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9/25/2015

Following the Pope

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The next scheduled blog post on the Catechism (Paragraph 18) went up this afternoon (Friday) at 2:45 PM, in the Thursday stream. Sorry for the confusion but like many of you, I have been watching the pope, too.


Tomorrow (Saturday's) post may be late as I am walking in an event sponsored by the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

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9/18/2015

Doing My Homework Today

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I'm sorry we had no post yesterday, but my wife Margaret and I went out on our Thursday Date Day. I was unable to write the Catechism blog the day before. At any rate since it poured buckets of rain we did not go hiking but instead devoted our day the Orlando's cultural and educational attractions.


Today, alas, I will be finishing up my two presentations for our Diocesan Day of Faith celebration tomorrow (Saturday, 19th.) I am scheduled to speak in the first round of programs, on the Crusades, and in the very last round, on the Resurrection Narratives. With a lot of free time during the day I hope to interview a lot of catechists for the blog. If there are Orlando folks reading this who plan to attend, come up and say hello and I will buy you a cup of coffee. Of course, it's always easy to be generous on the bishop's dime.


On Sunday I'll post my reactions to the day. Keep me in your prayers.

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9/11/2015

Time and Mercy

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I am late today as I had a doctor’s appointment this AM. He assured me that I am in good health but that I might be making the blog readers sick. 

It has been a few days now since we all got the news that Pope Francis had issued formal statements on the procedures involving the annulment process. My guess is that you have had access to news summaries by now; the official site of the U.S. Bishops finally has a fairly good summary, admittedly buried somewhat at the site. I sometimes refer to the pope as “Clever Francis,” and his new annulment procedures (which supplant a portion of the 1983 Code of Canon Law) are another example of outstanding pastoral wisdom and compassion without changing an iota of moral doctrine. The essentials of a sacramental marriage remain intact—in fact, I would argue that the marriage sacrament is enhanced—by reformed procedures for proving that an ill-advised union did not meet the Church criteria for a full sacramental marriage, and by enabling couples to live in true sacramental unions with appropriate catechesis, healing, and reflection. 

Speaking from two decades of parochial work, I can give some idea here of where the system was working and a number of places where it was not. Typically, a parish priest would get a call from someone who “wished to get a marriage blessed in the Church.” In many cases these would be inquiries from Catholics who had already attempted civil marriage outside of the Church setting, and neither had a previous marriage partner. Pastorally, this is rather uncomplicated: the couple presents Baptism certificates, receives appropriate spiritual and premarital counsel, and then pronounce the Church marriage vows in a relatively modest church exchange of vows called a “convalidation;” that is, the Church, through a validly ordained priest or deacon, is witnessing the sacramentalizing of an existing civil union. It is very common for catechumens to have their marriages “blessed” during their formative year. I might add here that as a pastor I found that convalidations were a splendid opportunity for evangelization and many such couples became very active in the Church. 

However, there are many times when seeking to make things right with the Church is much more complicated, when a Catholic is married to a Protestant and one or both parties have married before. The law is a bit confusing; if the Catholic party’s first marriage was celebrated outside the Church, then the Catholic—bound to Canon Law—is not considered sacramentally bound and does not need a full annulment, only a “defective form” affidavit. But if the Catholic’s husband, a baptized Methodist for example, was previously married to a baptized Presbyterian, he is considered sacramentally married by the Catholic Church because (1) as a non-Catholic, he was not bound to Catholic laws of procedure at the time of his first marriage, and (2) the Church defines marriage as a sacrament between two baptized persons, period. If you think of it, there would be great scandal if the Catholic Church taught that marriages between Protestants were invalid. But, the case of a second marriage involving a Catholic, it is often the non-Catholic who actually needs to embrace the annulment process and ends up doing the heavy lifting.  

Another very common scenario for a parish priest is the divorced Catholic who is seeking to enter a second marriage. The “petitioner” or divorced Catholic always comes in good faith. After all, wouldn’t it be easier to marry outside the Church? But in cases of this sort we have a Catholic (or just as likely two Catholics) who by approaching their pastor have already made a statement of sorts that they wish to conform to the sacramental and moral beliefs of the Catholic Tradition in undertaking their marriage. Pope Francis sees no reason to add to their burdens with procedures that, while instituted to protect the sanctity of the marriage sacrament, take the appearance of assumption of bad faith on the part of the petitioner and punitive intent on the part of the Church. I might add here the inclusion of couples, both Catholics, who married civilly and without recourse to the annulment process(es) for whatever reasons in the past and who now wish to join full communion. Again, the Pope’s directives on mercy and solicitude make it clear that the prejudice here is to mercy. 

