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The question in this tweet from CUA’s Prof. Chad Pecknold pretty much sums it up about this Jesuit.
First, the screenshot of Martin’s loopy comment. Then Pecknold:
Does Father Martin not believe that Catholics should receive Holy Eucharist having been absolved from all sin, in a state of grace? pic.twitter.com/xrVfvEO0qm
— C. C. Pecknold (@ccpecknold) June 14, 2017
No. I don’t think that Martin believes that the state of grace is important. I am not entirely sure that he believes in grace in the same way that the Church believes. At least I would like for him to clarify that he does with an explicit statement.
Who says that only “gay” (I hate that word now) Catholics are the only people expected to live according to a “sinless lifestyle”? We are all called to holiness equally. This is the flipside of the wooden nickle that some others, such as Card. Kasper and Card. Coccopalmerio, want us to accept: the Commandments are mere “ideals” which some people can’t live up to, hence, they shouldn’t be expected to. Martin flips that around, but the result is the same: he undermines the Church’s teaching.
This Jesuit’s goal is the same as those who push a homosexualist agenda: to mainstream same-sex … everything. That means that the Church’s teachings about sin, guilt, penance, absolution and amendment of life must be undermined and jettisoned.
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Here’s that old canard again, that somehow Holy Communion is “a prize for the perfect”.
All of us are sinners , but we struggle against our sinful impulses and we gain grace through the various sacraments we receive and sacramentals of which we avail ourselves.
What level of intellectual dishonesty is required to muddy the waters as Father Martin (and Cardinal Kasper and….. ) attempts to do? We are ALL asked to live sinlessly, not just one group.
Sounds like Fr. Martin is a Lutheran; in fact, much of the bad doctrine that is coming out of Rome these days has a distinctly Lutheran odor. The timing (500th anniversary) is very interesting, too.
They are ruling the day. Their power is growing and they know it. The culture is on their side, and will only grow as they gain control over the hearts and minds of the young.
They could have been stopped, but there were not enough soldiers of Christ to do it. Now they are in command, and all they have to do now is chip away.
Every lifestyle is not sinful; Christianity is heteronormative. (I know that’s a terrible word, but it’s used against us as a curse, and we can claim it as a blessing from God)
Repeat after me………………………..”O God, please clean up the mess”
As regular readers here know (and thank you for your support and prayers!) I am a Catholic with SSA fighting the daily battle with sinful inclinations.
If Martin isn’t speaking for the Church in 2017 then Church officials need to say so. His church is not mine.
I am a sinner. And when I am aware of a mortal sin, I exclude myself from Holy Communion until I make a sacramental confession with firm purpose of amendment. I am clearly not a perfect Christian.
I believe that God’s grace is sufficient to follow His commandments…I do not believe God asks the impossible, so what he asks must be possible with grace. I endeavor to follow His commandments because I endeavor to love God, who is all good and deserving of my adoration. Persisting in manifest sin without firm purpose of amendment is to shit oneself off from grace, and in the graceless void God’s commandments are impossible to keep.
Fr. Martin seems to want to leave lost souls in the graceless void of persistent unrepentant mortal sin. This. It seems to me, is the worst form of hate one could lavish on a sinner. To encourage someone to persist in mortal sin is the opposite of charity.
It is not complicated. Why do we have to complicate it?
Every Priest is a caretaker of souls. Someone who tries to mend and repair defects and wash away bad habits through both example, proper administration of the sacraments and teaching those entrusted to his care how to properly care for themselves so their soul stays healthy (in a state of grace).
Would we trust a surgeon who thought hand washer before operating was optional or cleanliness to high of an ideal to obtain? Wouldn’t we expect or rather demand that our physicians wash themselves EVERY time before they examine or operate on us? Wouldn’t we expect the hospital to teach us how to care for our wounds after surgery so that we can remain healthy and infection free?
It is so silly when put into any other life scenario. Most people and most societies would not accept dirty (sinful) behavior from those we would entrust with our bodily care: Doctors, Nurses, Child Care Personnel, even the parents of children. All of these people are expected to and usually demand that those under their care act in a clean and sanitary manner when dealing with bodily care issues. Why should we expect any less of our Priests who are entrusted with our immortal souls or those of our loved ones?
