isn't or shouldn't be Pope. Or else, on this subject, what the Church has taught for the last 2,000 years, going all the way back to the words of our Lord, is a lie.

Which do you think it is?

Archbishop of Malta: Bergoglio as Sun Myung Moon

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Archbishop Scicluna (True Father is currently arranging his betrothal to a seminarian)

A few weeks ago, Archbishop Charles Scicluna and the only other Maltese bishop Mario Grech, published controversial guidelines for the interpretation of the Papal exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Among other things, the guidelines stated that the divorced and remarried can receive communion "as long as they are peace with God."

Today, Edward Pentin has an interesting albeit disturbing article where he dissects the first interview on the matter given by Scicluna. I encourage you to read it here.

But the thing that jumped out the most for me was Pentin's account of some additional statements that Scicluna made subsequent to the interview:

Archbishop Scicluna’s wish to avoid addressing previous papal teaching was further witnessed the next day. In a homily on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul in Birkirkara, Malta, Jan. 25, he said: "Whoever wishes to discover what the true will of Christ is for him, the true heart of Jesus, he should ask the Church, not blogs.” 

To which any Catholic would answer, "of course." Then came the kicker: 

“He must ask the Pope and the bishops who are in communion with the Pope,” he added. “Whoever wishes to discover what Jesus wants from him, he must ask the Pope, this Pope, not the one who came before him, or the one who came before that. This present Pope. "

Now, this latter claim would have made even the most extreme Ultramontanist blush. All past Church pronouncements are meaningless. The current Pope is infallible on all relevant things, at least until he dies, at which point his declarations become a dead letter, and the opinions and statements of the next Pope become the new standard.

That may be Amoris, but it's not Catholic.

But actually it's even weirder than that. Note that Scicluna doesn't speak of a Church member understanding "teachings" or "doctrine," but rather of a faithful Catholic "discovering" (and only by asking the Pope) "what Jesus wants for him."

Bergoglio as Sun Myung Moon.

The difference of course is that instead of your True Father arranging a first marriage for you, Francis is giving you a bit of help with your second one.

Or your third one.

Or however many it might take for you to finally be "at peace with God."

And then there's this other minor problem. The only person you're allowed to go to for guidance is the Pope. But in the most well-known instance of a Catholic or group of Catholics asking the Pope for guidance - by asking five yes or no questions - the Pope refused to answer. And those who asked the questions (along with their perceived allies) appear now to be undergoing a purge.

As far as I know, even Moon wasn't that difficult.

Is This the End?

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Many were critical of The Irish Catholic for running that headline yesterday. I guess the argument of the critics was that the divorced and remarried can never receive communion, whatever anyone (including the Pope) says.

I think this criticism was misplaced. It's not the job of The Catholic Herald to write headlines about Catholic doctrine (since doctrine doesn't change, those would be pretty boring). Rather, it should report the news of the Church. It is now undeniably true that the Pope himself "gave the green light" to communion for the divorced and remarried, primarily through Amoris Laetitia, including his most recent commentary on it. If we can't say that "divorced and remarried Catholics can now receive communion," then words have no meaning.

The problem is not with the Catholic Herald. It is with Pope Francis.  I do not think any informed, honest and faithful Catholic can now resist seeing the obvious: Pope Francis is an evil man, a manifest heretic and someone whose goal is to destroy the Church as we know it. He is also dedicated and ruthless, not adverse to using trickery, dishonesty, the smearing of opponents and all the rest to realize that goal.

There have certainly been popes in the past that have been very bad for the Church. There have also been popes that have been objectively very evil people. There has been at least one heretic.

But the situation now is uniquely awful.

As Catholics, what do we make of it? How do we make sense of the current crisis, against one of the fundamental tenets of our Catholic faith - that the Church cannot teach error?

Take your pick from the options below:

1. On communion for the divorced and remarried, the Pope didn't teach error, at least technically. In certain complex situations, sexual activity within a second marriage may not rise to the level of mortal sin.
2. The Pope didn't officially teach that the divorced and remarried can receive communion. Rather, he merely implied it in a footnote and in a quasi-private letter. Another way to put this is that he intended to teach it but he didn't. It is the responsibility of the laity to be aware of these things.
3. It is true that the Pope is objectively teaching error. Unfortunately, this can sometimes happen. The Pope isn't the Church.
4. The person claiming to be Pope and who 99% of Catholics have believed to be Pope for more than three years, really isn't the Pope. The true Pope is a little old man who lives in a garden. 

Some Catholics have even claimed recently that it doesn't matter whether Francis is Pope or not. This is an absurd claim for a Catholic to make. I should know. I believe I've made the claim myself.  

