http://www.novusordowatch.org/wire/francis-marriages-invalid.htm

Chaos Frank opened his trap again...
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Francis: “Great Majority” of Marriages today are Invalid because People don’t realize it’s indissoluble — but “Fidelity” in Cohabitation = Real Marriage!


[UPDATE 17-JUN-2016 18:01 UTC: Vatican edits official transcript, changes Francis’ actual words “a great majority of” into “part of”. In either case, however, the fundamental problem remains: Francis believes sacramental marriages are invalid if people do not know or understand that marriage is permanent for life — how many such cases there actually are, is insignificant; the point is that Francis admits the principle! And he furthermore believes that fornication with only one and the same partner equals a real marriage!]

Francis simply cannot keep his jaws together. This is actually a grace for all who seek the truth, because the more he speaks, the more evident it becomes that there is not a single Catholic bone in this man’s body.

On Thursday, June 16, the “Holy Father” answered impromptu questions from the audience after a pastoral congress in the diocese of Rome. One question centered on the crisis in holy matrimony, to which Francis gave an explosive answer. Catholic News Agency has the story:


A layman asked about the “crisis of marriage” and how Catholics can help educate youth in love, help them learn about sacramental marriage, and help them overcome “their resistance, delusions and fears.”

The Pope answered from his own experience.

“I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,” he said.

“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

…

Pope Francis attributed the marriage crisis to people who “don’t know what the sacrament is” and don’t know “the beauty of the sacrament.”

“They don’t know that it’s indissoluble, they don’t know that it’s for your entire life. It’s hard,” the Pope said.

He added that a majority of couples attending marriage prep courses in Argentina typically cohabitated.

“They prefer to cohabitate, and this is a challenge, a task. Not to ask ‘why don’t you marry?’ No, to accompany, to wait, and to help them to mature, help fidelity to mature.”

...

“It’s a superstition, because marriage frightens the husband. It’s a superstition we have to overcome,” the Pope said. “I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity, but there are local superstitions, etc.”

“Marriage is the most difficult area of pastoral work,” he said.

(“Most marriages today are invalid, Pope Francis suggests”, Catholic News Agency, June 16, 2016; underlining added.)


Wow! This is so bad, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Let’s start with a quick note on the headline used by Catholic News Agency, which is misleading: “Most marriages today are invalid, Pope Francis suggests”. No, Francis didn’t suggest that most marriages today are invalid, he said it outright. But perhaps this harsh truth was a bit too much to take even for the Novus Ordo reporters at the news agency and so they tried to tone it down.

In any case, Francis declares that the “great majority” of sacramental marriages are invalid. What’s a great majority? Seventy percent, maybe eighty? That’s a lot of marriages. We’re not talking about pseudo-marriages, where one or both would-be spouses are already married to someone else whom they “divorced” — we’re talking about marriages where husband and wife were actually eligible to marry in the first place and freely joined this holy union. Francis states nonchalantly that most of them are invalid. Precisely how does he know that? He doesn’t, of course — he made it up. And by him asserting it to be so, he has just ensured that tens of thousands of additional requests for annulments will be submitted in the months to come, to tear apart even more families under the guise of “mercy”.

Francis’ own attempt at a justification for his outrageous and gratuitous assertion that “most” marriages today are invalid, is that even though people pledge “until death do us part” in their solemn wedding vows, they don’t mean it. They don’t mean it because they “don’t know” — even though they are saying the words, in their very own vernacular language, in what is probably the most solemn moment in their entire life.

You have got to be kidding.

This is a really curious new principle Francis is underhandedly introducing here: We can no longer assume that people mean what they say, even in something so solemn as the very marriage vow on their wedding day! The reason why is simple for him: culture! There, that’s it. In today’s “culture”, words don’t mean what they mean. It’s all so provisional, you see, nothing is permanent anymore — heck, even the “Pope” resigns when he feels like it!

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Bye bye, holy matrimony!


But there is more to be found here than a mere absurdity: Francis is undermining a fundamental principle of sacramental theology, which is that of the presumption of validity, a legal presumption that the necessary internal intention to confect the sacrament (to “do what the Church does”) is present in the minister when the matter and form of the sacramental rite have been properly applied — unless there is externally manifested evidence to the contrary:

A person who has correctly and seriously used the requisite matter and form to effect and confer a sacrament is presumed for that very reason to have intended to do what the Church does.

(Pope Leo XIII, Bull Apostolicae Curae, n. 33)

Provided the minister seriously performs all the sacramental rites, there is no need for being doubtful about the validity of the sacraments, for it is presumed that the minister has the requisite intention, unless he externalty manifests the contrary.

