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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 7, 2008 19:13:03 GMT
Recently I have been to some christenings, marriages and burials. In all of them the priests have prepared homilies very well and have been welcoming and non-judgmental to participants, many of whom have stopped practising the faith.
There is a question. Should those who no longer practise and their children be denied the sacraments? Here in Ireland the answer is definitely NO. However in the States it seems that those who supported Obama are not being made feel welcome in some Catholic parishes and are being discouraged from receiving the Eucharist.
I think we have it right. Jesus came to save us all. Those who are baptized as Catholics are part of the People of God/Mystical Body of Christ. We are all sinners and need God's grace. Thus to discourage our fellow Catholics or their children from participation in the Church is wrong.
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Post by guillaume on Dec 7, 2008 19:37:04 GMT
Recently I have been to some christenings, marriages and burials. In all of them the priests have prepared homilies very well and have been welcoming and non-judgmental to participants, many of whom have stopped practising the faith. There is a question. Should those who no longer practise and their children be denied the sacraments? Here in Ireland the answer is definitely NO. However in the States it seems that those who supported Obama are not being made feel welcome in some Catholic parishes and are being discouraged from receiving the Eucharist. I think we have it right. Jesus came to save us all. Those who are baptized as Catholics are part of the People of God/Mystical Body of Christ. We are all sinners and need God's grace. Thus to discourage our fellow Catholics or their children from participation in the Church is wrong. Receiving the Eucharist in the state of mortal sin is a mortal and sacrilegious. Those who no longer practise are obviously in this unfortunate state. So they shouldn't receive the Eucharist, the Body of Jesus, unless they received the Sacrament of Reconciliation or penance, before. However, of course, every catholic should be encouraged to participate in any sacraments, above all the Mass. I don't know how they know how people vote. Is vote non a secret, in this bizarre country which is the USA ? To vote for Obama doesn't seem to me to be a mortal sin as such. His opponent was not anti-abortion himself, neither was Bush.
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 7, 2008 21:39:26 GMT
Guillaume,
For an act to be a mortal sin it must be grave matter and done with clear knowledge and full consent. It is impossible to make these judgments. Thus one can never know if a person is in the state of mortal sin or not.
Very many Catholics participate at Mass rarely and never go to confession. Are these in the state of mortal sin.? At Christmas and Easter should all those who attend Mass only then be prevented from receiving Communioon?
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 8, 2008 17:26:16 GMT
There is a problem with the current approach, which is that it gives scandal. If (let us say) someone who is a publicly proclaimed atheist and up to their death has continued to proclaim their atheism, is given a Catholic funeral this amounts to treating the rite as a purely cultural matter with no real content and will be widely seen as implying that the difference between atheism and Catholicism does not matter very much. I can think of two very recent examples. Similarly, distributing communion to a public sinner who is known to be such can be seen as sending a message that the sin does not really matter at all and that the person can go on sinning without bothering themselves about it. On the other hand, there ought to be a general bias in favour of mercy if there is any doubt at all, and excessive severity can give scandal. By the way, I presume the statement about Obama voters implies that they should of their own accord not come forward for communion, since it would presumably be impossible to identify them (unless they wore, say, identifying badges in order to make an issue of it - such things have happened). I think on the whole current practice is too lax. We should bear in mind the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman "do not give the children's bread to dogs" "But the dogs eat the crumbs tht fall from the children's table" - always bearing in mind that the Samaritan woman WANTED to do the right thing.
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 8, 2008 20:19:28 GMT
Hibernicus,
You wrote: "there ought to be a general bias in favour of mercy".
I agree.
Should those who have been living together for years be given a Catholic marriage or a Catholic burial? I would say in general 'yes', as you cannot tell if a person is in sin and God is merciful.
Gabriel,
At Easter and Christmas many receive communion and participate at Mass who have been away from the Sacraments for a long time. Should the Church prevent people from doing this I think not. It is best to hope in God's mercy, as we all must, as we are all sinners.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 9, 2008 10:56:53 GMT
Gabriel: I think you have oversimplified it a bit. There is a question not only of the objective nature of an act but the subjective motive of the person performing it. Someone who voted for Obama because they were ignorant of, or misled about, his positions or because they sincerely believed in the "seamless garment" argument (that abortion is one of a number of social justice issues, all of which must be addressed together, and that this may justify voting for a pro-abortion candidate if his other stances are preferable to those of his opponent) would not commit sin thereby. Given the dreadful state of Catholic evangelisation and the muddled statements of many bishops on this matter, I don't think someone should be excommunicated just for voting for Obama though I believe they were wrong to do so. Somebody who makes it clear that they support Obama's position on abortion (especially when that person is a public figure who openly proclaims their views) is a different kettle of fish - such a person in my opinion certainly shoulld be excommunicated.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 9, 2008 11:09:10 GMT
Noelfitz: You seem to be confusing two issues - how should the general public react, and how should priests and bishops approach this as a pastoral matter? (Recall that the priest or bishop will probably have more knowledge of certain matters which the general public does not, such as whether the person repented and received the sacraments.) Certainly as members of the public we ought not to make hasty judgements. But remember also that to treat notorious sinners as faithful members of the church is to give scandal by giving the impression that their sin doesn't matter or is not a sin at all, and may have the effect of leading other people to commit that sin - or leading some people to conclude that the church condones the sin and is nothing but organised hypocrisy. Remember also that reparation where possible is a necessary part of repentance. Let us take one example - the late Fr. Sean Fortune, after a career of child sexual abuse and other misdeeds, committed suicide when faced with the prospect of exposure in court. Now, it is quite possible that he was not fully responsible for his crimes, including his final suicide, because of some form of mental illness. God's mercy and grace are for all, even the most heinous sinners, and we should pray that he received that mercy. There was therefore a case for allowing him Catholic funeral rites as an expression of that hope for mercy - but they should have been kept to the bare minimum in response to the heinous nature of his crimes. Instead, he received the same sort of funeral which a faithful priest would receive, with many diocesan priests in attendance (I can't recall if the bishop was there). This sent out the message that the diocese did not attach very much importance to his crimes and the suffering he ahd inflicted on his victims, even that it still doubted whether those crimes had taken place and (by extension) suspected that his victims were liars. (He claimed to the end that he was innocent, even in his suicide note, and even after what he did some of his friends refused to believe in his guilt.)
