ENTER THE NARROW GATE TO RECEIVE THE EUCHARIST

In case you missed it earlier when I posted it on Joan’s Rome, Facebook and Twitter, here is today’s noon medical bulletin from the Holy See Press Office (published today in Italian, English and Spanish) about Pope Francis’ continuing recovery from surgery : “The post-operative progress of His Holiness Pope Francis continues to be regular and satisfactory. The Holy Father has continued to eat regularly and infusion therapy has been suspended. The final histological examination has confirmed a severe diverticular stenosis with signs of sclerosing diverticulitis. Pope Francis is touched by the many messages and the affection received in these days, and expresses his gratitude for the closeness and prayer.”

Basically, it is brief but positive, saying things are progressing well and nothing other than diverticulitis was found in post-op lab exams.

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The column that follows, written by Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the questions and confusion that have arisen in the secular media (and some Catholic media as well) on the news that U.S. bishops intend to write a document on the Eucharist. Distortions abound about what happened in the USCCB June meeting and what their intentions are in writing about the Eucharist. Perhaps no one has been clearer than Abp. Aquila.

Read this carefully and thoroughly. Don’t read something into it that is not there. Don’t gloss over a sentence or two or your understanding will indeed be distorted.

ENTER THE NARROW GATE TO RECEIVE THE EUCHARIST

By Archbishop Samuel Aquila

Jesus counseled the disciples to enter “through the narrow gate,” since the road that leads to destruction is broad and “those who enter through it are many,” but the road that leads to life is narrow and “those who find it are few” (Mt. 7:13-14).

Those of us who have followed the news in the last week or so know that the press has declared that the U.S. Bishops are planning to ban President Biden from Communion, allegedly ignoring the Vatican’s guidance. Of course, that is not true when one looks at the details of what we discussed at our June meeting and what Cardinal Ladaria said in his letter to the bishops.

The bishops were asked by Cardinal Ladaria, who heads the Vatican’s doctrine office, to build consensus about how to respond to Catholics who hold public positions and who insist on receiving Holy Communion after publicly committing grave sins. After hours of discussion, the bishops voted 174 to 55 to draft a document that addresses both this issue and the broader question of what places any person in a state of not being able to receive Communion. The document, which will be drafted and then discussed regionally in the coming months, will strive to make the Church’s teachings on the Eucharist and worthily receiving the Lord more widely known. (Denver Catholic photos)

Despite the efforts made to clearly communicate that the document is “not meant to be disciplinary in nature, nor is it targeted at any one individual or class of persons,” 60 Catholic lawmakers released a letter one hour after our vote justifying their support for legalized abortion and arguing that the bishops have “weaponized the Eucharist.”

This is deflecting the blame for the situation. Instead of accepting their own responsibility to understand and follow Church teaching, these politicians are the ones who are “weaponizing the Eucharist” by insisting that they remain in good standing despite publicly committing grave sins and continuing to receive Communion. Everyone with common sense understands that their claim of being in communion with the Church is false. One cannot say one believes something, do the complete opposite and then credibly say that they are in communion with a Church that believes what they did is evil.

To add another layer to this, many bishops – including myself – have been privately dialoguing with Catholic politicians on abortion and other issues for years, urging them to refrain from Communion if they won’t change their immoral political positions. Unfortunately, many – but not all – of these public figures have chosen political expediency over the Gospel. They value their political party and their power more than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They do not serve as a leaven of the Gospel in society, but rather build a culture of death. They cite the importance of following their consciences but fail to explain how their conscience is a properly formed conscience. Instead, they adopt a form of relativism that says, “truth is different for every person.”

As Jesus said to the disciples, the road that leads to eternal life is narrow and those who attempt to take the wide road are headed for destruction. We see this in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where he warns that some people had received the Eucharist in a state of grave sin and became sick or died. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:27-30).

Drawing on St. Paul, the Church’s teaching for every Catholic about worthily receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus is that one “must be in the state of grace. Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance” (Catechism 1415). Yes, we are all sinners, including myself, and we need the medicine of the Eucharist for our hearts to become more conformed to the heart of Jesus Christ and to seek the will of the Father first in our lives.