(Rev. Raphael De Salvo, The Dogmatic Theology on the Intention of the Minister in the Confection of the Sacraments [Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1949], p. 105)


In Holy Matrimony, the ministers of the sacrament are the two spouses, who confer the sacrament on each other. The matter is, remotely, the right over the other’s body for the purpose of procreation and, proximately, the transfer of that right by signs and words. The form of the sacrament is the consent to that right, expressed in the marriage vow, which ends in “until death do us part” (see Rev. Henry Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, vol. 4 [New York, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1935], p. 62). The sacrament of Holy Matrimony is indissoluble by its very nature and necessarily lasts until the death of one of the spouses.

But what about Francis’ casual claim that people “don’t know” what they’re saying while exchanging matrimonial consent? Believe it or not, the Catholic Church had already considered that scenario before Jorge Bergoglio ever came on the scene. The following excerpt from the great canon law professor Fr. Henry Ayrinhac deals a devastating and fatal blow to the latest Bergoglian poppycock:


190. § 1. In order that matrimonial consent be possible it is necessary that the contracting parties at least be not lacking in the knowledge that marriage is the permanent union of man and woman for the procreation of children.

§ 2. Such ignorance is not presumed in those who have attained the age of puberty.

1. We can not consent to what we do not know; the marriage consent is not possible without some, at least confused, knowledge of what constitutes the essential object of the marriage contract; and this is the mutual right and obligation to the conjugal act: ... Hence a person who would marry without having any idea of that right and obligation would not marry validly. Clear and explicit knowledge is not necessary. If one, knowing that the purpose of marriage is the procreation of children, would enter the contract with that in view and would consent to all it implies, although having no distinct idea of what is required for generation, there would be confused knowledge of, and consent to, what constitutes the essential object of the contract, and the marriage would be valid; even if the party was so disposed that if he knew what the act of generation really is, he would not give his consent. But at least that confused knowledge of the substantial object of the contract is necessary.

191. 2. Ignorance of the primary purpose of marriage is easily admitted in children. In the ancient legislation it was always presumed before the age of puberty; after that age, on the contrary, knowledge is presumed. The presumption admits of proofs to the contrary, but it would require strong evidence to obtain the annulment of a marriage on the ground of ignorance in a person of age to marry….

…

198. A simple error as to the unity, indiasolubility, or sacramental character of marriage, even if it be cause of the contract, does not vitiate the consent. Error as to the essential object of the contract vitiates the consent, like ignorance. Error as to the essential properties does not, as long as it remains simply an error of the mind, whether antecedent or concomitant. Thus, a man who intends to form a real contract of marriage, although he does not believe in its indissolubility or sacredness, will be married validly, provided he does not exclude those properties by a positive act of the will, even though he would exclude them if he thought of it. His consent is directed expressly to the marriage contract and by way of consequence to the properties which are inseparable from it. His prevailing intention is to contract marriage; his views on the properties of marriage are errors in the mind which do not affect the primary object of the will. If, however, he would exclude those properties and make that exclusion the primary object of his will, this then would prevail over his intention of marrying and the consent would be vitiated, because one can not will marriage without willing an indissoluble union. But this requires more than a theoretical error; it supposes a positive act of the will, placing a condition, making consent depend on something else than the substantial element of the contract. That positive act is a fact which must be proved and is not presumed. Hence the difficulty of annulling a marriage on the ground of error as to quality…

…

[200.] 1. When a contracting party utters externally and seriously words expressing consent, he is supposed [=understood] to consent internally. His consent is supposed to be absolute if it is expressed absolutely. “Nobody is to be considered as having said what was not on his mind.” This, however, is only a presumption, and if in reality the internal consent was wanting, no matter what the external words might have been, the contract would be null in itself and before God.


(Rev. H. A. Ayrinhac, Marriage Legislation in the New Code of Canon Law [New York, NY: Benziger Brothers, 1919], pp. 191-192; 196-197; 199; underlining added.)


The 1917 Code of Canon Law underscores the firmness of the presumption of validity in a sacramental marriage: “Marriage enjoys the favor of the law; therefore, in case of doubt, its validity ought to be maintained until the contrary be proved…” (Canon 1014). Notice it says “proved”, not, “until Francis decides otherwise.”

Fr. Ayrinhac reminds us how serious this matter is:

It is a general principle that when an act has been performed it ought to be considered valid until it is proved to be null. This applies in a special manner to marriage, which is a sacrament and indissoluble by divine law. To pronounce a marriage null without sufficient evidence is to run the risk of “setting asunder what God has put together.”

(Ayrinhac, Marriage Legislation, p. 25)


Francis is finished.

By the way, how is it that Francis can “lament” now with a straight face the fact that people are clueless about the nature and beauty of holy matrimony when it is precisely his beloved Modernist Vatican II Sect that has been educating the “Catholic” masses in the last five decades? Haven’t we been hearing, ad nauseam, something about “Great Renewal” and “New Springtime” since Vatican II? What happened?!

