Before FS, I have never been approached by two homosexual people, male, female or whatever they say they are, for a special blessing as a couple. If I had been, I would not have interrogated them, but simply offered a simple blessing, not blessing any aspect of their relationship, but blessing them.
I am not sure how I would have worded that blessing if, for example, they told me they had just gotten civilly married and now would like me to bless them. Now, because of FS, I have to figure that out in a planned out way before I am asked for the first time.
Usually, people will ask me for special blessings after Mass when I am greeting people. I am still vested in chasuble and stole. Sometimes it is to bless them on the anniversary of their marriage or for some other special marital event. I do not interrogate them if they were married in the Church or their marriage is recognized by the Church. I bless them and their marriage. Should I interrogate in that setting?
It seems to me if a couple has a beef with the Church’s teaching on sex or on marriage as a Sacrament between one man and one woman and for a lifetime, and they ask me to bless a union that isn’t a Sacrament and not recognized by the Church, if they are doing so to poke the Church in the eye, but I don’t know that and I bless them, they are the ones guilty of the mortal sin of deceiving a priest and using him for their own purposes. I am not guilty of anything that is considered a mortal sin in that blessing.
As it concerns people living in sin, today most couples who plan to be married in the Church and are engaged, are living together in sin. That doesn’t stop any priest from an official blessing of an engaged couple. We know that the official blessing prayer for engaged couples which is found in the Liturgical Rite of Marriage Book, isn’t blessing any type of sin they may be committing.
In fact, at my other parishes, we offered deanery-wide marriage preparation workshops and at the end of that day-long workshop, as a group the attended the Saturday Vigil Mass at which I would offer the Blessing for Engaged Couples over all the couples at one time, at the end of the General Intercessions of the Mass. We also gave them a religious article as an “engagement” gift.
The same is true of the Nuptial Blessing at a Nuptial Liturgy within or outside of Mass. The couple may well have been living in sin prior to the Nuptial Liturgy and their sex lives might well include elements of sodomy. They plan to continue their sex life in that manner and will use artificial contraception to prevent pregnancy when normal sex is used.
Do we exclude the Nuptial Blessing from the Nuptial Liturgy? Of course not and I have never interrogated a couple about to be married about the type of sex they prefer. I hope no priest or deacon or bishop does.
I have seen advice the state of Georgia includes in the packet that has their marriage license that I must sign and return to the judge probate. It has illustrations on safe sex when doing unhealthy and STD spreading acts that some call sex. To be honest with you, some of it grosses me out. But that’s another story.
The question, though, that FS raises in my mind is something else altogether different.
Do we allow couples publicly living in sin to be acolytes, lectors, and Communion Ministers too? Does the new ideology of inclusivity extend to formal Church ministries and let’s say too, Holy Orders?
And what about paid jobs as Catholic school teachers and administrators.
Of course, for “lesser” jobs, like cooks, janitors, teaching assistants, secretaries, bookkeepers and the like, can we allow for a variety of public sins in these Church jobs? Is is wrong to call them “lesser” Church jobs?
That is the bigger issue no one is touching.
I’ve been through it with international news in Macon, Georgia, about nine years ago where our private Catholic school fired a young man about to be civilly married during the summer to his male partner and many of the school’s teachers were throwing him an engagement party to which I received an invitation to attend.
He and his partner were not Catholic. Should the Catholic school administrator and teachers celebrate his marriage by throwing parties and should his contract be renewed to continue to teach rather than firing him and under pressure to do so by the bishop?
You can read about the Macon scandal HERE!
That’s the conundrum that isn’t being addressed and more serious, I think, than private blessings offered by priests, deacons and bishops.
What say you?
20 comments:
Tell them to go to their local DNC chapter for their “blessing” where they can also learn about the “Sacrament” of Abortion or you can tell them “Go and sin no more” and bless them individually and pray they receive the grace to do so!
I read the article and it appears some Catholics supporting Dollar are Vatican II victims - not being properly catechized in the Faith.
Father McDonald said..."I am not sure how I would have worded that blessing if, for example, they told me they had just gotten civilly married and now would like me to bless them. Now, because of FS, I have to figure that out in a planned out way before I am asked for the first time."
Father McDonald, Bishop Stephen Parkes said in response to Fiducia Supplicans:
"As Bishop, I will ensure that the directives of the declaration are understood by the priests and carried out properly."
Father, in regard to Fiducia Supplicans: How in-depth will your bishop(s) go as it pertains to the guidance that he will provide to his priests?