I have two motivations in speaking out on this subject: first, to protect and faithfully hand on the teachings Christ has given us, and second, to warn those who are endangering their souls by receiving Communion in a state of grave sin, whatever that grave sin is. We do not decide the gravity of sin, God does. Those who decide to disregard this teaching aren’t just hurting themselves, they wound the unity of the Body of Christ and scandalize her members.

The people who I hear from the most about these issues feel betrayed by the Catholic lawmakers and other public figures who claim that they are Catholic but then vote and act against the faith. What do these people have to say to the young children, moms and dads and grandparents who are fighting for the lives of the unborn by praying outside of abortion clinics or caring for young moms in need before and after they’ve had their baby? What do they have to say to the children and young adults who are taught and encouraged by laws to embrace a view of the human person that is a distortion of how God created them to be?

Every Catholic, regardless of their prominence, must choose who they will follow – Jesus Christ and his Church, or the false gods of power, influence and the world’s acclaim. May we all respond to this choice as Jesus did when Satan tempted him, “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve” (Mt. 4:10). (Enter the narrow gate to receive the Eucharist – Denver Catholic)

DID THOMAS MORE AND JOHN FISHER DIE FOR NOTHING?

DID THOMAS MORE AND JOHN FISHER DIE FOR NOTHING?

This is from The Denver Catholic, and is a “gift for all seasons” from Abp. Aquila:

Did Thomas More and John Fisher die for nothing?

The Meeting of Sir Thomas More with his daughter after his sentence of death:

Following the words of Christ himself, the Church has always taught that divorce and remarriage is simply adultery by another name

By Archbishop Samuel Aquila

October 19, 2015

The idea that Catholics should be allowed to remarry and receive communion did not begin with the letter signed by Cardinal Kasper and other members of the German episcopate in 1993. Another country’s episcopate – England’s – pioneered this experiment in Christian doctrine nearly 500 years ago. At stake then was not just whether any Catholic could remarry, but whether the king could, since his wife had not borne him a son.

As with those who advocate for communion for the civilly remarried, the English bishops were uncomfortable with embracing divorce and remarriage outright. Instead, they chose to bend the law to the individual circumstances of the case with which they were confronted, and King Henry VIII was granted an “annulment” — on a fraudulent basis and without the sanction of Rome.

If “heroism is not for the average Christian,” as the German Cardinal Walter Kasper has put it, it certainly wasn’t for the King of England. Instead, issues of personal happiness and the well-being of a country made a strong utilitarian argument for Henry’s divorce. And the King could hardly be bothered to skip communion as the result of an irregular marriage.

England’s Cardinal Wolsey and all the country’s bishops, with the exception of Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, supported the king’s attempt to undo his first – and legitimate – marriage. Like Fisher, Thomas More a layman and the king’s chancellor, also withheld his support. Both were martyred – and later canonized.

In publicly advocating that the king’s marriage was indissoluble, Fisher argued that “this marriage of the king and queen can be dissolved by no power, human or Divine.” For this principle, he said, he was willing to give his life. He continued by noting that John the Baptist saw no way to “die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage,” despite the fact that marriage then “was not so holy at that time as it has now become by the shedding of Christ’s Blood.”

Like Thomas More and John the Baptist, Fisher was beheaded, and like them, he is called “saint.”

At the Synod on the Family taking place right now in Rome, some of the German bishops and their supporters are pushing for the Church to allow those who are both divorced and remarried to receive communion, while other bishops from around the world are insisting that the Church cannot change Christ’s teaching. And this begs a question: Do the German bishops believe that Sts. Thomas More and John Fischer sacrificed their lives in vain?