In any case, we have seen that the true Catholic teaching is that even if people do not know about or believe in the indissolubility of marriage, as long as they intend to enter the matrimonial union, their marriage is valid, unless they make a positive act of the will not to enter into a union that is indissoluble — and even that positive will, if not externally manifested, would have to be proved, not presumed, before a valid annulment could be issued.

But notice how devious the Argentinian impostor pope is: He is carrying out his subversion of holy matrimony and of the presumption of sacramental validity under the guise of lamenting a crisis in marriage, when the truth is that by these remarks, Bergoglio is exacerbating the crisis by colossal proportions.

Here we might add that it was Francis himself who, in September 2015, opened the bogus “annulment” floodgates even further, when he overhauled and “streamlined” Novus Ordo marriage annulments, which were already being given out like popcorn:

    Motu Inapproprio: Francis overhauls Marriage “Annulments”


In his two motu proprio docuмents, Francis not only made receiving a declaration of nullity easier, faster, and free, he also added unheard-of new grounds for considering a marriage null and void, such as “brief conjugal cohabitation”, “defect of faith”, and “abortion procured to avoid procreation”! But not enough, for we can now add a new one to the list: “not meaning the marriage vow when you say it”! And this man wants people to think he is bewailing how many invalid marriages there are? Whom is he kidding?!

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They think they’re married! But not to worry: Francis’ annulment factory is waiting in the wings in case it doesn’t “work out”…


But alas, we are not done yet, for the monster Jesuit from Argentina knows how to add insult to injury. Right after shedding crocodile tears over the terrible matrimonial ignorance which afflicts “the great majority” of people who think they’re validly married, Francis launches his next attack on truth and decency by claiming that cohabitating fornicators in marriage prep courses ought not to be told the truth about marriage: “They prefer to cohabitate, and this is a challenge, a task. Not to ask ‘why don’t you marry?’ No, to accompany, to wait, and to help them to mature, help fidelity to mature.”

So there we have it: This is precisely the reason — one of them, that is — why so many people in Francis’ religion are clueless about marriage: because they are never told by those who ought to tell them. And Francis is going to do all in his power to ensure that it will stay this way! He is the kind of man who first creates a problem, then bewails that the problem exists, and then offers more of the problem as the solution.

Instead of telling cohabitators in marriage preparation that they must separate and refrain from all sɛҳuąƖ relations until they are married as a precondition to be even allowed to get married — how’s that for helping someone understand the beauty and uniqueness and exalted state of holy matrimony! — Francis proposes his cure-all of pastoral “accompaniment”, a term left, of course, conveniently undefined.

But it gets better: Francis claims that the cohabitating fornicators possess “fidelity” (!) which needs but “mature”! There goes the Novus Ordo doctrine of “elements” again: We now have “elements of marital fidelity” in two people who are habitually engaging in mortal sin against the Sixth Commandment, all in the spirit of Amoris Laetitia! At least we now finally know what Bergoglio meant in his 2010 book On Heaven and Earth, which he co-authored with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, when he said that “co-habitation certainly does not have the fullness, or the greatness of marriage” (p. 116). It sure doesn’t. But it won’t matter, because… accompaniment!

But we’re still not done — Francis tops himself yet again: “I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity…” This is blasphemy!

Francis says here openly and without shame that in some cases of fornication — namely, when the two partners are particularly attached to each other in this mortal sin — God blesses them for their sin and rewards them with the “grace of a real marriage”! This is foul and disgusting beyond words! “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Is 5:20)!

Words fail at the sight of such brazen and direct identification of evil with good!

At the same time, this frightful utterance is but Francis’ re-application of the same blasphemy once spoken by “Pope” John Paul II, who claimed that it is God Himself who is responsible for the firmness with which non-Christians adhere to their false religions: “...the firm belief of the followers of the non-Christian religions [is] a belief that is also an effect of the Spirit of truth operating outside the visible confines of the Mystical Body…” (Antipope John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, n. 6). Francis simply took the essence of John Paul II’s thesis and applied it to fornication. Voilà! Different scenario, same blasphemy — brought to you by the same Novus Ordo religion.

Of course, fornicators cannot practice fidelity because fidelity (“faithfulness”) refers to the marriage vow — you know, that little bit of text you said on your wedding day when you promised fidelity to your spouse “until death do us part”. If you meant it, that is.

As we explained in our in-depth podcast covering Amoris Laetitia, for Francis there is no essential difference between holy matrimony and fornication, between vice and virtue, between holiness and sin, between truth and error, between God and the devil. When a man and a woman sin long enough exclusively with one other, this constitutes a “real marriage” for Jorge Bergoglio. This is where we’re at. Let this sink in for a minute.

As we said in a recent post, Francis has completely done away with black and white — everything is now fifty shades of grey! The Novus Ordo Church is a sect straight from the pit of hell. Francis really couldn’t make it any clearer.

And to answer right up front the question Jimmy Akin’s next blog post will ask in its title: Yes, Jimmy, he did.