Annulments are hard work for all involved. I once processed a case where the original marriage took place in the 1920’s! In general, the “petitioner” for an annulment writes a detailed psychosocial history with emphasis upon state of mind and the condition of the relationship in the time leading up to marriage. An annulment sets out to prove that at least one party did not have the moral or psychological capacity to make a marriage vow as the Church understands it, and thus that the marriage never actually took place as a sacrament. Annulments are not divorces. As a sidebar, I recommend that those of you in Church ministry, when asked about annulments, recommend sooner than later after the civil divorce. Memories are fresher, and when annulments are processed competently, annulment ministers can assist petitioners to seek the appropriate spiritual and psychological healing of a failed marriage, so that a future union will have a better chance of success. The petitioner submits the names of several witnesses who knew the couple well at the time of the marriage. The other spouse in the marriage in question, the “respondent,” must be contacted by the Diocesan Tribunal and given full rights to present his/her assessment of the marriage, and may also provide witnesses on his/her behalf. 

None of these steps have been changed as far as I know. The major adjustments have been made in the Church’s administrative handling of petitions. In current practice, if a petitioner’s request is found to be with merit, the diocesan tribunal’s affirmative determination needs to be appealed to the region’s larger metropolitan diocese. For example, here in Orlando we had a highly competent tribunal that believed “justice delayed is justice denied.” But in the 1980’s, I believe, Pope John Paul II established the rule of automatic appeal, which meant that all of our cases were shipped down to Miami for a second review. Pope Francis has terminated this second review except if the respondent appeals. In addition, the pope has returned to local bishops the power to make determinations on procedures, appeals, etc. that were formerly handled by the Roman Rota or high court.  

In short, Pope Francis wished to shorten the process considerably. But I think there is more to his thinking here: he wants annulments to become moments of mercy and evangelization. He sees them connected to full sacramental communion and has conveyed to priests his desire that petitioners be treated in this respect. I also suspect that he would like to see less time and energy invested in the legal paperwork and much more in the catechesis of marriage and support of couples and families. 

Oh, and I was just alerted to this from Catholic New Service, Pope Francis’s morning address today:  

To be a true Christian means being forgiving, kind, humble, gentle, generous, merciful and very patient with one another, Pope Francis said in a morning homily. Priests must be especially merciful, he added, saying if that they weren’t, then they should ask their bishop for a desk job and “never walk into a confessional, I beg you.” “A priest who isn’t merciful does much damage in the confessional. He berates people,” the pope said Sept. 10 during the Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae. However, if snapping at people is caused not by a lack of compassion, but by being high-strung, then “go to a doctor who will give you a pill for your nerves. Just be merciful,” he said.

 

 

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9/4/2015

Catechism Analysis: Paragraph 16

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Part Three: The life of faith

16      The third part of the Catechism deals with the final end of man created in the image of God: beatitude, and the ways of reaching it—through right conduct freely chosen, with the help of God’s law and grace (Section One), and through conduct that fulfills the twofold commandment of charity, specified in God’s Ten Commandments (Section Two).

 

Paragraphs 14-17 indicate the four divisions of the teaching content of the Catechism. The first (14) spoke of the works of God through the Trinity: creation, redemption, sanctification. The second (15) outlined briefly the work of the Church in its sacramental nature, visible and effective. Today (16) we see the nature of man and his destiny to holiness, grace and free will, and the living of purpose through charity, specified in the text as The Ten Commandments. Next week (17) will discuss the life of prayer, arranged around The Our Father.

Paragraph 16 has no footnote, nor does it (or the other three headings, for that matter) make direct reference to any previous catechism in terms of its organization. Father Bernard Marthaler, author of The Nature, Task and Scope of the Catechetical ministry: A Digest of Recent Church Documents (2008), opens with a fine review of papal teaching on the subject of religious education and catechism (1ff) and notes a repetitive theme dating back to the end of the Council of Trent. The most significant papal pronouncements come from Benedict XIV in 1742 and Clement XIII in 1761. In both cases the popes believed that the poor state of religious instruction was due to deviation from the official catechism produced after the reform Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Roman Catechism.