Thank you.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Anyone who approached a Catholic Priest to bless their homosexual relationship prior to Fiducia supplicans you would have known instantly that the person had no idea what he was doing. Then in your pastoral judgement you could counsel and administer the proper blessing. Now, homosexualists are armed with a litmus test to challenge your secular orthodoxy and gather information on your views and practices that may be used as needed in the future. You are caught in the pincer movement of so ial justice and evolving Catholicism.
Bishop Parkes’ response is not a profile in courage like the African bishops!
MT, Pope Francis in FS told bishops and bishops conferences not to regulate the prayers a priest or deacon might choose. So Bishop Parkes can only make sure it isn’t liturgical or contrived. But of course, we saw Pope Frances’ good buddy, Fr. James Martin, arrange a casual blessing with a couple he contacted and then made sure the New York Times was there to photograph it and make it an international story. To think Marin did not pass this by Pope Francis would be naïve. He completed disobeyed the letter of FS but certainly not the spirit of it or Pope Francis’ spirit for such a public gesture. Here’s the pertinent part of FS telling bishops to stay out of the wording of the blessing:
Therefore, the pastoral sensibility of ordained ministers should also be formed to perform blessings spontaneously that are not found in the Book of Blessings.
36. In this sense, it is essential to grasp the Holy Father’s concern that these non-ritualized blessings never cease being simple gestures that provide an effective means of increasing trust in God on the part of the people who ask for them, careful that they should not become a liturgical or semi-liturgical act, similar to a sacrament. Indeed, such a ritualization would constitute a serious impoverishment because it would subject a gesture of great value in popular piety to excessive control, depriving ministers of freedom and spontaneity in their pastoral accompaniment of people’s lives.
37. In this regard, there come to mind the following words of the Holy Father, already quoted in part: “Decisions that may be part of pastoral prudence in certain circumstances should not necessarily become a norm. That is to say, it is not appropriate for a Diocese, a Bishops’ Conference, or any other ecclesial structure to constantly and officially establish procedures or rituals for all kinds of matters […]. Canon Law should not and cannot cover everything, nor should the Episcopal Conferences claim to do so with their various documents and protocols, since the life of the Church flows through many channels besides the normative ones.”[24] Thus Pope Francis recalled that “what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule” because this “would lead to an intolerable casuistry.”[25]
38. For this reason, one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation. At the same time, one should not prevent or prohibit the Church’s closeness to people in every situation in which they might seek God’s help through a simple blessing. In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.
It almost seems that in an effort to make such blessings casual, and not codify how blessings of this nature are delivered, it's all indirectly been codified as to ritual/non, place and dress.
It puts priests in a corner to sleuth out desire, purpose and motivation prior to determining ritual/non, place and dress.
The Roman Church cannot be everything to everyone, be everywhere at one time determining this and that and performing adequate forensics to determine ritual/not, place and dress.
Tell me I'm wrong, but, FC seems to be an extension of the desired "mess".
It is essential NOT to implement apostasy. The African bishops gave the Pope a richly deserved middle finger!
MT would have been a perfect member of the Hitler Youth
Does anyone here remember how we got to the point of having altar girls in every parish? It started with disobedience. It then extended itself by bishops looking the other way. It finally resulted in a tired pontiff signing off reluctantly on a practice he disapproved of?
How about Holy Communion in the hand? Again, disobedient countries under disobedient bishops began the practice. Soon another reluctant pope offered dispensations to bishops conferences that insisted it had been a local tradition, and, in our case, the U.S. Bishops, under that disgusting leadership of Cardinal Bernardin, LIED to the Holy See and changed their voting rules to force it on Americans. Force? You scoff at that word? I remind you that in most parishes, we were told THIS IS THE NEW WAY WE ARE TO RECEIVE COMMUNION. Very, very few parishes told their faithful that they could still receive the old way.
When something bad happens in the Church, at least in the modern era, it happens slowly but steadily. Learn this word:
I N C R E M E N T A L I S M
The fag-fest being imposed upon us by bad bishops lacking enough integrity to even feel shame has been incremental. It doesn't matter if the actual details of the dicastery's document doesn't violate the letter of canon law. The secular media and the disobedient in the Church are taking care of the rest. They have "taken the ball and ran with it. Most people don't read news stories. They read headlines and the headlines are telling us something very different and the disobedient in the Church are making this disobedience not only reality, BUT THE NORM.
Take just one example, Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director for DignityUSA, who said, "“For the Vatican to so totally reverse itself in less than three years is just such a quick response to something that produced a global outcry for being seen as cruel and pastorally insensitive and harmful to people's ministry on the ground.”
