Theologians & Scholars Formally Request Correction of Amoris Laetitia

No one can state what it will be like in the very end. To say we will all have bodies is pure speculation. We might have bodies and souls for a brief instant. But after that only God knows. We don't know Gods plan. There is no right or wrong answer. But there is different spiritual philosophies.

Who says God destroys anything. We destroy through our free will. We destroy good.

Good thief, judgement upon death. Humans timeline or Gods eternal moment. Two very different definitions of time.

Yes, He will judge the world on the last day. But we don't have a clue what happens after...our only real truth is the humanity/souls will be separated. The next part of the journey is a mystery.

These conversations are interesting and there is some clues to Gods plan. But most of it is a mystery. I can give you my personal spiritual philosophy/interpretation and you can take it with a grain of salt.

But instead of trying to prove me wrong. Which in all reality I am...just consider it food for thought.

If you really want to debate... 20 questions with millions of possibilities will never get you a answer.

Brother al

 

What will God do with the body if only the soul remains in paradise? The person who dies in God's grace won't have destroyed the body.

I'm not trying to prove you wrong. I'm merely trying to figure out why you would want to over-think this. The Church teaches that we will have a particular judgement immediately our soul is separated from our body on death and that our body and soul will be reuinted for the general judgement at the end of time. The traditional teaching of the Church has been that hell is a place of eternal fire and that we will suffer the absence of the beatific vision and God's infinite love. Saints who have had visions of hell describe it as a place where the damned are burning but not annihilated. If it's good enough for the Church throughout the ages and its good enough for the saints who have been shown hell, it's good enough for me. Why isn't it good enough for you? I don't see how it adds anything to a person's spirituality to speculate on the duration of the reunification of body and soul.

 

Now thats better.

I have stated nothing that is against Catholic Theology or Dogma. I have stated my personal spirituality. You can take it or leave it.

But it is interesting to discuss the spiritual. Thats why i am here.

May God Bless You on Your Journey

Brother al

 

Which facts are you alluding to which have been presented do not represent the truth?

Every week the Popes statements and actions bring a new controversy, and he typically does not clarify them. This leaves Catholics in an awkward position of having to question the Pope on his actions.

The reality now is that Catholics have to check the CCC every time the Pope says or does something.

Please by all means rebut the questions that I brought up in relation to the Popes statements and actions. I welcome it greatly, I would love to see each one of them knocked down. The points brought up are not "tittle tattle" they are very grave and deeply concerning.

I merely bring up Pope Francis' questionable statements and actions to light. Why you construe this as condemnation and persecution I have no idea. Its like calling people who question the actions of Barrack Obama racist.

Do you believe that all the actions of Pope Francis being brought up in this thread have no merit to be questioned?

He has not formally contradicted the CDF, but informally he has done it numerous times. He has also has uttered many heretical statements, if you wish I can repeat some of them for you. I also have not laid any charges against the Pope, I merely bring up his questionable actions. As for never having poisoning the faith, that is debatable.

I am here because I am concerned for the Church, and wait for many of my questions to be answered. But I find it interesting that when people bring up all the controversial actions of the Pope you think they have an agenda to attack him. If the Popes litany of controversial actions did not occur this thread would not even exist.

Then perhaps we need to build a list of his controversial actions, and hopefully refute them one at a time. Unfortunately that list is so large, and the task so daunting that this forum is likely incapable of performing the task. While I agree with you that even critiquing the actions of the Pope is very serious, we can no longer look away from the growing volume of his uncertain actions.

While we all have logs in our eyes... we also have the Laws that the Lord Our God has given us to obey. This topic isn't about counting the number of sins of the Pope. It is about where the Head of the Body of Christ is leading the Church, and based on his actions it is gravely concerning where we appear to be heading.

Tell your supporters I would love nothing more for them to rebut the points being made here. I personally have gleaned so much from this thread it has been amazing, it has been no waste of time for me. I have no intention of leaving this thread until clarification has been made on the points being made here. But I agree that if you cannot bring clarification to the actions of the Pope being brought to light in this thread it becomes a waste of time for you.

 

Have it your way SH. I find nothing but hope and certainty in my pope. You find nothing but despair and confusion. Have it your way.
Sorry for the brevity. I have back to back patients all day.

 

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/iss...t-chance-to-heal-a-rift-over-st-john-paul-ii/
Francis has an excellent chance to heal his rift with followers of St John Paul II

A banner unfurled on St Peter's Basilica during the canonisation of Pope St John Paul II (CNS)
The rift, which began with the joint canonisation of John Paul II and John XXIII, is rarely spoken about in public

When Pope Francis arrives here next week for World Youth Day, will he come as his predecessors did – Benedict XVI to honour John Paul II, and John Paul in turn to honour Paul VI? If he does not do so, he will further widen the rift with Catholics who are devoted to the sainted Polish pope. That there is a rift is beyond question.

