July 2014 Print

 

Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

This issue of The Angelus on marriage cannot avoid the heated debate which has avidly fed the media at large, for and against the Catholic Church. What is at stake is nothing less than the sanctity of Catholic marriage since the problem, practically speaking, is whether or not to allow remarried divorcees to receive Holy Communion. On this question, the reader may refer to the statement of Bishop Fellay and to the important historical text of Prof. de Mattei in reply to Cardinal Kasper.

Remarried Divorcees and the Church

Christ said that marriage is an unbreakable bond. In Matthew 19:3-12, Christ specifically ruled out divorce, saying, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” “Whoever puts away his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if the wife puts away her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11; Luke 16:18).

Following Christ’s condemnation, the Church has always affirmed that remarrying after divorce or separation was sinful. The Church Canon Law (of 1917) imposes an automatic excommunication on those who marry before a non-Catholic minister (can. 2319). The Third Council of Baltimore explains how this applies to divorcees who remarry. Church law moreover denies Christian burial to public sinners (can. 855), and among these are included those known to be remarried divorcees.

Chesterton said: “We do not need a Church which moves with the world; we need a Church which moves the world.” The Church cannot be the salt of the earth without becoming a sign of contradiction. Her impeccable moral principles based on the natural law and the Ten Commandments (e.g. Thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not desire thy neighbor’s wife) fly in the face of a permissive society where liberty translates as license. However, sexual liberation is bound to speed up the downslide of societies. Contraception has led to abortion; abortion led to divorce; divorce has led to civil unions of all kinds. Families and children are under direct attack from such immoral legislation.

Would a slackening of Church rules and of God’s commandments prove merciful? Some object that the Church is merciless to those who made hard decisions due to painful circumstances. Yet, for these as for all sinners, the Church has applied the balm of the faith and understanding, and is still offering them the support she bestows on all sinners. Indeed even public sinners are apt to receive succor from Holy Mother the Church, dependent on the circumstances. In the case at hand, the Church has always made the proper distinctions between notorious and hidden cases, between those locked in a free or necessary cohabitation, with the prerequisite that they live chastely as brother and sister to be able to receive any sacrament. Yet such a demand, not so uncommon in lawful marriage bonds, does not stand a hearing from a world sunk in filth.

The Kasper Bomb

At the February consistory of cardinals, Kasper, at the request of Pope Francis, gave a lengthy conference on the question of the family which will be the topic of the October Synod. In less than ambiguous terms, he advocated for a revision of the Church praxis of not admitting remarried divorcees to the sacraments, given their state in life.

In the present conference, he suggested that the current situation is analogous to that of the Second Vatican Council on issues of ecumenism and religious freedom: Without violating the binding dogmatic tradition, the Council opened doors. We can ask ourselves: Is it not perhaps possible that there could be further developments on the present question as well?

He added that “we cannot presuppose that spouses” understand the conditions which make for a valid marriage, and asked if the presumption of validity “is not often a legal fiction.” In light of this, he suggested that instead of questions of nullity being decided by a tribunal, “As an alternative, one might think that the bishop could entrust this task to a priest.”

Likewise, the sacraments should be made available to the few seriously prepared couples: “A divorced and remarried person: (1) if he repents of his failure in the first marriage, (2) if he has clarified the obligations of the first marriage, if it is definitively ruled out that he could turn back, (3) if he cannot abandon without further harm the responsibilities taken on with the new civil marriage, (4) if however he is doing the best he can to live out the possibilities of the second marriage on the basis of the faith and to raise his children in the faith, (5) if he has a desire for the sacraments as a source of strength in his situation, should we or can we deny him, after a period of time in a new direction, of ‘metanoia,’ the sacrament of penance and then of communion?”

Our Comments

The statements of Cardinal Kasper are pregnant with strange assumptions.