Jesus showed us throughout his ministry that heroic sacrifice is required to follow him. When one reads the Gospel with an open heart, a heart that does not place the world and history above the Gospel and Tradition, one sees the cost of discipleship to which every disciple is called. The German bishops would do well to read, “The Cost of Discipleship” by the Lutheran martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For what they promote is “cheap grace” rather than “costly grace,” and they even seem to ignore the words of Jesus that, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,” (Mk. 8: 34, Lk. 14: 25-27, Jn. 12: 24-26).

Think, for example, of the adulterous woman whom the Pharisees presented to Jesus to trap him. The first thing he did was to protect her from her accusers, and the second thing he did was to call her to leave her sin. “Go,” he commanded her, “and sin no more.”

Following the words of Christ himself, the Catholic Church has always taught that divorce and remarriage is simply adultery by another name. And since communion is reserved to Catholics in the state of grace, those living in an irregular situation are not able participate in that aspect of the life of the Church, though they should always be welcomed within the parish and at the Mass itself.

Last May, Cardinal Kasper claimed in an interview with Commonweal that we “can’t say whether it is ongoing adultery” when a repentant, divorced Christian nonetheless engages in “sexual relations” in a new union. Rather, he thinks “absolution is possible.”

And yet, Christ clearly called remarriage adultery and said adultery was sinful (Mt. 5:32, Mk. 10:12, Lk. 16:18). In the case of the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42), Jesus also confirmed that remarriage cannot be valid, even when informed by sincere feeling and fidelity.

When one adds to the equation the high failure rate of remarriages subsequent to a divorce, where Cardinal Kasper’s reasoning would lead, no one can say. For example, should sacramental communion be allowed only for the once-remarried? What about people remarried twice, or three times? And it is obvious that the arguments made for easing Christ’s prohibition on remarriage could also be made for contraceptive use, or any number of other aspects of Catholic theology understood by the modern, self-referential world as “difficult.”

Predicting what this would lead to isn’t a matter of knowing the future, but of simply observing the past. We need only to look at the Anglican Church, which opened the door to – and later embraced – contraception in the 20th century and for more than a decade has allowed for divorce and remarriage in certain cases.

The German bishops’ “Plan B” to do things “their way” in Germany, even if it goes against the grain of Church teaching, has the same flaws. And, it has an eerie ring to it – in an Anglican sort of way. Consider the words of the head of the German Bishops Conference, Cardinal Marx, who was cited in the National Catholic Register as saying that while the German Church may remain in communion with Rome on doctrine, that in terms of pastoral care for individual cases, “the synod cannot prescribe in detail what we have to do in Germany.” Henry VIII would most certainly have agreed.

“We are not just a subsidiary of Rome,” Cardinal Marx argued. “Each episcopal conference is responsible for the pastoral care in their culture and has to proclaim the Gospel in its own unique way. We cannot wait until a synod states something, as we have to carry out marriage and family ministry here.”

The Anglicans also sought such autonomy – though with increasingly internally divisive results and the emptying of their communities.

It is undeniable that the Church must reach out to those on the margins of the faith with mercy, but mercy always speaks the truth, never condones sin, and recognizes that the Cross is at the heart of the Gospel. One might recall that Pope St. John Paul II – cited by Pope Francis at his canonization as “the pope of the family” – also wrote extensively about mercy, dedicating an entire encyclical to the topic, and establishing the feast of Divine Mercy. For St. John Paul, mercy was a central theme, but one that had to be read in the context of truth and scripture, rather than against it.

On remarriage, and many other issues, no one would say that the Church’s teaching, which is Christ’s, is easy. But Christ himself did not compromise on core teachings to keep his disciples from leaving him – whether it was on the Eucharist or marriage (Jn 6: 60-71; Mt 19: 3-12). Nor did John Fisher compromise to keep the king Catholic.

We need look no further for a model on this matter than words of Christ and St. Peter in Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel – a passage that reminds us that the teaching on the Eucharist is often difficult to accept even for believers.

“’It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. … For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.’ As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’”

As disciples we are always called to listen to the voice of Jesus before the voice of the world, culture or history. The voice of Jesus sheds light on the darkness of the world and cultures. Let us pray that all concerned will listen to those words of eternal life, no matter how difficult!