Dogma Doctrine Discipline

well good morning everyone as you might have seen when Carmen announced this the topic this morning is on Dogma doctrine and discipline the three DS if you will and this is apropos of it's always good to go back to some fundamentals especially when with some of the current issues that are in the air these days with Pope Francis and his latest letter among other things that just come up in the normal course of being a Catholic or a Christian today so Carmen thought it a good topic and it is always a good topic to cover to bring clarity to what we mean by the terms of dogma doctrine and discipline I'd also just add a quick commercial for the summer school of faith which starts Tuesday June 14th at Gorton so we're here for this session but all of this summer school of faith sessions Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Gordon and the topic there is apologetics which is really the an area event for Catholics there used to be a lot of apologetic books written in in the 20th century in the early part of the 20th century but there hasn't been so much published recently that is useful helpful or contemporary to what current people who may not even be Christian let alone Catholic are thinking about and so apologetics is that that part of theology that traditionally dealt with questions prior to believe what why is the Catholic belief or Christian belief reasonable and historical in the first place so that's coming this summer and you'll hear more about that in those sessions and as you see other advertisements for it you have a handout I hope everyone has a handout and it's double side so when I refer to the other side of it just flip it over but I thought before we jump into the topic for this morning that we would review what I call the levels of teaching in the church because it informs and provides a framework for understanding dogma doctrine and discipline so I'd asked you to look at that and that page is really a reflection of Vatican 2 the dogmatic Constitution on the church lumen gentium and in particular paragraph 25 so this isn't necessarily new but it's good to go over it again which we'll do together and then move to the next topic of dogma so when you think about the different levels of teaching authority in the church they range from very formal occasions of what are called extraordinary and universal when the Pope is defining a marian dogma for example or an ecumenical council like the Council of Trent or Vatican 1 or vatican 2 all the way down to the Pope giving a private audience to 10 individuals and he says things so you see there's a wide range of occasions by which the Pope or bishops speak on different subjects so that's what this first page is trying to show so let's go through each one of them the first one when the Pope is speaking what's called ex cathedra from the chair is it's considered extraordinary and universal and what is meant by that is that he is proposing a doctrine to be held by the church universally and to be held of faith not an opinion not a conjecture not amusing not thoughts about will the Cubs win the World Series or not this year but rather it is a a formal declaration that what he is proposing is a matter of faith divinely revealed and our response is one of faith and we'll get into why why are we calling that out but our response is correlated to the level and dignity of the teaching so our response is the full ascent of faith but there's also other examples of extraordinary and universal teaching which is infallible on faith and morals namely an ecumenical council properly convened and blessed by the Pope so there have been approximately I believe it's 21 ecumenical councils starting with the Council of Nicaea and 325 AD all the way through to Vatican 2 21 ecumenical councils throughout the life of the church where bishops and if the Pope was not there his Lea gates were there and then later confirmed by him have met to decide and define questions of dogma and doctrine so for example the Council of Cal Seton in 451 ad defined dogmas about who is Jesus Christ he's God and man the council of trent defined dogmas around grace and freewill around the sacraments etc etc etc so an ecumenical council in union with the Pope because there been some councils held without the Pope that are later deemed invalid can and does define dogmas definitively to be held of faith and our response again is faith our response to that is ascent of faith there's another class of teaching called ordinary and universal because if you think about it there's only been 21 ecumenical councils in 2,000 years so they're not that frequent and Pope's don't often exercise their exclusive ex cathedra Authority the the most obvious examples are the Marian dogmas of the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception so it's rather infrequent that those two things are happening but obviously the church wants to guide the faithful continually and so the ordinary and universal teaching of the church is often what we see in the press or coming from the church and this is when Bishops proposing something even throughout the world which is what disperse means they may not be together in a council or a synod but they're proposing something that is basically a retelling or rephrasing or restating defined church teaching and this happens all the time so for example the church talking about the evils of abortion abortion and the evil of abortion or murder has has always been considered a moral evil and that's a inviolable dogma of the church it's not changing it will never change so the direct taking of innocent human life intentionally is something that's always going to be wrong if the Pope is giving a statement on this it may not require a council doesn't require him to make an ex cathedra statement he's just repeating accepted Church teaching in the ordinary course of doing his job or any bishop in his diocese who might write a letter to the people in his diocese on abortion or on other issues and bioethics that are directly related to that