Reading Marthaler, I was motivated to look at the text of the Roman Catechism. I found it on-line here, and the opening outline is intriguing. Edited by St. Charles Borromeo shortly after Trent, perhaps around 1570, this is a document of considerable length—340 computer pages—and in many respects resembles the modern day Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994). The Roman document is divided into four sections: the Creed, the Sacraments, the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) and The Our Father. In other words, our present day Catechism, in terms of its organic structure, is nearly identical to the Roman Catechism. I did mention in a previous blog that the Roman Catechism was intended for priests in teaching and preaching ministries; we have noted that the present day Catechism has a similar intent, extending it to all catechists and particularly to Church publishers. The era after Trent saw the compilation of many simpler “peoples’ catechisms,” by such noted sources as St. Peter Canisius, St. John Neumann, the United States bishops (the “Baltimore Catechism” series begun in the 1880’s, and even Pope Pius X around the turn of the twentieth century. Popes like Benedict XIV and Clement XIII saw this proliferation as troubling even in their own time, but the Roman Catechism in truth was hardly a layman’s teaching tool.

The present day Catechism, of course, has benefited from several centuries of advanced scholarship. In no way can it be said to be a repetition of the earlier Roman text. I came across a rather extensive discussion in the Roman book on why Catholics should not drink from the cup at Mass, but it did not mention the actual “agenda” of the explanation—that an outspoken advocate of the shared cup was the Czechoslovakian reformer\heretic Jan Hus, burned at the stake during the Church Council of Constance in 1415. Today’s Catechism has the benefits of the teachings of Vatican II to enrich and broaden its discussions.

For such a brief text, para. 16 contains a number of complicated and disputed questions both within and outside the Church. The term “final end of man” is virtually synonymous with “the nature of man” or Christian anthropology, a branch of theology as well as modern philosophy we will revisit in discussions ahead. The definitions of the meaning of man as put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas was developed considerably in the twentieth century, by Father Karl Rahner among others. The term “beatitude—and the ways of reaching it”—is the gateway to the theological conundrum of God’s efficacious or powerful saving grace and man’s freedom to sin and, in effect, “damn himself.” This controversy has raged under numerous names: in St. Augustine’s day in the fifth century the priest Pelagius held that man could be saved by his own good works; a millennium later John Calvin would hold that God “pre-destines” some to be saved, the principle of predestination.

Para. 16 speaks of the conduct necessary to remain true to our created end, as specified in the Ten Commandments. For those undertaking Hebrew Scripture study for the first time, it is often a shock to look at the Pentateuch (Biblical books of the Law) and discover that for all the simplicity of the Ten Commandments, there are over three Biblical books (notably Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) that explicate the Decalogue. “Thou shalt not kill,” for example, actually meant that one was forbidden to kill another freeborn Hebrew male. Subsequent laws permit stoning of adulteresses (see Jesus’ response to this in John 8: 1-11) and others guilty of a variety of legal and moral infractions. As to the Sixth Commandment, we find a peculiar directive that the wife of an enemy soldier may be carried off by a victorious Hebrew warrior, but he must give her thirty days to grieve before bedding her.

The term “Ten Commandments” has a theological usefulness in that it reveals God’s intent that we live a moral life consistent with our destiny. The Bible in its entirety makes it clear that the ten precepts underwent a gradual understanding curve—actually, in a healthier and more intensive observance of spirit, truth be told. We know in our present day that the discernment of moral issues continues, and often with controversy. Para. 16 does not mention this fact here, but have no doubt that later discussion of the moral life will not always be so tranquil.

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  • HOME
  • MORALITY
  • SCRIPTURE
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
  • CHURCH HISTORY
  • BOOKS
  • LITURGY
  • ON MY MIND
  • The Boys of Aroma Hill-Callicoon
  • ABOUT THE BREWMASTER
  • CATHOLIC NOVELISTS and the BOOKS THEY WRITE
  • VATICAN II DECREE ON LITURGY STUDY