I've been trying to digest the news of what has gone on over the last couple of days. Yeah, the truly frightening part to me is that where allowance appears to be made for each individual conscience in future to determine whether or not that person's marriage was valid or null. Yeah, we all know how that's going to work out, a diabolical free-for-all where every person decides in "conscience" that their own marriage is annulled the moment the vows they took so solemnly before God's Altar begin to place real obligations on them. Human trickery cannot put asunder what God has made one flesh.
To the point mentioned earlier, yes, there is of course a difference between a spouse who wickedly abandons his or her partner to commit adultery and the one who is unjustly abandoned by the other. The first is a selfish adulterer, pure and simple. The second has been sinned against, but must never on that account go outside the Church for a "divorce" or falsely try to obtain an annulment if it was evident the marriage was always valid. With confident trust in God, the offended partner must submit to His will and seek to live in accordance with it. Perhaps by God's mercy, the sinner will return penitent and contrite, and then reconciliation and return to married life may be possible. If not, to live chastely and faithfully carrying one's cross patiently and never letting the desire of another man or woman enter one's heart the rest of one's days is the way those in such situations must remain faithful to God and will merit great reward in paradise.
It would be true mercy on the part of the Church, to the spouse now abandoned, to not only bar from Holy Communion but even excommunicate as an obstinate, public sinner the divorcee who willfully remarries without an annulment. That's how the Church our Mother traditionally penalized grave and obstinate sin, while showing mercy to faithful Catholics striving to live a holy and God-pleasing life. It's incredible how many nominal Catholics think they can use some creative legal fiction to argue a marital bond just never existed even after many years and, not infrequently, some children, together. Were they, then, born of fornication? The lax policies and skyrocketing rates of annulments even in the US alone after Vatican II have been amply docuмented. They should make clear that real, traditional reforms are necessary only in one area - that of ensuring annulments are never granted save in the rare and exceptional case where one partner, fully intending to cheat the other, manifestly never intended from the start to live together, but as a common perjurer impiously faked his or her vows before God. And if those who, contrary to good Catholic sense, have contracted civil marriages before the judgment even of lax ecclesiastical tribunals in our day, nonetheless want to receive Holy Communion, they still have, by God's mercy, in accordance with the Church's traditional discipline, to take the vow to live as "brother and sister" henceforth. I personally don't like that option very much, as I think it would be better for good Catholics to avoid even the appearance of scandal, but the Church has allowed it in the past, pre Vatican II.
Recall that this is merely a report from the Synod to Francis. Francis can come out with whatever he wants to regardless of what's in this Relatio. What he comes up with remains to be seen.
Yes, he's going to be writing an apostolic exhortation. I pray for the Pope, but I cannot agree with the majority attitude predominant on this thread. When I see people saying they're praying and hoping the synod approves divorcees receiving communion, I'm reminded of Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae when so many millions were saying the Catholic Church is finally going to surrender to the sɛҳuąƖ revolution and legitimize the bestial practice of onanism or contraception. A solitary Franciscan Friar, the only stigmatist-priest in the known history of the Church after St. Paul the Apostle, wrote to the Pope to tell the Holy Father he was offering all his sufferings for the Pope's sake, for the good of the Church. When the Pope asked for his opinion on the docuмent just before it was published, the Saint replied after reading it, "Publish it right away. Publish it as it is". History turned out differently than the liberals would have wished. Better that the liberals revolt, as they're already planning to do if they don't get what they want (cf. The heretics in Germany saying "we're not a Roman subsidiary"), than implausible sedevacantist scenarios come to pass. [Frankly, such a travesty would not yield the hoped-for millions of conversions to sedevacantism, but would rather, if anything, result in significant lapses to the Greek schism of Michael Caerularius, (or "Orthodoxy" falsely so called); especially because the schismatic Greek Church first compromised on this matter of divorce and remmariage several centuries ago, under the Caesaropapist influences of the Byzantine emperor to which it had always yielded in craven subjection.) Faithful traditional Catholics today should not give into the despair of sedevacantism or the schism of 'Orthodoxy' hoping Rome will legitimize divorce and remarriage in our day but follow the example of St. Padre Pio.
Topic: The Synods Final Relatio: Adulterers in State of Grace! (Read 3790 times)