It is spoken about openly in private, but rarely in public. It began with the decision, just a few months into the pontificate of Francis, to accelerate the cause of Blessed John XXIII – who did not have the requisite second miracle – in order to jointly canonise him with Blessed John Paul II, who not only had a second miracle, but plenty to spare.

If ever there was a contemporary Cause that deserved, as it were, a solo canonisation, it was that of John Paul, perhaps the most consequential historical figure of our time. Had Providence brought the two Causes to maturity at the same time, that would have been one thing, but it was altogether different to waive the requirements for John XXIII in order, it appeared, to diminish or to balance out the attention given to John Paul.

In different circumstances, something similar was done in 2000, when John Paul beatified John XXIII and Pius IX together, along with three others. Of course no rules were waived then, but it was widely accepted that John XXIII was the spoonful of sugar needed to make the medicine (Pius IX) go down. The decision of Pope Francis was poorly received by those who thought John Paul needed no such sweetener.

The actual canonisation exacerbated the problem. It was conducted in such an understated fashion as to come off rather flat, despite the enormous number of bishops who came from all over the world. Pope Francis said next to nothing about John Paul, and nothing about Poland at all, despite the immense number of Poles in Rome.

Most shocking of all, given prevailing Roman manners, the Holy Father had not a public word of thanks for Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz – Archbishop of Kraków and personal secretary to John Paul for 39 years – despite the canonisation falling on his 75th birthday. As Dziwisz reached the mandatory retirement age on the day that the man he served for his whole life was canonised, basic courtesy demanded an acknowledgement that he was entitled now to sing his Nunc dimittis, secure in the gratitude of the entire Church. Why Pope Francis did not extend that courtesy remains puzzling, but the slight is remembered. It all left the John Paul enthusiasts rather cool toward Francis.

That relationship would warm up, but in a combustible rather than affectionate way, with the two-year synod process, which had as its apparent aim the overturning of St John Paul’s teaching in Familiaris Consortio. After that goal did not achieve the support of the synod of bishops, despite two years of trying, Pope Francis issued Amoris Laetitia, which does not overturn Familiaris Consortio – there is too much deliberate ambiguity for that reading to be sustained – as much as it undermines the vision of Veritatis Splendor, John Paul’s 1993 encyclical on the moral life.

World Youth Day in Kraków, in the home city of the pope of Divine Mercy during the Jubilee of Mercy, offers Pope Francis the ideal opportunity to heal the breach. His host will be Cardinal Dziwisz at an event that is entirely the fruit of John Paul’s pastoral imagination. The model for taking advantage of the opportunity lies in following what John Paul himself did in 1979, and Benedict XVI in 2006.

John Paul had every right to return to Poland in 1979 as a conquering hero. He was not only a native son, but successor of the martyred Stanislaus, Bishop of Kraków, the royal and ancient capital of Poland. Yet he presented himself instead as the successor to Pope Paul VI, who had been denied permission to visit Poland by the communists in 1966 for the millennial celebrations of Poland’s baptism. At that time, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, primate of Poland, flanked by Karol Wojtyła, then-Archbishop of Kraków, celebrated the millennial Mass at Częstochowa in the presence of a great empty throne, representing the absent Blessed Paul VI.

In 1979, the throne of Peter in Poland was no longer empty, but John Paul began his first address in Poland – to the state authorities – by quoting Paul VI. His history-changing homily in Warsaw’s Victory Square later that day opened with John Paul casting himself as fulfilling the desire of Paul VI to come to Poland. Twenty-seven years later, Benedict XVI came to Poland explicitly to thank Poland for the gift of John Paul and to lift him up for the entire Church.

Francis can easily do the same, arriving in continuity with, and offering honour to, his great predecessor. It will be an excellent chance to heal the rift.

 

Obviously the growing criticism of AL isn't limited to a handful of troublemakers here at MOG. More and more, mainstream Catholics are coming to realize the grave problems, but papal positivists and the Vatican are not willing to be fraternally corrected:


http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=28913
Vatican newspaper publishes defense of Amoris Laetitia
Catholic World News

July 25, 2016

L’Osservatore Romano has published a defense of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia by Rodrigo Guerra López, a philosopher at the Center for Advanced Social Research in Queretaro, Mexico.

Stating that “it is not strange to find resistance when Christian thought takes a new step forward,” López writes that the controversy over Amoris Laetitia recalls earlier controversies over whether the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on religious liberty was faithful to the teaching of Leo XIII and whether St. John Paul II’s use of phenomenology was in accord with the Church’s philosophical tradition.

“Amoris laetitia is a true act of pontifical teaching,” said López. “It is very imprudent, in addition to being theologically inexact, to insinuate that this apostolic exhortation is a kind of personal opinion, almost private.”