like euthanasia so these are all examples of ordinary and universal teaching but it's not exercised officially in those first two ways of the Pope speaking ex cathedra or an ecumenical council then we get into another class of the Pope speaking on something and it's authoritative but it may not be infallible if he's not repeating dogma it might be is his thoughts on a particular subject and in the literature from the congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith this involves often what they call contingent or conjectural elements and so this teaching is characterized as authoritative but not necessarily infallible or not infallible at all and the the examples I think of of this are let's take an example of an encyclical from john xxiii who was Pope in the 1950s on foreign policy in Europe is that infallible no it's not it's not because he is trying to apply Catholic social principles to what he perceives as the plight of farmers in Europe now we wouldn't begrudge any Christian leader pope bishop or layperson from speaking about the plights of in Justices throughout the world that's part of our heritage you think of the Old Testament prophets so the official status of the Pope or the bishops doesn't prevent them from speaking out on a wide range of issues another obvious example in our time is the Pope's encyclical where he's talking about air pollution and global warming and that the primary causes of that are burning fossil fuels now that's a conjecture based upon the scientists that he's influenced by and so there are arguments to suggest that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming but there's also a body of literature that shows that co2 is actually a very small percent of the total greenhouse effect in the atmosphere now Pope Francis has chosen not to heat that body of literature on on global warming but you see now we're in the area of conjecture and contingent facts and findings so that is not infallible and in fact it's not even an object of infallibility which is faith and morals air pollution doesn't fall into either of those categories and the fact that there's controversy scientifically about is a primary or secondary or tertiary the burning of fossil fuels as it relates to the greenhouse effect on the atmosphere that's still being debated even though you might not hear about it so often so you see what I'm getting at is that to the extent a papal encyclical or teaching or audience that he gives is based upon contingent or conjectural elements it - that's extent it's it's we read it respectfully it's certainly not infallible and it's possibly even deficient so on these contingent and conjectural elements I'm talking about and I just gave you a few examples of that the bishops in the same way have an ordinary exercise of their teaching office in their diocese to the extent they repeat the faith that's universally held that's authoritative but it's not infallible again if they go into areas that involve subjective conditions it might be on what should the minimum wage be you have some bishops who would like to opine on what they think that is you can obviously see that whether it's $9 an hour or $11 an hour we are a long way away from faith and morals and when bishops do that they are then subject to the same critique and economists would be on the effects of unemployment or employment on various groups of people the response is there you notice have changed by the way out on the last two we just talked religious submission of intellect and will is out of the posture of faith but an act of faith is not required because it's not that level of teaching so on the examples that I've been giving there is a respect for an encyclical on what it's proposing and teaching and we should read it and listen to it and think about it but it doesn't command the same kind of response as the dogmas on Mary or on the Trinity or on the real presence in the Eucharist do from us to be considered faithful Catholics the last teaching office that the church will speak to is that of theologians and this was more confused of 40 years ago and 30 years ago when there's a lot more public dissent among Catholic theologians and a lot of the progress that's been made here through John Paul the second and Benedict of crushing these people and removing them from their their teaching offices maybe not as fast or as rapid as we would have liked but you don't see as much as you did in the eighties you know the people like Charles Curran are long gone teaching at Protestant universities or secular universities others like that have died off happily so so you see less of this and it was much more of an issue 30 years ago but theologians have a teaching office too it just happens not to be authoritative and they're there their arguments are are given the respect on the merits of their arguments so if they they might have three PhDs behind their name but if they're spouting things that just are not accurate not true that they could have 10 PhDs it has no bearing on our allegiance to that or even its authority they have no formal Authority like the Pope and the bishops do when they so it's all based upon the merits of their arguments and and there are obviously good theologians out there too who can be very effective teachers and we all probably have names that come to mind of priests and laymen out there who are excellent teachers of the faith in universities and who publish books etc so I just wanted to provide this skeleton before we then turn to the subject for this morning are there any comments or questions on this I'll just read quickly then from Vatican two the dogmatic Constitution on the church it's not in your packet or your your two pager but it's paragraph 25 for your reference and I'll it's it's a very concise statement of everything I've just gone over so it reads quote among the principal duties of Bishops the preaching of the gospel occupies a Neman in place for bishops are preachers of the faith who lead new disciples to Christ and the are chthonic authentic teachers teachers