THE MEDIA IS LAPPING THIS UP. WE ARE AT A POINT OF SUCH SHALLOW CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS THAT PERCEPTION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN REALITY.
Regarding the local ordinary, Parkes: Again, he's a beginner and he's young. He knows who holds the power levers and Bishop Strickland's swift dismissal was surely not lost on him. He is going to be cautious. However, at some future point, he is going to face an either/or moment that will be inescapable. That's when we'll find out what he's made of.
Finally, the biggest temptation of this whole mess is to hate Bergoglio. Well I DO hate what he's doing. I despise what he's doing. I SPIT UPON WHAT HE IS DOING. But as an act of my will, I refuse to hate him. I have become convinced that he is in a place of irresistable ignorance and insists that what he is doing is for the good of the Church. I believe he honestly thinks we have to change Church doctrine and structure completely to "get with the times".
This kind of confusion and chaos is NOT a fruit of the Holy Spirit. For anyone to call him or what he is doing HOLY invites the blood of the martyrs to cry out against him at the Last Judgment and it insults basic human intelligence. This pope is mislead and misguided AND HE IS WRONG. We must pray for him, regardless of what we might feel.
Frankly I think priests and bishops have given up on doing their job when they leave off insuring parishoners are following the ancient teachings before administering any sacrament, and this why the Church now in such a sorry state. There was a time when priests and bishops looked into things and enforced things.
The fruitcakes having been running the Church for a long time but they have been emboldened by the Apostate in Chief! Sadly, unless there is a corrective course very soon, the Church will continue to shed millions of members each year until there is only a remnant left - the TLM Catholics. The Novus Ordo Church is living on fumes and rests on quicksand
Bishops of Burundi reject Fiducia Supplicans.
"Aucun pretre ne peut benir les pecheurs publics qui ne manifestent aucun geste de repentir pour renoncer a leurs peches." My translation: "No priest is able to bless public sinners who manifest no gesture of repentance in order to renounce their sins."
Bishops of Congo reject Fiducia Supplicans.
"...nous disons NON a toute forme de benediction des couples de meme sexe."
"... we say NO to every type (all forms) of blessing of couples of the same sex."
Black Pentecostals write to Pope Francis to ask him to reject same sex blessings.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/storage/pdf/pentecostal-letter-to-pope-francis76.pdf
bysRus says "
The Roman Church cannot be everything to everyone, be everywhere at one time determining this and that and performing adequate forensics to determine ritual/not, place and dress."
Amen!
I would add to that statement, a few thoughts. The tendency of the west to explain and define all the things kind of placed themselves into this corner. (Put another way it would have been wiser for Rome to say nothing here)
All one needs to do change something is create a perception that it can change and within a generation it will be changed. I would make the argument it is worse precisely because no explicit teaching was changed. In the case of something being changed it's a lot easier to call out than when nothing is done. Or put another way it's the cowards way of dealing with issues.
Kyrie eleison is about all I can really say at this point.
By the way, the “priest” in the picture looks like part of the problem!
I agree with Bob; too many clergy are so inclined to "not offend" that they do offend those who still try to be faithful Catholics. Since the clergy are playing the selective obedience game, the laity will as well.
It is simply amazing that, in the midst of a homosexual predation crisis by clergy (wait until the AG reports from NY and NJ come out) that the Pope and so many bishops are falling all over themselves to welcome sodomites.
I think the bottom line is that Pope Francis is an enabler of certain kinds of sinful behavior. Rather than promoting love the sinner but hate the sin, he tries to elevate certain sins to the level of a virtue, but does so by stealth.
This ideology of welcome and inclusivity is but a smoke screen because the institutional Church by way of Canon Law requires all Catholics to attend Mass under the canon of obligation on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, under the pain of mortal sin if they freely choose not to attend. Unless someone has a civil injunction against them attending Mass because they are disruptive or a danger to the community, no gay person that I know of has ever been turned away from attending Mass anywhere in the world.
Now, if they dress immodestly and in a mocking way of Catholic virtues, then, yes, they can be turned away. Do we welcome and tolerate string bikinis on men, women or whatever one says they are under the banner of inclusivity and welcome?
But the Church has always had an outreach to sinner, no matter their sexual preferences, legal or illegal. We call that the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance. We have prison ministries to hardened criminals and those on death row.
Mother Teresas’s sisters opened hospices at the height of the aids epidemic in the homosexual community to care for them in their dying days and did not demand a litmus test from those they took in to repent of their homosexual behavior that caused them to catch a terminal disease.