In Amoris Laetitia, López continued, there is an “organic development” of the understanding and application of the deposit of faith, but “Pope Francis does not change the essential doctrine of the Church.”

“The deposit of faith is a gift we must protect,” but not something to be stored in a freezer, López said. In applying the deposit of faith with “creative fidelity,” Amoris Laetitia is an example of the hermeneutic of reform in continuity mentioned by Pope Benedict in his 2005 address to the Roman Curia, and not an example of rupture with previous teaching.

López also states that critics of Amoris Laetitia who cite St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict are misinterpreting these three figures.

References:

• Fedeltà creativa (L’Osservatore Romano, p. 5)

 

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/
“L'Osservatore” Says What “Amoris Laetitia” Says. But Then It Gets Pelted

Point and counterpoint between Rocco Buttiglione, in the pope’s newspaper, and Professor Robert A. Gahl of the Roman university of Opus Dei. The former in favor of communion for the divorced and remarried, the latter against

by Sandro Magister



ROME, August 2, 2016 – After giving plenty of room to cardinals and bishops for an empty-headed lovefest over the postsynodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” “L'Osservatore Romano” has also given two laymen a turn, who have instead entered into the thick of the debate and have both taken positions in favor of the pastoral innovations so dear to Pope Francis.

All of this took place over the span of three days, between July 20 and 23.

The first to weigh in was the Italian Rocco Buttiglione, a member of Communion and Liberation, a professor of philosophy and renowned expounder of the thought of Karol Wojtyla, whose confidant and friend he was, but also a person engaged on the political terrain, as a member of parliament and minister of culture:

> La gioia dell’amore e lo sconcerto dei teologi

The second was the Mexican Rodrigo Guerra López, he too engaged on the two fronts of culture and politics, a professor and researcher at the Centro de Investigación Social Avanzada in Querétaro:
> Fedeltà creativa

Both have insisted on the continuity between “Amoris Laetitia” and the previous magisterium of the Church. But both have read the postsynodal exhortation as “an organic development with creative fidelity,” which for Buttiglione implies a clear openness to communion for the divorced and remarried, no longer with those stringent conditions - living as brother and sister - established by John Paul II in particular.

So given that “L'Osservatore Romano” has so far not published even a single line that would signal the presence among cardinals, bishops, priests, and laymen all over the world of interpretations that instead hold firm the traditional teaching of the Church on the point in question, it is more and more evident that the authentic position of Pope Francis is precisely the “evolutionary” one, in spite of the calculated ambiguities and reticences of the document he wrote.

Moreover, the fact that it is precisely an historic Wojtylian like Buttiglione who has supported the pastoral innovations attributed to Pope Francis with respect to his predecessor makes such innovations even more credible.

It was foreseeable, therefore, that the broadsides of Buttiglione and Guerra López would not escape backlash.

And in fact so it was. The two received replies right away from two experts on the other side.

Buttiglione received a reply on July 26 in “First Things” - the online magazine that describes itself as “America's most influential journal of religion and public life” - from Fr. Robert A. Gahl, Jr., a professor of ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome:

> Healing through Repentance

While for Guerra López the reply is on its way from Jaroslaw Merecki, a Polish Salvatorian and professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome.

“On its way” because his reply will be published as an exclusive on this website in a couple of days.

So here, for starters, is a full reprint of Gahl’s reply to Buttiglione.

__________

Con't

 

Con't


Healing Through Repentance

A response to Rocco Buttiglione's reading of “Amoris Laetitia”

by Robert A. Gahl, Jr.


A few days ago, in the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Rocco Buttiglione entered the thorny sdebate over Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia".

Buttiglione, the former Italian minister of culture and an expert on the philosophy of Pope St. John Paul II, sought to defend Francis from conservative critics who claim that he has broken with John Paul’s teaching on divorce and remarriage.

With a populist approach centered on the sensus fidei of Catholics unencumbered by theological theories, Buttiglione claims that a simple interpretation of "Amoris Laetitia" will be the most faithful one, the one best able to understand and appreciate the pastoral novelty proposed by the pope.

Unfortunately, Buttiglione’s interpretation of the distinction between objective morality and subjective imputability, a distinction emphasized and developed in "Amoris Laetitia", is misleading. When taken seriously with its full pastoral implications, it will encourage a merciless, rather than merciful, pastoral approach to repentant sinners.

Buttiglione addresses the especially controverted question raised by the more difficult passages in "Amoris Laetitia": whether or not a person who is divorced and civilly remarried, or simply cohabiting, may receive Holy Communion.

He leverages the objective-subjective distinction to note that a person who commits what is objectively a mortal sin might not be subjectively guilty of that sin, and therefore may be excused from full blame for it. Such a person may feel trapped and be sorry for what led to his or her predicament, without knowing how to resolve it.