In the past, I've criticized claims 1 and 2 (or similar arguments or positions) pretty harshly. But in fairness, it's not easy to see why 3 and 4 are any less unreasonable. While 4 has begun to seem more probable to some (based on the absurdities of 1-3), it has itself only come to seem all the more more absurd by the recent statements of the "true Pope" profusely praising the "false Pope."

Sorry, I forgot one. Let's call it 5:

This is the end of the Catholic Church as we know it, which means the end of the Catholic Church as something that should be considered anything more than a merely human contrivance. It had a good run for 2,000 years, but now it's over. The whole thing was a lie. A beautiful lie but still.

I do not believe 5. I do not now think I will ever believe 5. But quite honestly, if a formerly faithful Catholic came to adopt it as the least unreasonable conclusion, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a convincing response.

Unless something happens and happens soon - and by that I mean real opposition to Francis by the bishops - more faithful Catholics will at least start to consider 5 as a real possibility.

The Catholic faith isn't based on the primacy of internal religious feeling. It's based on, among other things, the claim that the Church as an institution is important and necessary for the discernment of religious truth as well as for individual salvation. Christ Himself promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.

And no, you can't just switch over to being Orthodox or an Evangelical or whatever. Each piece in the structure of our faith is in one sense mutually dependent on every other. We became or remained Catholics because we appreciated the logic of that. The downside of course is that if you take a pin out, the whole thing comes crashing down. 

He promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. How could all of this be happening if Jesus was who He said He was?

As horrible as things are, you may not yourself have any doubt that this dilemma will be solved somehow, even if you can't for the moment see it. Your faith may still be solid. But what about the family next to you in the pew? Or what about you or your family after, say, three more years of this?

Is this the end?

No. I'm sure of it.

But you tell me why I should be so confident.

The LAST Word on Scalfari

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Loyal son of the New Church

I'm not saying it's the LAST word because I'm so much wiser or whatever, only that I'm tired of the whole thing.

It's now clear that the Eugenio Scalfari interviews in the anticlerical La Repubblica are actually an important part of Bergoglio's controlled demolition of the Church. In the interviews all sorts of heresies are proclaimed, as befits a South American Jesuit who came of age in the late twentieth-century: Indifferentism (proselytism is solemn nonsense), relativism (what really matters is that we all journey towards our own conceptions of the good) annihilationism or universalism (there is no hell), Kasperism (doctrine should bend to practicality) and so on.

Bergoglio knows the message that he believes these things, and thus that they are now quasi-official teachings of the Church, will get out, not because everyone reads Scalfari, but because his words will gradually filter down to the bishops, priests and Catholic masses through secondary articles, headlines and the like. And they will be, as it were, implemented, just as surely as if that kissing priest had written an encyclical for him.

Is Bergoglio worried about opposition? Sure. But telegraphing his thoughts through Scalfari gives him a certain protection. There will always be someone--even the official Vatican spokesman--who will imply (though never actually say) that these are not really Bergoglio's thoughts. Don't trust that atheist journalist spinning his words, etc. etc. This of course is ridiculous, but it gives his potential opponents just enough cover to provide an excuse to mask their own cowardice in doing and saying nothing. And Bergoglio, being an arch-coward himself, knows that most men grapple with that vice.

Doctrine is never officially challenged or denied, but it is undermined just as surely as if Bergoglio had solemnly declared what's what from the throne of St. Peter.

The latest Bergoglio claims, made via Scalfari, favoring communion for the divorced and remarried, are not a "trial balloon". They are, as it were, part of the balloon.

Even Phil Lawler, whom I (amazingly) still respect, is continuing to spout nonsense about the Pope being an incompetent interviewee. Please. Bergoglio knows exactly what he is doing, and has done so since the beginning. How do you think this Jesuit became bishop and then Cardinal?

I can already see the snarky responses: "So, you think it's all an evil conspiracy?!!" (smirk, smirk, smirk, smarmy and leaden Patheos prose, smirk).

Well, I don't know about conspiracy (though It's certainly evil). But it's clearly a strategy.

And, to give credit where credit is due, it's a damn good strategy. Literally.

The only defense for Begoglio now is that he's an utter imbecile. As tempting as that is, I reject it, for the reasons given above. Again, how did he make it this far?

To repeat the claims of the previous post, if you are still going along with this charade, you are aligned with the forces of hell. The clock is ticking for you. It is ticking for us.

Bergoglio must be resisted. And the movement that has buffeted him to the pinnacle of the Church must be fought and defeated. 

Oh yeah, the Muslim hordes are again at the gates of Vienna--abetted by Bergoglio and his allies. There's that too.

Pray for us, Charles Borromeo. 

Is James Martin a Heretic?

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"How many souls can I make fit for hell? Put it this way: Hans Kung was a fag."