endowed with the authority of Christ who preached to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice and by the light of the Holy Spirit illustrate that faith they bring forth from the Treasury of Revelation new things and old making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock bishops teaching and communion with the Roman pontiff are to be respected by all as witnesses to to divine and Catholic truth in matters of faith and morals the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and to adhere to it with religious assent this religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic Magisterium of the roman pontiff even when he's not speaking ex cathedra that is it must be shown in such a way that a supreme Magisterium is acknowledged with reverence its judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to according to his manifest mind and will his mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine or from his manner of speaking so I'll stop there because you can see how the counsel is pointing out to even the occasions on which the Pope speaks is an indicator of of the level of the message so for example if if the Pope is giving an audience to the nuns visiting from hungry that's generally not the occasion for him to surprise the world with a Dogma it just isn't it isn't the right occasion it's not the right forum also there are different types of documents that the Pope will generate from encyclicals to Epis taluk exhortation to private audiences as I mentioned to Epis taluk letters they all have a different range of authority historically speaking so that's what Vatican 2 is is trying to get it and continuing then although individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility they nevertheless proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly whenever even though dispersed throughout the world but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals they are an agreement on one position as definitively to be held that's why I use that language definitive to be definitively held because it comes right from Vatican 2 this is even more clearly verified when gathered together in an ecumenical council they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church whose definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith so that's you can see that's a now a different level we're now at the level of dogma and our response being faith and just continuing then and then we'll move on to the next topic and this infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded and this is the infallibility which the Roman pontiff the head of the College of Bishops enjoys in virtue of his office when as the supreme Shepherd and teacher of the faithful who confirms his brethren in their faith by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals and therefore his definitions of themselves and not from the consent of the church are justly styled ehre formable since they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit promised to him in blessed Peter and therefore they need no approval of others nor do they allow and appeal to any other judgment for then the Roman pontiff has not pronounced pronouncing judgment as a private person but as a supreme teacher of the universal Church in whom the charism of infallibility of the church itself is individually present he is expounding or defending a doctrine of Catholic faith the infallibility promise of the church resides also in the body of bishops when that body exercises the supreme Magisterium with the successor of Peter to these definitions the assent of the church can never be wanting on account of the activity of that same Holy Spirit by which the whole flock of Christ is preserved and progresses in the unity of faith so those paragraphs from Vatican 2 basically I summarized on this first page of level of teaching in the church so just to review authoritative and fallible definitive Pope speaking ex cathedra by virtue of his office the church gathered in an ecumenical council blessed by the Pope with the bishops presence those are authoritative definitive and infallible declarations on faith and morals bishops dispersed throughout the world can repeat that teaching and fail ibly and it's to be held as a matter of faith as well as as the when we get into secondary situations encyclicals private audiences a bishop in his diocese speaking on other topics that are related to the faith but not directly related to faith and morals that has Authority authoritative status but it is not necessarily infallible and there may be as I say conjectural or contingent factors or issues in the things they're talking about that make them reformable or correct it as time goes on so any comments or questions on that before we move to the next page so this is fairly standard stuff yes I will get to that toward the end that's an apostolic letter and so it's a little bit below the dignity of an encyclical but I would say not to brush off that question because it's in part why we're all meeting there was no new doctrine proposed in that letter if you read it all the way through what you have is a elaboration of the pastoral care of people in irregular marriages or irregular situations so I'll have a little bit more to say about that in a moment but there was no new doctrine and they even said I'm not proposing in the letter I'm not proposing any new doctrine I'm trying to elaborate strategies for helping people who are outside the church due to their circumstances away back in for them so there was a lot of heat and energy around oh he's contradicting x y&z but there was no new doctrine proposed in that and you can read that in the letter itself as well as the Cardinal Schoenberg who held the press conference to publish the letter said that that there's no new doctrine being proposed and Pope Francis later in a interview said the Cardinal is exactly right so there if you think about the battle lines that were being drawn at the synod's where some bishops did want new doctrine they didn't get it but