All of this is true. But Buttiglione goes one step further and submits that the confessor should determine whether or not the penitent may be admitted to the sacraments, without being guided by predetermined principles. Predetermined principles would lead to casuistry, and besides, “the variety of situations and human circumstances is too vast” to be covered by them. Thus, the sin committed by one who continues to engage in sexual relations with someone to whom he or she is not (currently) married may not be grievously culpable. Buttiglione thereby implies that the confessor may open the door to the sacraments without securing full repentance from the penitent.

While Buttiglione is right that some past sins may not be subjectively culpable, his suggestion that the confessor can give the penitent “a pass” for such sins in the future cannot be reconciled with the tradition that holds that habitual sinners must repent to be forgiven and that their repentance must include a firm purpose of amendment (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1451 and Council of Trent, DS 1676). Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more” (Jn 8, 11). Good confessors know to guide their penitents toward full repentance by helping them reflect upon what they may do to free themselves from a difficult predicament or even an apparent dilemma. By helping the penitent to achieve a firm purpose of amendment, the shepherd does him or her a favor – instructing in the fullness of the truth of Jesus.

Pope Francis famously promotes pastoral accompaniment as a merciful process of encounter with the Savior. To confuse the law of gradualness whereby, as John Paul proposed, the sinner is gradually brought to face the fullness of the truth, with a gradualness of the law whereby some sheep are dispensed from the prohibitions of intrinsically evil acts, as Buttiglione seems to propose, would be to undermine the message of salvation and mistake the power of Jesus’s Redemption (See John Paul II, "Familiaris Consortio", n 34). Rather than helping sinners find redemption, subjectivist laxity locks them into their personal suffering. It denies the healing power of true repentance and the uplifting remedy of the Holy Eucharist to those who have responded to Jesus’s invitation to “sin no more.”

In an important interview in 2013, soon after his election, Francis warned of the dangers of both legalism and laxity in the pastoral approach to repentant sinners. Even as he denounced the legalism of binding people by rigid rules, he condemned false compassion:

"The confessor... is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful, because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, 'This is not a sin' or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds."

To heal the wounds of the sheep, the shepherd must help them face the truth about their own sinfulness, so that they may embrace the fullness of redemptive mercy. Only then, with true repentance and a firm decision to sin no more, can one receive absolution and enjoy the graceful assistance of the Holy Eucharist.

Buttiglione is seeking what I like to call a “Catholic hermeneutic,” in contradistinction to a “progressivist” or “revisionist” hermeneutic from the left, or a “conservative” hermeneutic from the right. The Catholic hermeneutic is rooted in a superior epistemology of the faith, insofar as it presupposes a living Body of Christ, always the same Body, alive “yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13, 8). This superior epistemology enjoys the firm foundation of divine revelation as treasured by Church Tradition and enlightened by faith and the prophetic inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as the Church, with all her members, engages the world in history. To use the terminology common to political analysis (and admittedly deficient when dealing with questions of theology), the Catholic hermeneutic avoids the pitfalls of the left and the right. On the left, the progressivist hermeneutic reads church teaching as though the magisterium must improve upon revelation in accord with the historical developments of our age. On the right, the conservative hermeneutic prefers a silent pope because, from the conservative perspective, we already have enough doctrine and it will always stay the same, like a petrified forest rather than a living body.

In these times of ecclesial controversy, Buttiglione's attempt to read "Amoris Laetitia" in continuity with the previous papal magisterium is commendable. But the details of his pastoral implementation lead to dangerous and irreconcilable deviations from the tradition, especially with respect to John Paul's important teaching documents "Familiaris Consortio", The Catechism of the Catholic Church and "Veritatis Splendor."

Unfortunately, therefore, Buttiglione ends up undermining the very premise of his approach to reading "Amoris Laetitia".

__________

 

http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2016/08/don-nicola-bux-on-amoris-laetitia.html

Don Nicola Bux on Amoris Laetitia: "The Eucharist is Not a Sacrament for the Sinner"

"The Eucharist is not a sacrament for the sinner but the sacrament of reconciled sinners. Just as it is the source and principle of mercy. I hope I have been clear!

Nicola Bux, August 13, 2016 at a youth meeting in Schio. The theologian spoke on the theme "The sacraments are not a joke." The Eucharist is not a sacrament for the divorced and remarried, but for reconciled sinners. The liturgist Nicola Bux is one of the most reputable practitioners of the liturgical science and is one of the leading supporters of Benedict XVI's intended liturgical renewal. He is a lecturer at the Theological Faculty of Puglia and the local Institute of Religious Sciences, consultor of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and spiritual assistant of the St. Josef Brotherhood of Bari. Under Pope Benedict XVI. he was also a consultant of the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Pope .