Posted on 07/07/2005 7:58:28 AM PDT by NYer
The Vatican on Thursday said too many Roman Catholics were not taking their religion seriously and that those faithful who receive communion and still support abortion rights were behaving scandalously.
In an 88-page working document for a synod of bishops to be held in October, the Vatican also decried dwindling attendance at Sunday Mass and reaffirmed a rule that Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church cannot take communion.
The document on the theme of the Eucharist said many Catholics had lost the sense of the sacred surrounding communion, which the Church teaches becomes the body and blood of Christ during the Mass.
One part of the document returned to an issue that remains particularly hot in the United States -- whether Catholics who support abortion rights can receive communion.
"Some receive communion while denying the teachings of the Church or publicly supporting immoral choices in life, such as abortion, without thinking that they are committing an act of grave personal dishonesty and causing scandal," it said.
"Some Catholics do not understand why it might be a sin to support a political candidate who is openly in favor of abortion or other serious acts against life, justice and peace," it said.
The U.S. Catholic community was divided last year over whether they should support presidential candidate John Kerry, himself an Catholic who supported abortion rights.
Some Catholics say they personally would not have an abortion but, in pluralistic societies such as the United States, feel obliged to support a woman's right to choose.
But the Church, which teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and that abortion is murder, says Catholics cannot have it both ways.
The document lamented what it called "a crisis in the meaning of belonging to the Church" and an inadequate understanding of the Catholic teaching that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is real and not symbolic.
It said an increasingly secularized society had weakened the sense of mystery in the sacrament of communion. Too few Catholics were approaching communion with the "fear and trembling" that the true presence of God warranted.
It also listed a series of other "deficiencies and shadows" related to communion, lamenting that too many Catholics were taking the sacrament while they were in a state of sin because they had not gone to confession first.
"The faithful frequently receive Holy Communion without even thinking that they might be in state of mortal sin," it said.
The taking of communion by divorced Catholics who remarry outside the Church had become "a common occurrence in various countries" even though it is officially forbidden.
The Catholic Church forbids divorce.
The document lamented that in some developed countries participation at Sunday Mass was as low at 5 percent and again urged the faithful to keep Sunday holy.
You are exactly right. That is a tried and true technique to paint the broad brush of discredit over the entire Conservative Christian population.
Certainly the closer one gets to the word of Christ and the knowledge of those he spoke directly to, the closer one is to the actual faith and not some late historical invented device.
That was wonderfully said; thank you.
I forgot about McCarrick's birthday! You've just shined a little light into an otherwise very depressing day. I admit it, I'm going to feel very let down if the Pope lets McCarrick linger.
Of course, none of this is any solace to the folks in England.
May God Bless their souls, and bring comfort to their loved ones.
There are alternatives to contraception. I am a Catholic and I am morally against contraception. It seems unrealistic, I agree, but the reasons for this view are not baseless. It is not just a rule that Rome made up to be a 'drag' for a husband and a wife.
"Contraception negates the creative act of God. It also compromises the unity of the relationship between the marriage partners. For these two reasons, fundamentally, the Church teaches that contraception is disordered and morally wrong. It is wrong, according to the Church, because it separates the procreative and the unitive meanings of the marital act. In this way, the Church condemns contraception primarily because it violates the goods of marriage and procreation. In Humanae Vitae we find the following statement:
By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true marital love and its orientation toward man’s exalted vocation to parenthood.8"
( I got this quote from http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/11-12-98/Morality2.html )
To put it in a vulgar kind of way, how can you fully give your love to your spouse if you "protect" the act of love by trying to destroy any possibility of allowing the natural order or aim of intercourse, a.k.a. sexual reproduction.
I'm not trying to push my views on to others, I'm just providing an opposing opinion to highball's other Catholic Friends. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me. I would be happy to discuss anything you'd like.
Pork
I am glad you are concerned about the abusers (mainly homosexual) who use the Catholic Church to gain access to their prey. In many parts of the Church they are being weeded out and it needs to happen faster. Personally I think the death penalty is the only effective solution for homosexuals and pedophiles.
If you would like to help the situation, instead of sniping from the sidelines, and aid us in tracking down these homosexual perverts, then why not make a start by sending us your "Contacts" list???
When we eat of the bread and drink of his cup as one does during the "Lord's supper" or Eucharist as others call it, with the full realization that by doing so we SPIRITUALLY eat of his body and drink of his blood, then we are fullfilling John 6, not contradicting it.
I submit there are many Catholics and Protestants who "go thru the motions" without the proper preparation and confession of sins, for whom the ritual is nothing more than that...a ritual!
Paul warned that to "take of the cup and eat of the bread" in an "unworthy manner was to bring damnation unto one-self"!
So tell me again how I am contradicting John 6?
The Bible says we are to "present of ouselves as living sacrifices wholly acceptable unto God" The taking of the Eucharist is our personal identification with the crucifixion of Jesus... His death, Our life!
The more I hear about this guy, the more I like him.........and I'm a Baptist!.......
LOL! Good one. I'm a former Catholic and now happy Protestant but I too like the fact that the Pope is making things clear cut. Sort of like the Baptists..... :)
Jesus said "Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away"
The spiritual is not founded in material reality, material reality is founded and supported by the spiritual.
If all churches and Bibles were suddenly destroyed, would the Church as a trans corporal, transtemporal reality still exist?
What did the crucifixion ultimately establish?
So tell me again how I am contradicting John 6?
Like such:
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Do you believe that the Bread and Wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ during Mass?
It tends to make more sense to heed the beleifs, unchanged, of the church for 2000+ years than it does to beleive something you made up.
Strictly speaking Christ did make Peter the first of Church. If I had to make a judgement call between the two I'd have to assume Peter was in the right. Both being men and not of God however each was failable, still the word in the bible is divinly inspired, it is the work of God that the bible was written not just the interest of men. I'd difer to the 4 Gospels for wisdom, second to them the original traditions of the church, not the ramblings of men some thousand or so years later.
So, the church should dillute its teaching to increase its ratings?
They shouldn't be publicly diagreeing with Archbishop Levada, who is going to be the head of the CDF.
This would make a good tagline.
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