1. Progress in disorder. It is revealing to hear Kasper use the ‘developments’ on ecumenism and religious freedom at Vatican II to force a similar ‘development’ on the question of concubines. Put in less diplomatic terms, this means that the dogmatic contradiction of postconciliar teaching is the key which opens the door to the more obvious contradictions now erupting in the moral arena.
2. Devious praxis forces devious laws. The presumption that modern-day couples getting married do not know what marriage is seems odd: it is a slap in the face of the Church that she has not done her job of teaching the faith for the last 50 years. And what is Kasper trying to argue? That…majority makes the truth? And therefore we need to annul with a sweep of the hand all these “legally fictitious marriages” and go counter to the sacred vows emitted by the couples? But will not the remedy be worse than the malady? To create exceptions in principle means the end of the principle. Instead of strengthening family bonds, the Church will simply loosen it to equate it to the status it had in Israel before Christ’s time.
3. The end of public sinners. The last Kasperian blow which smashes to pieces the vestiges of Catholic marriage is the admittance of successive polygamists to the sacraments. Those who put themselves in a public situation of sin are inapt to receive absolution or Holy Communion. The question is not a legal matter, but an inherent contradiction. There is a logical impossibility in granting forgiveness to a person who, not being committed to changing his life, shows no firm purpose of amendment and therefore no real sorrow for his sins.
4. Communion is due to all Mass attendants. As to Holy Communion, it is only a post-Vatican presumption that one is required to receive Communion at every Mass, while the confessionals are left unused. For centuries, people received rarely and yet understood that they benefitted from the spiritual goods of the Church. By way of illustration, Cardinal Burke had tirelessly insisted that the Church’s teaching on refusing Communion to “manifest grave sinners,” including politicians who support abortion, is perfectly clear.

The Modernist Strategy at Work

It is impressive to see the momentum of a well-orchestrated campaign of disinformation at work here.

1. One for all, all for one. We are seeing here Cardinal Kasper spear-heading the latest modernist attack on the few things the Catholics still hold sacred against the godless world. He shot the first bullet, but he is closely followed by the drums of high-ranking officials to set more pressure upon the Church at large and bow before the ‘sign of the times’ which is now ripe for some ‘relaxation’ of Church ‘discipline.’
2. Time works for the revolutionaries. The neo-modernists know that the media are going to propel their ‘gospel of mercy and understanding’ urbi et orbi, and turn the individual battle into a gigantic tsunami as if this were gospel truth and the ‘will of the people.’ Democratism is the new magisterium imposing itself with an iron will. We hear things like: “Unless the Synod makes openings for the remarried divorcees, great expectations will be thwarted!” 
 Like for the battle of the ‘pill’ in the mid-sixties, time works for them in as much as the Church authority is slack in using its power and stopping the nonsense. Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI came two years too late: the venomous discussions had gained worldwide acceptance and many Western Episcopates were advocating for it.
3. Situation ethics all over again. Against the innovators, Archbishop Aquila requested that we go back to Christ’s interchange with the Pharisees on the question of divorce. He strongly criticized these new gospel preachers who denounce Christ’s “gospel of marriage,” calling it “impractical” and, as a result, “non-pastoral.” It is typical of the modernist strategy to oppose praxis to theory, situation ethics to moral principles. The modern existentialist philosophy which defines a person by his acts, and the present moment as ‘creative’, virtually denies human nature and all natural law. What applies to all others can in no way apply to me and has no right to restrain my sacrosanct liberty!
4. Slow descent into the abyss. This is an onslaught on the sanctity of marriage. Bishop Fellay quotes Cardinal Caffarra, archbishop of Bologna, explaining how the Church pillar is that sexuality can be exercised only within marriage bonds. And if this goes, who can condemn any of the strange immoral behavior: anything is up for grabs! But this final attack was unfortunately prepared long ago with the apparently innocuous text of Vatican II setting the two ends of marriage on an equal footing, echoed 20 years later by the new Code of Canon Law which placed “mutual support of the spouses” even ahead of “the generation of children.” This de facto allowed the coming of strange titles for declaring marriage nullity, like immaturity and lack of love. The results are there for all to see: it has opened the flood gate of marriage annulments, which used to be virtually inexistent before Vatican II.
5. A German schism. Part of the Kasper push was forged from the German Episcopate, which elected its new President, Bishop Fürst. The Episcopal conference said that they will press forward to allow remarried divorcees to receive Communion. They state this despite the repeated veto of Archbishop Müller of the Congregation for the Faith, who tells them that “Bishops’ conference presidents are not ‘vice-popes’…” The seeds are planted for a schismatic German church aligning itself all too closely to Protestant belief on marriage vows. It is true that the issue is prevalent in Germany, where close to 200,000 divorces are registered each year, and a quarter are subsequently remarried civilly. And this has had a major impact on the tax revenues of the Catholic Church.

Are we heading towards a renewed campaign against the major tenet of Catholic morality? Everything points in that direction, and please God, the worst will be averted and the beauty of Catholic marriage will be brought forth more brightly and immaculate than ever before.

Fr. Dominique Bourmaud has spent the past 26 years teaching at the Society seminaries in America, Argentina, and Australia. He is presently stationed at St. Vincent’s Priory, Kansas City, where he is in charge of the priests’ training program.