will have more to say about that when we when we go so if you turn your page to dogma doctrine and discipline and you'll see this in the book that Carmen was referring to Ludwick at on Dogma and this is the classical layout of how we understand Dogma doctrine and discipline so Ludwick aughts and others will talk about the truths of Revelation divine revelation and make a distinction between things that are primary directly revealed by God and then things that are revealed by God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the church and even though there's a distinction we make there's really no distinction in terms of whether it is held of faith or not it's just a maybe a theological technical distinction but dogma is formally defined those things of faith they feed a you've heard that turn a term before maybe or they feed a definite of faith formally defined to be held definitively but again it's any time the church gathers either in an ecumenical council or the Pope speaking officially where they want to specify or determine more precisely a doctrine to be of faith to the status of a dogma so the examples I give there are the articles of the creep the Trinity of Jesus Christ the all of the dogmatic statements by the Council of Nicaea the council of ephesus the council of cal seeding all of that dogmatic work that was done in those councils made dogmatic statements about jesus christ the sacraments the seven sacraments being instituted by Christ that give grace is outward signs we all remember those formulations the Marian dogmas the dogma on original sin and so on I won't read all those but the point I will make is that they also extend into morals so many again it was the controversy for a while that well can the church really make a dogmatic statement about things in the moral area because that has a lot of contingent elements to in the answers of course yes and the Ten Commandments the Sermon on the Mount are all part of the divine treasury of what has been revealed by God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit so the answer is yes and the we could list more here abortion adultery fornication theft are all biblical sins if you will all clearly called out as wrong unlike a ventilator on a person who's in the hospital they didn't have ventilators 2000 years ago so you see how it's a good example of how the church has to develop its understanding but we wouldn't call and we wouldn't expect to hear the dogma on the care of elderly people it wouldn't make any sense because it already has a contingent element to it namely technology of medical hospitals so you begin to see the difference that the dogmas that I'm talking about here are directly revealed by God and there's very little ambiguity about what they are and so that's really that primary object of faith to be held definitively I mentioned a a second area here and I describe it as truths that are connected to dogma as implications of them so for example we have the dogma of Christ being human and divine is there a dog that it says that Jesus laughed there there isn't but it's it's doctrinal or dogmatic to think so because it's part of being a human being did Jesus have if we think of the dogma the resurrection and implication of that is we will not find the bones of Jesus in this world that's a implication of the dogma of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ but you won't see that defined anywhere but it's an implication of it some things are defined because they're they're being debated as a authentic development from dogmas but you see the difference a a doctrine is something to be held of faith it's it's no less authoritative than a dogma but it's we've come at it through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through councils through papal declarations and I and I try to give examples of this in order for an ecumenical council be considered advancing divine faith it has to be viewed as authentic so the celebration of an ecumenical council is an implication of the church's mission to teach authoritative Lee if if the church couldn't do this it couldn't fulfill its mission so one of the things that's always put first is the fact that the church can hold a clinical councils to define things so that's that's one another is the legitimacy of a papal election properly properly convened if we didn't believe that you couldn't have Pope's exercising their authority so you see these are are not primary objects of faith they are secondary objects of faith that are required and implied by the primary objects of faith the canonization of saints every time a pope canonized is someone that's an exercise of infallible judgment and that's an example of people sometimes say well the Pope only does that he's only done it twice for the tomb Arion dog nose well actually he's doing that every time he canonized us someone he's exercising an infallible act by declaring someone to be a saint they are in heaven they are worthy of prayers they are worthy of imitation and so on that is an infallible statement you might remember this from your study toward the end of the 19th century Pope Leo declared Anglican orders as null and void there had been theological opinion up to that point and controversy of what is the status of the Anglican faith and Pope Leo the 13th settled that question by saying I declare definitively that the Anglican orders are null and void in other words their ordinations are not valid they cannot validly save the man so then they're in the same category as Methodists and Episcopalians and and so on as it relates to their sacramental orders that is something that is a doctrine you wouldn't call that the dogma of the invalidity of Anglican orders I mean that it's clunky but it is a doctrine to be held infallibly continuing the affirmation of in the conjugal act in a heterosexual marriage that life and love must be present that affirmation of that teaching of Humanae Vitae and then repeated by john paul ii the core of that is infallibly taught and it is a doctrine and sometimes it's