Archbishop Chaput

[47of74]

And some other dumb things too.

nbcnews.com/news/us-news/archbishop-philadelphia-issues-strict-guidelines-n604786

Quote

The head of the Philadelphia Archdiocese says gay, divorced and remarried Catholics can receive the sacrament of Communion --- as long as they don't have sex.

"Live as brother and sister," Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in a seven-page guideline that was released July 1.

Titled "Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia," it also states that gay Catholics should not be allowed to hold "positions of responsibility" in the parish.

Guys like Chaput are the reason I'm not a Catholic anymore. 

 

[Fundie Bunny]

What does he think of the pope? He is not even against divorced men from being priests.

[lawfulevil]

He can go "live as husband and wife" himself.

[doggie]

well this should make people flock to the church for sure. 

http://bigstory.ap.org/90339344a93749c19d279d228107c66d

Quote

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia is closing the door opened by Pope Francis to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion, saying the faithful in his archdiocese can only do so if they abstain from sex and live "as brother and sister."

Archbishop Charles Chaput, who is known for strongly emphasizing strict adherence to Catholic doctrine, issued a new set of pastoral guidelines for clergy and other leaders in the archdiocese that went into effect July 1. The guidelines reflect a stance taken by St. John Paul II.

"Undertaking to live as brother and sister is necessary for the divorced and civilly remarried to receive reconciliation in the Sacrament of Penance, which could then open the way to the Eucharist," the guidelines read.

 

Church teaching says that unless divorced and remarried Catholics received an annulment — a church decree that their first marriage was invalid — they are committing adultery and cannot receive the sacrament of Communion.

 

Chaput says the new instructions stem from Francis' sweeping document on family life released in April. That document — called "The Joy of Love" — opened a door to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.

 

[LadyCrow1313]

[samira_catlover]

Let me see, here (looks up the very excellent Lead Us Not Into Temptation and also Vows of Silence by investigative reporter Jason Berry, and also the Pulitzer Prize-winning Spotlight reports published by the Boston Globe staff):

There have been major scandals in the RC Church since the 1980s, where clergy were KNOWN to be molesting children, and they got shuffled from parish to parish to parish to continue re-offending.  No immediate suspension from clerical duties for the safety of the People of God (pending detailed investigation), and IIRC, it took a LONG time for some of those clergy to be laicized. 

But people who are legally married (albeit outside Church standards) are henceforth barred from the sacrament of Communion, for the Ebil Offense of copulating with their adult spouses.

[Eternalbluepearl]

My spouse acting as my brother and avoiding sex was how I got divorced in the first place though.

[NachosFlandersStyle]

To be clear this guy is reiterating old beliefs that Francis has been suggesting should be changed, not proposing new practices. Of course many people don't say this stuff out loud for fear of sounding as crazy as this guy, and many others just don't give a shit. I'm a certified cohabiting, blaspheming, birth-control-using sinner, but when I went to Mass with my family at Christmas I got in the Communion line out of habit and nobody batted an eye.

[Georgiana]

This has always been the case.  The degree to which it was enforced by various local priests may very, but this was always the official line.  My aunt had to stop taking Communion when she married a divorced man even though she had never been married before.  

[Marian the Librarian]

Ew!

[NachosFlandersStyle]

15 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

This has always been the case.  The degree to which it was enforced by various local priests may very, but this was always the official line.  My aunt had to stop taking Communion when she married a divorced man even though she had never been married before.  

Yes, technically you are not supposed to take Communion unless you've been to confession about any of the "big" sins. In a large diocese though it pretty much operates on the honor system. If the priest or server doesn't know your business they're not gonna question you before handing over the wafer. Instead you just get awkward reminders like this.

 

Personally, I think the attitude towards divorce will be the first to change among the church's sexual teachings. At least among American Catholics I know, there seems to be pretty broad agreement that it's cruel and outdated.

[FlamingFundie]

38 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

This has always been the case.  The degree to which it was enforced by various local priests may very, but this was always the official line.  My aunt had to stop taking Communion when she married a divorced man even though she had never been married before.  

I agree that YMMV on this. My very Catholic current husband had not been married previously, but I was a divorced very-non-Catholic when we came together. His priest is so awesome, he *almost* makes me excited to go to Mass haha! Anyway, I was divorced before and the preist knew this because we sought counsel with him about getting me a religious annulment for my previous marriage so that my current marriage with my husband could be officially recognized by the Catholic church (per my current husband's wishes-- I couldn't care less). I don't take Communion for various reasons (Im not Catholic, I am a germaphobe) but all the divorce stuff hasn't stopped my husband from taking Communion. The priest has never said anything to us. But our priest is pretty awesome though-- he had all the "welcome all people with open arms" beliefs even before Pope Francis came along. We also had our child baptised in that Catholic church thanks to our priest, so if he suddenly started pushing "live like brother and sister" to us that would make for some awkward explaining about how our daughter was conceived...