We don’t condemn heavy smokers or drinkers who develop life threatening diseases. We make their lives comfortable in their last days, even while they continue to smoke and drink.
So…..
"t is simply amazing that, in the midst of a homosexual predation crisis by clergy (wait until the AG reports from NY and NJ come out) that the Pope and so many bishops are falling all over themselves to welcome sodomites."
E X A C T L Y.
To this day, we still hear the LIE repeated to us over and over that the sex abuse crises which was exposed in 2002 was pedophilia. IT WAS NOT PEDOPHILIA.
The entire VIRTUS shakedown is mere window-dressing to convince the uncritically thinking among us that something preventative has been done.
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice report frustrated the bishops who commissioned it because it didn't tell them what they wanted to hear. It found that the majority of cases involved priests preying on adolescent boys--i.e., HOMOSEXUALITY. The report was quickly disowned.
Bishop Bruskewitz had the integrity to stand up to his fellow bishops and tell them that we had to deal with homosexuality in the priesthood. He was met with the sound of crickets.
How often do you see a book like 'Goodbye Good Men" in a parish gift shop with all the other "feel good" books?
Our world is in crisis beyond the boiling point. Between the wars, complete moral breakdown of society, an entertainment industry that is pornographic, a government that had used civil rights as a smokescreen to tell us what is good is now bad and what was bad is now good, false worship of the earth, confiscatory tax rates, race relations approaching the level of warfare and so many other problems and THE TOP PRIORITY OF OUR BISHOPS IS 'WELCOMING" PEOPLE WITH DISORDERED SEXUAL APPETITES.
They give themselves away. The pool of Catholic leadership is tainted with perverse men who can't see beyond their own disordered inclinations and the rest of us are paying for it.
That is why bishops like Bruskewitz are retired with great speed.
That is why bishops like Bernardin rise to the top of the power structure.
It's sickening, but even more sickening is that they think we are so stupid that we can't see what they are really up to.
In a way they're right. We've been stupid enough to enable this with our donations. Maybe we really ARE stupid. For decades we unwittingly asked for a pope like Francis. Now we get to live with it.
Father McDonald said..."I think the bottom line is that Pope Francis is an enabler of certain kinds of sinful behavior. Rather than promoting love the sinner but hate the sin, he tries to elevate certain sins to the level of a virtue, but does so by stealth."
Then that makes Pope Francis, who promotes sin supposedly, a man of Satan. In regard to the notion that Pope Francis promotes wickedness in supposed stealth fashion:
If true, then His Holiness is aware of his supposed evil action in question. He plots in secret supposedly against God/holiness. That is the work of the Devil.
Finally, the following stands in monumental opposition to the notion that Pope Francis "tries to elevate certain sins to the level of a virtue": Pope Benedict XVI was unrelenting in his portrayal of Pope Francis as a holy man — a true man of God.
Example: In his final book, that was released earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI declared:
"At the end of my reflections, I want to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to constantly display the light of God, which, even today, has not faded. Thank you, Holy Father!"
Pax.
Mark Thomas
MT, you must be having a Fredian slip of some kind with your comments, but no, you are wrong, although you may have a deep seated suspicion about it that you let slip. Freud can help, I have no expertize. But, we can only say that Pope Francis, like all of us, except the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord, are sinners. Don't let your deep seated fears about His Holiness lead you to state in writing that he is a man of Satan. That would be absurd of course.
Father McDonald, you stated clearly that Pope Francis, in stealth fashion, enables (or has tried) sinful behavior. That is not the first time that you have expressed that on your blog.
Father, you said today that Pope Francis "tries to elevate certain sins to the level of a virtue." You said that he "does so by stealth."
If your claim in question is valid, then it is undeniable that Pope Francis is evil. In secret, if your above claim is valid, Pope Francis has plotted against God.
Well, I guess that it is not so secret, as least to you, as you are aware of Pope Francis' supposed determination to act as "an enabler of certain kinds of sinful behavior."
Father McDonald, in respectful fashion, I reject your claim in question. Father, you made a mistake in regard to the "stealth" behavior that you attributed to Pope Francis.
But I am not on the warpath against you. I do not cast any stone at you. I am certain that, as compared to you, I have made far more mistakes in my life.
Anyway, I have total trust in Pope Benedict XVI's following evaluation of Pope Francis:
Again:
"At the end of my reflections, I want to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to constantly display the light of God, which, even today, has not faded. Thank you, Holy Father!"
Pax.
Mark Thomas
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