phrased negatively as contraception but it is actually an affirmation of that life and love must be present in the marital act between couples in marriage and and so that's what's being affirmed if we get into issues of well my wife has a medical condition that requires taking medication that also has the effect of rendering her infertile at certain points that's justified under the principle of double effect that is is a allowable use of a medical procedure or pharmacy that would prevent conception but that's not what the church's is talking about its affirming that life and love must be be present in the marital X so that's taught infallibly but there can be examples where that teaching is developed and extended which are those contingent elements I've been talking about earlier you know there are other examples last summer we talked about the Catholic social teaching and those principles and there were seven or eight of them for example the principle private property of solidarity of the principle of subsidiarity and there are other principles those are infallibly taught and they're part of the church's moral teaching their application is another topic which we'll get to in a second but those principles and all the core moral principles of this Catholic Church are taught and validly doctrinally though you wouldn't call a dogma of the principle of private property it doesn't make any sense it's a doctrine the next layer here then is the ordinary teaching proposed as true or at least as sure but not definitive or final and so these are what I'll call doctrinal you can call them doctrine but they don't enjoy the same prerogative of infallibility as the first to do and this is where we get into the area of application of those principles so you see there's a certain wisdom here because there are contingent elements in the application of any principle your right to private property as a principle is assured but what about in wartime situation if you think about it the the application of a principle is different than the principle so the principle of private property as an example is a bedrock of Catholic social teaching does that mean you can do anything you want with your property no does it mean the government in extreme situations can commandeer your property yes it does so it related to the common good so the principle is assured when we get into applications that's where we have to use our head so we we are not just simply reading dogmas and doctrines blindly we actually have to apply them to open-ended situations that may come up so examples of this that I also mentioned conditions for the use of capital punishment by the state so this gets confused often in our culture today even by I'm sad to say even by priests and bishops but the church has always affirmed the right of the state to exercise the use of capital punishment and that hasn't changed what has developed perhaps and it's based upon an assessment of conjectural and contingent elements by john paul ii and by others is that have we reached a point in first world nations where the use of capital punishment by the state is no longer necessary pope john paul ii concluded yes we've reached that point where in order to promote a culture of life the execution of criminals guilty of capital crimes crimes in first world countries is no longer needed that assessment he's making is a Prudential judgment he's attempting to promote a greater culture of life things can go back to the second and third world very quickly and so you can see how if you lived in a part of the world where there was no police force there were no courts there were no jails you would have a different opinion say certain jungles in Africa run by Christians surrounded by Muslim tribes you might have a militia that would take a completely different view of this and I suspect that Pope John Paul the ii would as well but if we're talking about the west and first world countries he's making a judgment that in order to promote a culture of life in the west which seems bent on promoting a culture of death the exercise of capital punishment against criminals doesn't accomplish that that is a an argument but none of that has has the church ever rejected the core right of the state to execute criminals guilty of capital crimes it's just the overlay today in our media in our culture and with priests and even bishops unfortunately is to just immediately go right from the principal to equating the application in first world countries to the principal if they did that they'd have a hard time explaining my copy of the Catechism from 1994 which affirms the right of the state to inflict capital punishment and then the revision ten years later where it doesn't it so you can see how we're in the area of conjecture and contingent elements which Pope's and bishops are certainly allowed to do so I hope that's clear I mention other things like on global warming and farm policy these can be revised and they can often be based as I've mentioned on contingent assessments conjectures and for that reason they can be defective in some cases we shouldn't make a habit of thinking things are defective from the Magisterium because they get things right obviously more times than they don't on these contingent things but nevertheless to the extent when they wade into economic policy for example or comments about the United Nations or global international treaties they are wading into areas that are removed from their province of faith and morals and they're making Prudential judgments that are only as good as the merits of their and then disciplines in the prudential orders the last category there these are the necessary functional declarations the pope might want to create a new diocese in france as an example or a bishop in his diocese might want to issue regulations on how annulments are going to be done in terms of the legislative process the procedural aspects of it may be the fees he reduces the fees to get an annulment for example so I think the the dollar amount feet again annulment in the Archdiocese