[Gimme a Free RV]

This reminds me of the young woman, years ago, who told me that she thought of my then-husband as a brother.  At the time, they were screwing each other's eyeballs out.  Oh, how many times I would like to have gone back to her and said, "Really?  You do THAT with your own brother?!"

[Carol]

I think Amoris Laetitia works in a strip bar near me.

[December]

I don't understand why making consenting adults feel shame over remarrying after a divorce is such a top priority for this guy, given the many other serious issues the RCC could choose to address (including issues within the Church itself). 

If contraception is so forbidden in the RCC, I'm assuming it's because sex with the possibility of procreation is seen as a critical part of Catholic marriage? If that's the case (please, anyone feel free to fill me in, as I don't know!), how do they justify a marriage where sex is off-limits permanently? 

[Cleopatra7]

59 minutes ago, December said:

I don't understand why making consenting adults feel shame over remarrying after a divorce is such a top priority for this guy, given the many other serious issues the RCC could choose to address (including issues within the Church itself). 

If contraception is so forbidden in the RCC, I'm assuming it's because sex with the possibility of procreation is seen as a critical part of Catholic marriage? If that's the case (please, anyone feel free to fill me in, as I don't know!), how do they justify a marriage where sex is off-limits permanently? 

For the Roman Catholic Church, what makes a marriage is consent between the two consenting parties, not consummation, otherwise the marriage between Mary and Joseph would be considered not a real marriage. For a while (like in antiquity and the medieval period), it used to be "trendy" for very pious married couples to live like brother and sister and devoted their lives to prayer. I don't know if that's a thing anymore, but it was for a long time. At the same time, the Catholic Church also believed that marriage was important because it prevented an outlet for sex that was morally sanctioned. Thus, we have the idea of the "marriage debt" by which spouses are obliged to have sex with each other as part of their agreement to get married and to fulfill the sexual desires of the other. Of course, you can see how such a view can quickly devolve into marital rape, since the other spouse has to fulfill the debt whenever the other wants it. 

The problem as I see it is that the Catholic hierarchy thinks that norms on marriage stay static, when in reality it's always changing. The reason why it was easy to get American Catholics to obey the hierarchy in the early and mid 20th century is because most white Catholics still lived in ethnic ghettos where the priest's word was law. Thus, people could be easily peer pressured into following church rules on sex, unlike now where Catholics in general are more geographically dispersed and not reliant on the Catholic hierarchy to make moral decisions. However, the conditions of the white Catholic ghettos appeared to be the exception, rather than the rule in Catholic history. Marriage wasn't even a sacrament in the Catholic Church until the late medieval period. Before then, the laity tended to follow whatever the local customs were, which could differ a lot from village to village. It was quite common for peasants to live together before marriage, because they didn't have to worry about land or dynastic concerns like the nobility. Because consent made a marriage, there were many cases where young people contracted a marriage between themselves, with no priest or parents, and that was it. On the flip side, there were also many cases where one party would claim the other party had married them in secret, with the other person denying any such thing had happened. Naturally, this led to a lot of drama:

https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/innIII-marriagewomen.asp

Quote

"We have learned from the letter that you have sent to us that a certain girl of your diocese was married to a man who was frigid by nature and brought into his home.   Since she could not be continent, she fell in love with a young man.  Before she had informed the church of her legal husband's impotency she moved in with the young man who betrothed himself to  her de facto and had sexual intercourse with her.   When it came to your notice, you compelled the young man to leave the girl and to swear an oath that he would not keep her or have intercourse with her as long as her husband was alive, since the man and the girl had not been separated by a court judgment.   The first man took her back into his home again, but embarrassed by his impotency entered a religious order and a short time later died.  The youth who had betrothed himself to the girl received her into his home and treated her as his wife.  When she bore him a child, he sought to leave her and marry another woman.  You have asked us to instruct you  what should be done in this particular case. 

Since there are many things that are not legal in the beginning but afterwards, with the emergence of other facts, become legal, we mandate that, if the facts of the case are exactly as stated above, Your Fraternity through this Apostolic letter compel the youth to hold the aforementioned woman as his wife under the threat of ecclesiastical censure and without any possibility of appeal.

Innocent III.  Written in the Lateran, 1 April, 1204"

I would encourage FJ members to read all the letters at the above link, since they're very Jerry Springer in their luridness.

[December]

2 minutes ago, Cleopatra7 said:

For the Roman Catholic Church, what makes a marriage is consent between the two consenting parties, not consummation, otherwise the marriage between Mary and Joseph would be considered not a real marriage. 