The Catholic Church has long opposed giving communion to the divorced and remarried. Recently a vocal and powerful minority within the Church, probably including the Pope himself, have challenged this position.

It is a sign of the decadence of the state of contemporary Catholicism that those in this minority are called "liberals" or perhaps even "moderates"--advocates for the importance of "pastoral care" alongside doctrine, and even disciples of the "new" doctrine of mercy, advocated by the current Pope.

In fact, of course, they are heretics.

I'm not using the term because I don't like them (though, obviously I don't), but because it is precisely accurate. In Catholic terminology a heretic is one who denies one or more (though not all) claims of Catholic doctrine. If one is in in favor of giving communion to the divorced and remarried, then one must deny at least one doctrinal claim.

Now, of course, it is fashionable among some modern Catholics to deny that there is even such a thing as doctrine, and thus not really any such a thing as heresy. The Church (so goes the argument) has beliefs and teachings, some of which stay the same and some of which change. It might be inadvisable to change anything too quickly or change too many things at once, but in the end, everything is, so to speak, up for grabs, as long as one acts in the spirit of Christ's teachings as they were presented in the Bible and explained and developed by the Church.

That view is also a heresy. And no, I won't argue for it. But in a sense I don't need to, as those in the contemporary pro-communion-for-the-divorced-and-remarried crowd explicitly reject it. They endorse the view that one should not deny Catholic doctrine, as well as affirming that they themselves are not really doing so.

Rather, they claim they are exhibiting pastoral discernment in how to apply Catholic doctrine. Or mercy.

This of course makes no sense. It's a smokescreen or more precisely a lie. And the liars are well-aware of what they are doing.

What is the Catholic argument for not giving communion to the divorced and remarried?

1. Communion involves physically receiving the real body and blood of Christ.
2. It is a grave sin to receive the real body and blood of Christ if one is currently in a state of mortal sin.
3. Adultery is a mortal sin.
4. Being in a second marriage is equivalent to being in an ongoing state of adultery.
5. Being in a second marriage involves being in an ongoing state of mortal sin (from 3 & 4).
6. If one is in a second marriage, it is a grave sin to take communion (from 2 & 5).

We can see that the argument is based on four premises, each of which is uncontroversially (even for the heretics) a fundamental Catholic claim. I believe it is a valid argument (one whose conclusion follows logically from its premises), and thus, rejecting the conclusion involves rejecting the truth of one or more of the premises.

And you can't get it around it with the totem words "pastoral" or "mercy".

Take your pick:

1. Deny the Real Presence.
2. Deny (among other things) the Catholic interpretation of the words of Paul in the Epistles--"For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."
3. Deny that adultery is a mortal sin.
4. Deny the Catholic interpretation of the words of Christ on marriage.

And don't say, "I'm not denying any of those--I'm just claiming there are exceptions." Please don't.

And don't say, "yes, but you have to meet people where they are." Simply don't.

Also, don't misunderstand. This is not an argument for the truth of any of these premises.  Virtually all of my non-Catholic friends deny at least one of them. Indeed, for some Protestants at least, denial of, say, the first, is one of the things that makes them Protestant.

I'm only talking about Catholics who claim to believe all of them but because they are in favor of communion for the divorced and remarried, in fact must deny them.

And of course they know that.

Do you think Archbishop Cupich believes in the Real Presence? Yeah, sure he does. Eucharistic Adoration? In the seminaries that trained Cupich and his like they called it "cookie worship". Indeed, if you try to kneel to Christ's body and blood, as you would if you honestly believed it was really Christ's body and blood, then Cupich will bitterly snap at you. He becomes an old woman. Even if you're a teenage girl.

Archbishop Cupich believes in midnight basketball and gun control.

Cardinal Kasper doesn't give one golden bauble about the words of Paul the Apostle.

James Martin SJ doesn't believe in mortal sin. Come on, seriously. Does anyone here believe that he does? Anyone? Mortal sin is for the haters. Martin's thing is hating the haters. Martin is obsessed by hate. Consumed by it. And don't say he loves gays or any of that claptrap. If the Zeitgeist were homophobic, as it often has been and no doubt will be again, Martin would be hanging gays from lampposts and then smirking about how merciful that was. You know he would.

Block that.

And what of the Pope? Honestly I don't really know what he does or does not believe. Tragically, I'm not sure he does either.

As a Catholic, perhaps I should be angry with those who deny Catholic claims. But I'm not, or at least I'm not per se. I'm angry with Catholics who deny Catholic claims. They are the worst sort of dishonest, well, scum imaginable. Termites, they have been called. Too cowardly to come into the open; too filled with hatred to simply go away. They must spoil it for everyone. They must spoil it for us. They are unceasingly dedicated to eating away at the Church from the inside. And that's much worse than the damage any atheist would do.