of Chicago is nine hundred dollars maybe a bishop says I'm gonna make that two hundred dollars to make it more affordable as an example these are procedural canonical they can be universal for the whole church so for example the Pope once introduced another holy day of obligation or they can be specific to a diocese and this is where we are in terms of what the questions that came up earlier on Pope Francis's apostolic letter on the joy of love and the pastoral care of people in irregular situations and so we are in the level of disciplines of directives to bishops priests and laypeople in terms of how we accompany people in irregular situations who would like to come back into the church more fully we're in the area of what I'll call tactics we're in the area of how do we interact prudentially with people and that's you can see that's a different level of teaching and therefore authorities and so that's that's the layout of of what I wanted to formally cover to to just address this issue more that came up I'll start with the apostolic letter of john paul ii what was called familiaris consortio way back in 1981 where he was talking about how to we face Catholics who are divorced and remarried without an annulment and and basically where he what he develops is that the Eucharist is more than just receiving the body and blood of Christ it is a celebration of an identity of an ecclesial Union that we all have with the church so when we gather for Mass it's not just a matter of us receiving something it's also the celebration of an identity for those who are in in the irregular situation of divorced and remarried without an annulment they have by that action and by that life choice have severed that ecclesial unity because they no longer identify with the church teaching on a core issue of the indissolubility of marriage and so they are not to be admitted to the sacrament but he goes on to say that there are cases where the circumstances are such that they are unable to get an annulment and as a result he says if if they go to confession and live as brother and sister they in private can receive Communion so that's been the standard approach of the church on this subject for a long time at least for the last certainly for the last 35 years that the status of people who are divorced and remarried without an annulment assuming they approach the sacrament of confession and agree to the priest that they will not engage in marital relations any longer but they will stay together for the sake of their family their children etc they always had an avenue to receive Communion privately in order not to give scandal to the broader parish or the church so that that remedy has always been in existence I will then offer to you a statement of the congregation by the doctrine of the faith in 1994 in tight communion of divorced and remarried so this was from Cardinal Ratzinger at the time and it's a follow on clarification from John Paul the second apostolic letter so I'll just read this to you the faithful who persist in such a situation may receive Holy Communion only after obtaining sacramental absolution so he's referring to that case I just mentioned of a divorced remarried couple who have not gotten an annulment and but who would like to receive Communion and are willing to go to confession so may receive Holy Communion only after obtaining sacramental absolution which may be given only to those who repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and a fidelity to Christ are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage this means in practice that when for serious reasons for example for the children's upbringing a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate they take on themselves the duty to live in complete countenance that is by abstinence by and from the ex proper to married couples in such a case they may receive Holy Communion as long as they respect the obligation to avoid giving scandal it goes on in inviting pastors to distinguish carefully the various situations of the divorced and remarried the exhortation of john paul ii familiaris consortio recalls the case of those who are subjectively certain in conscience that their previous marriage is irreparably broken and was never valid it must be discerned with certainty by means of the external forum established by the church whether there is objectively such a condition of nullity that is the tribunal process of an annulment that's what is meant by the external forum the example that comes to mind is and if you think in this country but also more broadly outside of the US suppose someone is married to someone who's a member of the mob and their marriage was a sham from the beginning due to infidelity zuv of the man and these are actually not far-fetched cases by the way and and he as his wife told him as she was leaving this is crazy I'm not staying here anymore I'm taking the kids and he says to her if you ever attempt to divorce or get an annulment I will kill you and I'm not cooperating with any tribunal so you can just forget that and you're not gonna be able to get a hold of me again you can see how that's next to impossible to advance that in the external forum so what is the fate of this woman if she remarries and has children from that Union so this declaration goes on it must be discerned with certainty by means of the external forum if possible established by the church whether there is objectively such a nullity of marriage the discipline of the church while confirms the the exclusive competence of ecclesiastical tribunals with respect to the examination of the validity of the marriage of Catholics also offers new ways to demonstrate the nullity of a previous marriage in order to exclude as far as possible every divergence between the truth verifiable in the judicial process and the objective truth known by a correct conscience adherence to the Church's judgment and up and observance of the existing discipline concerning the obligation of canonical form necessary for the validity of the marriage of Catholics