I think what got me confused is it looks like if a marriage isn't consummated, then it can be dissolved even if it was technically valid? So in your example, Mary and Joseph's marriage would be real but at the same time their abstinence would be grounds for either of them to request it be voided, as I understand it? I'm sure there is some complex theological reasoning behind it, but from my perspective it just seems like a two-tiered system for marriage. 

[ester]

4 hours ago, Eternalbluepearl said:

My spouse acting as my brother and avoiding sex was how I got divorced in the first place though.

This. My only regret is that I have but one upvote to give....

[Cleopatra7]

27 minutes ago, December said:

I think what got me confused is it looks like if a marriage isn't consummated, then it can be dissolved even if it was technically valid? So in your example, Mary and Joseph's marriage would be real but at the same time their abstinence would be grounds for either of them to request it be voided, as I understand it? I'm sure there is some complex theological reasoning behind it, but from my perspective it just seems like a two-tiered system for marriage. 

I don't have "Fundamentals if Catholic Dogma" close at hand at the moment, but I believe that if both spouses agreed to a Josephite marriage (I.e. living as brother and sister) then it was allowable. Otherwise, both spouses had to pay the marriage debt. I'm not sure if Josephite marriage in the classic sense is allowable anymore, perhaps because of local laws that stipulate that consummation is required to make a valid marriage, as well as evolution within Catholic thinking that makes marriage a vocation in its own right.

[snarkopolis]

Every time one of these Archbishops gets it in his head to try to "remind" Pope Francis of what the Catholic Church is about, Francis fires or demotes them. Just saying........

[NachosFlandersStyle]

Fun fact: St. Therese's parents married after they were each turned away from monastic communities for health reasons. Neither one wanted to give up on the goal of consecrated life, so they decided to remain celibate. After some time their priest noticed they did not have children, and told them it was their duty as a married couple to reproduce. They proceeded to have nine children, and the five who survived infancy all became nuns. Therese and her parents have all been canonized, and one of her sisters is currently a candidate for sainthood.

Sometimes I wonder if the Catholic Church is looking at the rest of us like "see, it's easy to be a good Catholic family, it's been done before!" 

[Cleopatra7]

1 hour ago, NachosFlandersStyle said:

Fun fact: St. Therese's parents married after they were each turned away from monastic communities for health reasons. Neither one wanted to give up on the goal of consecrated life, so they decided to remain celibate. After some time their priest noticed they did not have children, and told them it was their duty as a married couple to reproduce. They proceeded to have nine children, and the five who survived infancy all became nuns. Therese and her parents have all been canonized, and one of her sisters is currently a candidate for sainthood.

Sometimes I wonder if the Catholic Church is looking at the rest of us like "see, it's easy to be a good Catholic family, it's been done before!" 

The Holy Family (i.e., Mary, Jesus, and Joseph) is generally considered to be the model for Catholic family life, which I find a bit odd. Not only is the Holy Family a standard that no one can possibly achieve, but think about what it consists of: a perpetual virgin whom Catholic dogma teaches was preserved from original sin and never sinned in her earthly life living in an asexual marriage to an older man, while raising a child who is supposedly both god and man. The whole situation is queer in every sense of the word.

In any case, the push to have more "ordinary people" (that is, non-monastics or priests) canonized seems to be part of the general push to have marriage redefined as a vocation. Before Vatican II, a vocation referred to being "called" to the religious or priestly life, whereas marriage was simply the default for the masses in the "spiritual B-team" who couldn't hack it as celibates. This is why marriage became a sacrament relatively late in Catholic history, because the Church Fathers and early medieval writers didn't think the subject was worth thinking about and because they thought as many people should be monastics. After Vatican II and the collapse of the women's orders, the rise of second wave feminism, and the sexual revolution, I think heterosexual marriage was redefined to act as a bulwark against changing views of sex, gender, sexuality, and family structure. This is particularly obvious in John Paul II's "Theology of the Body," which portrays sacramental, heterosexual, married sex as being of cosmic significance, though how an ostensibly celibate man knows this is never explained.

[CyborgKin]

Oh yeah, the RCC still deny that Mary and Joseph ever made the proverbial beast with two backs.  Way to miss the point and focus on all the wrong things, guys. *sigh*

[47of74]

This has always been the case.  The degree to which it was enforced by various local priests may very, but this was always the official line.  My aunt had to stop taking Communion when she married a divorced man even though she had never been married before.  

I remember the rector at the Episcopal church I go to mentioned she went to a Catholic funeral and the priest went out of his way to invite everyone in the church - including non Catholics - to come up and receive communion. And he asked her to help out at the funeral.

[PraiseDog]

I love all your posts, @Cleopatra7!  The history is really fascinating to me.  The Catholic church has definitely redefined its dogma over the years, according to changing societal conditions...
I'd love to hear your take on all the Pre-Renaissance popes who were far from celibate!