I received this comment form a priest whom I know, in response to my post about the Prodigal Son. I thought my readers would be interested to read it in its entirety.
--The Catholic Church has no authority to deviate from the teachings of Jesus Christ who stated that divorcing and remarrying is the moral equivalent of committing adultery.
Nor does the Church have the authority to permit adultery – which is forbidden in the Ten Commandments: breaking any one of these is a mortal sin.
This teaching has been interpreted infallibly as a matter of doctrine by the Council of Trent:
“If anyone says that the Church is in error for having taught and for still teaching that…the marriage bond cannot be dissolved…and that neither of the two, not even the innocent one who has given no cause for infidelity, can contract another marriage during the lifetime of the other…Anathema sit.”
Council of Trent 24th Session: Doctrine on the sacrament of Matrimony – November 11,1563 – Canon 7: (Denzinger 1807)
Furthermore, the Council of Trent also taught as a matter of doctrine (and not mere discipline) that if you have committed a mortal sin, you must go to confession before you can receive Holy Communion again.
“Those whose conscience is burdened with mortal sin, no matter how contrite they may think they are, first must necessarily make a sacramental confession…If anyone presumes to teach, or preach, or obstinately maintain, or defend in public disputation the opposite of this, he shall by the very fact be excommunicated.”
Council of Trent 13th Session on the Most Holy Eucharist October 11, 1551 - Canon 11 (Denzinger 1661)
Of course only those Cardinals who know how to read will be influenced by these parts of the Deposit of the Faith.
Some members of the hierarchy seem unwilling to even mention the word sin.
They appear to think that the Prodigal Son's faults consisted of Unethical Farming and Global Warming (caused by the pigs' over production of methane).
Their friends in the Green Party would have arrested Our Lord after the unfortunate incident of the Gadarene Swine.
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3 comments:
It strikes me as shocking that we are in a position where we are having to re-affirm basic stuff like this. Are our shepherds so deceived by their own self importance that they have completely lost sight of what it means to follow Christ?
I'm sure that Council of Trent decisions aren't as binding as, say, whatever Pope Francis came out with last time he flew in an aeroplane, or whatever Cardinal Kasper told a journalist, or whatever someone wrote in the Tablet. Those are the modern ways to develop Catholic doctrine.
It certainly seems that way at the moment.
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