are what truly contribute to the spiritual welfare of those concerned the church is in fact the body of Christ and to live in ecclesial communion is to live in the body of Christ and to nourish oneself with the body of Christ with the reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist communion with Christ the head can never be separated from the communion with the members that is the church for this reason the sacrament of our union with Christ is also the sacrament of our unity of the church and in Church receiving Eucharistic Communion contrary to ecclesial communion is therefore itself a contradiction so you have the finish there of a research thing that look you only should receive the Eucharist if you are in proper communion with the church that can be achieved through the external forum of an annulment and in this very discretionary case of the internal forum as it's called now a lot of people don't know this and it hasn't been talked about much but in the case of the woman married to the mobster she could receive a moral declaration from a priest in consultation with the tribunal that her first marriage was not valid and received communion privately so that's been the settled practice of the church for decades now we come to the letter of pope francis not only is there no new doctrine proposed in that letter but what he's done is he's he's in a way that perhaps is confusing to the broader audiences of people who read this or read a new snippet he has made very public these very highly discretional personal situations which you can't publish general rules on obviously suppose someone said well it's not a mobster is gonna kill me it's just someone who lives in Decatur and I can't get a hold of them you know you see how that's completely different and and so it is so hard and and this is where if if you'd like to make a criticism of Pope Francis I think this is where it is namely is it prudent to publish something like this over 300 pages on a topic that is highly discretionary between a priest and the conscience of the person approaching them in a way like this and and it's it's difficult because it then does create more confusion than it solved do we have cases of pastors out there today who are wagging their finger at people who approach them privately looking for help that's not my experience of the priests and bishops I know are there examples of that that you could point to of course there are but did they need to hear this guidance this way or maybe a memo to their bishop would have been a more effective way to do this so that's the critique respectfully it would make of the letter is that this isn't how you do things in a in a large organization I think of just my business experience where I to run facilities that had you know hundreds and hundreds of hourly people working and you had HR policies on sexual harassment and other things that were grounds for dismissal drug use etc etc and and we would publish these policies and in a union environment they are very very well known and so I remember a case of a maintenance manager who was taking drugs and it violated the policy but it so happened that the drugs he was taking were for a rare form of cancer he had that occasionally made him act strangely I'm not going to publish that in an HR manual that how would you say that in a manual you know it's it's you may not take drugs unless you have a condition subjectively that you've determined you need it's impossible to run an organization like that you would sit down with the individual privately and say you would counsel them on what to do but you see how it is leaders and organizations know what to communicate at what level is the plan I'm trying to make and business leaders face us all the time with what do we publish in terms of our HR policies versus how do we handle one-off situations that are difficult you know I I had another situation where our Quality Control Manager who was married was dating someone in the customer service department and they would go to lunch together and it was becoming a problem for the office because at the Christmas party we would all meet his wife and yet we know he was dating someone so I took him aside privately and I said to him look you're making your personal life my problem everyone knows what's going on you have to stop this and you have to stop it now and he he did now there was no policy in the HR manual of you may not cheat on your wife I mean but leaders have to know what to publish at what level to whom and what to handle in the internal forum and so their critique of Pope Francis on this is that we're not running a lemonade stand here we are running a universal Church and what you say is going to be read by a wide group of people and things that should be handled in the internal forum should be handled in the internal forum that's their critique so there's no new doctor and he's not being unfaithful to this he's not being unfaithful to that this is a management issue this is a I hate to put it in in secular terms this is a business issue of how to communicate to what groups what kind of message you know I could give you many examples of that where you have HR issues when you're managing large groups of people and you have to have a policy manual of course but you have to know when to stop talking also and when to handle things internally so that's how I would characterize the letter and I say that respectfully because I Pope Francis if you read the first seven chapters it is a beautiful description of Christian marriage heterosexual Christian marriage biblically based goes through church he was asked if you think of the initial drafts of the Synod documents by the German Bishops they wanted to start with a sociological survey of marriage throughout the world and the different patterns and models of marriage and what nonsense and Pope Francis had none of that it was completely stricken from his final document so we should be happy that in the first seven chapters we have a beautiful reaffirmation of Christian marriage the issue