A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Truly an Ash Wednesday? Pope suggests same sex civil unions OK? March 5, 2014

I wasn’t going to cover this kind of thing very much (if at all) over Lent, but it is absolutely exploding in the secular media (which is how I found it, I was browsing for some secular news, and this is what I see.  I’m going to cry).  Pope Francis gave another of his famous “wide-ranging” interviews, and hinted that the Church might be OK with civil unions for same-sex couples.  So much for a sin that “cries out to Heaven for vengeance:”

Pope Francis suggested the Catholic Church could tolerate some types of nonmarital civil unions as a practical measure to guarantee property rights and health care. He also said the church would not change its teaching against artificial birth control but should take care to apply it with “much mercy.”

Pope Francis’ words appeared in an interview published March 5 in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera…..

……..”Matrimony is between a man and a woman,” the pope said, but moves to “regulate diverse situations of cohabitation (are) driven by the need to regulate economic aspects among persons, as for instance to assure medical care.” [It is almost a cliche’ among Catholic progressives to suborn doctrine in favor of ostensibly more “pastoral” solutions, solutions that always tend towards materialist concerns.  Is this what the Pope is doing?] Asked to what extent the church could understand this trend, he replied: “It is necessary to look at the diverse cases and evaluate them in their variety.” [Doctrine is clear.  Christ spoke in terms of black and white.  The devil loves shades of grey.  In practice, “looking at diverse cases and evaluating them” has involved a whole lot of grey]

In the interview, Pope Francis praised Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which prohibited the use of contraception.

In contradicting contemporary pressures for population control, Pope Paul’s “genius was prophetic, he had the courage to side against the majority, defend moral discipline, put a brake on the culture, oppose neo-Malthusianism, present and future,” Pope Francis said.

But he also noted that Pope Paul had instructed confessors to interpret his encyclical with “much mercy, attention to concrete situations.”

“The question is not whether to change the doctrine, but to go deeper and make sure that pastoral care takes account of situations and of what each person is able to do,” Pope Francis said. [To, in effect, absolutely neuter the doctrine by giving carte blanche in “pastoral” situations?  Has this not been the practice in most of the Church since Humanae Vitae was released, and has that not led to mass apostasy from a formally defined doctrine?  Contraception is an intrinsic evil. You either use it or you don’t.  What “pastoral situations” can there be that would permit the use of contraception?]

The pope said birth control, like the predicament of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, [How is sin a “predicament” for the Church?  The Church has been healing souls for two millenia. Sin only becomes a predicament when we don’t want to call it sin anymore] would be a topic of discussion at the Vatican in October at an extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family. [I dread this synod more and more.]  He said the synod would approach all such problems “in the light of profound reflection,” rather than casuistry, which he described as a superficial, pharisaical theology focused exclusively on particular cases. [In other words, a theology hung up on “rules”……does Pope Francis consider St. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, “pharasaical?”  ]

The pope said he had welcomed the “intense discussion” at a February gathering of cardinals, where German Cardinal Walter Kasper gave a talk suggesting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics might sometimes be allowed to receive Communion even without an annulment of their first, sacramental marriages.

And Pope Francis heaped great lauds on Kasper both during and after this gathering.

Wow.  I know people will say “nothing’s happened yet,” and “it’s just an interview,” but so much of what we’re seeing from this pope confirms time and time again that he plans on enacting – or is at least very favorable to – those items the progressives really wanted in Vatican II but could not get.  It’s a veritable laundry list of progressive dreams for a notional “Vatican III.”  I’m sure I’ll hear I need to calm down (and perhaps I do), but I’m actually feeling quite dispassionate at the moment.  It’s not like this is the first time the Pope has made statements that cause Catholic hearts to palpitate.  I’m just reviewing very public statements dating back nearly a year.

As if we needed more motivation for this Lent, but this Synod is shaping up as the most critical, pivotal event in the history of the Church since the Council.  We must do penance for all those lost in sin.  And for the good of our Church, and for our own sins and failings that have brought us this leadership in the Church we apparently deserve.