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 10, 2008 13:43:05 GMT
Jibril - The various schismatics (of both liberal and traditionalist persuasions) who have received or conferred priestly or episcopal orders are all excommunicated - Fr. Stallings, Bishop Pivarunas, Bishop Clarence Kelly etc. (If you don't know who these people are I refer you to a difficult and inaccessible source known as Wikipedia.) Archbishop Burke recently issued formal decrees of excommunication against schismatics operating in St. Louis, such as Fr. Bozek and the trustees of St. Stanislaus Church and two women who went through a supposed ceremony of ordination ot the priesthood. MOre recently, the Mafia godfathers Paul Castleeano and John Gotti were refused public Catholic funerals in the archdiocese of New York, though I understand private prayers were allowed. If you took any interest in Catholic news sources you would know this. Is there any means of "excommunicating" Jibril from this board before he suffocates it completely?
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Post by guillaume on Dec 10, 2008 20:18:57 GMT
At Easter and Christmas many receive communion and participate at Mass who have been away from the Sacraments for a long time. Should the Church prevent people from doing this I think not. It is best to hope in God's mercy, as we all must, as we are all sinners. Of course they shouldn't receive communion. To miss mass on Sunday or Holy day of Obligation is mortal sin. You should know better your basic catechism. So people who go to mass only at Easter or Christmas are not practising catholics. They go because of the tradition, of the family, of the "fashion" on somehow. But the rest of the year, they turn away from God and the Church. God is not that "silly", He knows. And those persons, while being accepted in the church during Christmas or Easter, they shouldn't receive Jesus. Of course, we are all sinners. But, for catholics, sinners, before receiving Christ under our roof, we must "cleanse" our "house", and go to confession in order to receive Him properly. This is a basic dogma of the catholic Church which should be more taught.
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 10, 2008 21:01:51 GMT
Gabriel
Many thanks for your posts.
You wrote: "Have I gone to Mass every Sunday? Have I participated at Mass or have I daydreamed or been present with a blank mind? Have I prayed every day (15-20 minutes)? Have I read the Bible? Have I studied the truths of our faith and allowed them to become more a part of the way I think and act? Have I read any spiritual books or religious literature?"
These are works of supererogation, not commands.
You also wrote: "It seems that your consideration of Catholic's is that they are incapable of examination of conscience, am I right? "
I am afraid you are right. JP II has spoken about the loss of a sense of sin among modern Catholics.
God is merciful and we have been saved by Jesus Christ. At present in some parishes in Dublin only a handful of Catholics attend Mass. Are the rest damned? If so can God be considered merciful?
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 10, 2008 21:14:29 GMT
Gabriel
You wrote about Catholics who voted for Obama.
I think the Catholic Church in the US should sort out this problem. Is it a mortal sin to support Obama and the Democratic Party? Are all those Catholics who support him implicitly excommunicated?
Pope Benedict XVI claims Catholics can vote for a candidate who does not support Church teaching if there are proportionate reasons.
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 10, 2008 21:20:59 GMT
Hibernicus You wrote: " Certainly as members of the public we ought not to make hasty judgements."
I fully agree.
However on balance I think the Church is right in being non-judgmental at funerals, marriages and baptisms.
However there is a danger of seeming to condone bad behaviour. Perhaps it is a question of balance, but Christian charity is the most importand criterion.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 11, 2008 9:59:41 GMT
Noelfitz: Refusal of the sacraments does not mean a person is damned - that is up to God, and we can't know it. Someone may not be in a fit state to receive the sacraments and yet not be fully culpable for a variety of reasons. The refusal of a Catholic funeral (at which point the person's fate in eternity can no longer be affected by our actions) and the refusal of sacraments to living persons are different issues, so I will only discuss the former here. Such refusal should be an act of evangelisation and therefore an act of charity (read the way St. Jean Marie Vianney or St. Pio of Pietrelcina reacted in the confessional to people whom they sensed were approaching them from unworthy motives or without ture repentance). Part of the problem is that many people like those Dublin non-Massgoers whom you mentioned have not been properly evangelised (or have been counter-evangelised by the media, so to speak) with the result that they see going to Mass or not having sex before marriage as purely arbitrary commands whose observance is no big deal, and when they are reprimanded they see this also as an arbitrary exercise of power rather than an imitation of Jesus' dealings with the Pharisees, the moneychangers, the Gadarene swine and barren fig-tree etc. (Anyone who thinks Jesus never uttered condemnations or threatened punishment for those who would not repent has not been reading the Gospel carefully.)
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 11, 2008 19:00:33 GMT
I gather from the tone of the replies to my original question that those fallen-away Catholics, who have not kept the faith, should not be given Catholic funerals.
I wonder if this is the correct charitable and Catholic response?
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Post by Noelfitz on Dec 12, 2008 2:06:54 GMT
Gabriel,
| am not considering those Catholics who have become Protestant. I am thinking of those who have drifted away from Catholicism.
I suppose one must discern. In practice Christian charity and pragmatism will prevail.
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