is everyone focuses on the last chapter in the last footnote of that chapter yes that as I've just read to you the the footnote itself doesn't really contradict the practice of the church it's actually in continuity with the congregation Doctrine of the Faith letter from 1994 on Communion and divorce Catholics so I see it in continuity I just see it as unwise how it was even formulated this way right so we would we may not like stylistically how he said that the Eucharist should not be a prize for the perfect eye I think that that's tone-deaf so I agree with you that do we have a problem today of people coming to mass too much too often receive the Eucharist I don't think so we have single-digit participation in Europe of mass attendance on Sunday so to write something like that is I agree with you to be not in tune with what's happening in the West in particular but as I'll say again in reading again the 1994 statement of allowing for an internal forum solution for divorced and remarried Catholics who do not have an annulment they can receive Communion that is consistent with what he says in that footnote my beef was why are you why did you create a hullabaloo about this you know two synod's to merely reaffirm what the church's practices was in a highly discretionary way that's that's not responsible as a leader of a worldwide organization that's that's the issue why to the point you rate it's causing confusion it's causing confusion well maybe on some level but all I'm saying is is what I'm saying which is it is in continuity with Church practice as we've seen how it's been communicated has caused confusion I think both statements can be true I want to be sensitive to our time are there any comments or questions on the topic I mean this is is a good subject to cover and everyone wanted to get to this but the dogma doctrine discipline distinctions are useful helpful on a variety of issues you know we've been talking about this but the encyclical on global warming is subject to the same kind of critique of conjectural contingent elements that may change we might discover from science that actually water vapor is formed more often by episodes from the sunspots than burning fossil fuels so we it's helpful to know these distinctions in general and then apply them to situations but in this last case of Pope Francis on marriage what he there's no doctrinal change from what I can see yes so generally speaking a doctrine can and the Marian dogmas are an example of that where the faith of the church on the Immaculate Conception for example had been discussed and believed for millennium or on the assumption on capital punishment we're in the area of application of moral principles by the state in this case and so the principle of the state having the right to use capital punishment is affirmed I don't know that it would ever be elevated to the level of a dogma because the reason to make something a Dogma is to resolve a controversy to provide clarity the church is trying to act as service to its members on something that's being debated and discussed endlessly no one's really debating the right of the state to have this right to execute criminals guilty of capital crimes the conversation is around the application of that an example let's say there's a Christian nation one day that's formed right surrounded by Boko Haram in Africa that's the example I was thinking of to survive to exist the defendant citizens if you could see how could obviously have to have the death penalty the comment was I see this is all leading to chaos and I would say a couple things things have been more chaotic believe it or not in our history think of right after Vatican 2 the mass being in English and all the innovations that began to start happening that was pretty chaotic you can go back in time in the church when there were three people claiming to be poked in the 15th century in the forth end of the 14th century right think of the 4th century of there were more area and bishops heretical bishops who thought Jesus was not God then there were Orthodox bishops and saying that the nation's was one of those bishops who he was thrown out of his diocese five times he had to live in the Hills while the Greek Emperor's were purging out all the Orthodox Catholics think about the French Revolution where they were putting the Eucharist in the cannons and shooting it against the people they were killing with it think of all the priests and nuns that were butchered by the French Revolution do you know there were in in the space of about three years 45,000 Frenchmen were killed in the reign of terror 45,000 in the space of three years the church was devastated and and so things I think actually have been worse Christians in the Middle East for a long time I'm not downgrading that at all but I wouldn't point too a letter by Pope Francis on marriage as the the match that lights the the chaos I we've had these problems for a long time yes you know I I guess I as a as a spiritual matter I I try not to let myself get distracted by these things it's pretty clear to me what my faith calls me to do and I don't want or seek these distractions because that's what they are ultimately now if if I have an ability to influence it absolutely but there's nothing I can do about conversations Pope Francis has with Cardinals that are liberal let's say or misguided etc or and is that even productive to dwell on that if I can't change it now I can influence my local situation the priests bishops here etc on some level but to reflect on that too deeply is I think in some ways counterproductive to just my own personal spirituality and faith I agree with that yeah well good well thanks everyone for coming hope to see you this summer at Gordon you

Channel: Church of St. Mary Summer School of Faith

Views: 2,121

Rating: 4.8367348 out of 5

Keywords: Roman Catholic, dogma, doctrine, papal infallibility, pope francis, magesterium, ex cathedra, amoris laetitia

Id: jk8K5lseVy8

Length: 63min 56sec (3836 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2016