If we had a doctor who we knew never washed his hands before surgery, used dirty medical tools in his day to day office care, didn’t teach his charges about how to care for themselves or point out unhealthy life choices, that doctor would be removed from his position. Why do we shy away from demanding orthodoxy from our spiritual doctors? Why do we entrust our immortal souls to those who may not have a good grasp on how best to care for them?
[Regarding that surgeon and hand cleanser analogy… I want to caution in the strongest way not to fall into the trap of thinking that the holiness or the sinfulness of the priest affects the VALIDITY of the sacraments that he administers. The priest who is holy and the priest who is not VALIDLY absolve sins and confect the Eucharist, anoint, confirm, bless etc. Furthermore, on the battlefield or on the street or in the parish church, when you are bleeding out and staring judgment in the face, you don’t ask if the medic or doctor has clean hands.]
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Shoukdn’t that be “O God, please help us to clean up this mess.”
After all, He didn’t make the mess.
(but I will bet He doesn’t make typos either)
Wow! As one from one of the “other groups” …… I’m not expected to be sinless? Who knew?
Regarding the word “gay”. I agree – it’s not used correctly. In my mind, being “gay” as commonly used, means engaging in a hedonistic lifestyle that is contrary to Church teaching. The same kind of hedonism can be lived by heterosexuals, as well. Sin is sin, regardless of your sexual orientation.
Words are important and I think we need to use the term SSA for those who are carrying that cross; but are living chaste lives., just as there are single and chaste heterosexuals,
You know…. a lot of this nonsense is based in liberal assumptions about history that are wrong. Labeling people based on sexual behaviors is something the modern world did, never the Church! How can anyone claim “The Church” is against “gays” (I despise the hijacking if that word, too), when in the Church, there is no such identity or category as “gay”, nor has there ever been? For in reality the Church sees only individual persons, who are by nature only ever male or female. All sexual *acts* that miss the mark and are therefore sinful – ie *any* use of sexual organs by people or between person of any sex, or between persons and themselves, objects, animals, etc etc etc that are not between a married man and woman while being open to life – are unacceptable. The Church says: don’t do sinful acts. That’s all. If you do, sincerely repent, go to confession, amend your life. Nobody is labeled, except the way we are all: redeemed sinners. How is that not clear and simple!
We are seeing this attitude in multiple places and from multiple clergymen. Yes, we are all sinners. But we are not all unrepentant sinners. And if you refuse to acknowledge that what you are doing is sinful, then you should be welcomed to go to Confession, not to receive the Eucharist.
The homilist on EWTN yesterday spoke of invoking St. Anthony to find and guide those lost family members or friends that we have. I reckon that invoking him for lost and wayward priests/preachers would also be prudent.
Didn’t Fr. Martin play “Dieter” on Saturday Night Live once?
Pretentious, celebrity-obsessed, intolerant of disagreement…
Boniface: “The Church says: don’t do sinful acts.”
I don’t disagree with your point. But the problem is that many churchman failed to teach about or enforce the Church’s moral teaching for the past 5 decades. When our Church’s regularly marry people who are fornicating or committing adultery (I.e. When heterosexual sinners are given a free pass), it does begin to look like the only sexual sin the Church is really opposed to is homosexuality. Obviously, this is false, but some of the current problems are the result of inconsistency on the part of the Church.
To put it another way, Christianity is the only truly alternative lifestyle. Everything else is basically just staying in a life of your own predilections whatever they may be.
Unfortunately, Prof. Pecknold also sounds as if (though he does not directly say that) losing the state of grace wer a normal or usual effect of time, as if absolution from all sin (that is, including venial sin) were required for Holy Communion, and as if one could only Communicate once per Confession… all of which is wrong too.
As our reverend host likes to remind us, one can go into the ditch on either side of the road.
@Boniface,
Yes! I could not have said it better. How detrimental is it to out souls to label outselves anything but what we really are? Redeemed sinners. It is a terrible trap to fall into these labels because it takes the focus off what sin truly is whether mortal or venial. Focus on what sin is, what it does to ourselves and the body of Christ and there, the reality hits home. This is why we pray for yhe conversion of “sinners”. Who prays that prayer sincerely usually gets a keen sense that they are the first.
Fr Martin was schooled in Fundamenta Option/Choice moral theology of the Jesuits (read: Karl Rahner). In this misunderstanding of the human act, the Intention of the End (Chur–Why something is done) is overemphasized and Moral Object (Quid–What is done) is underemphasized, it is all but impossible to distinguish grave from light matter.
Thus,
A college kid who habitually fornicates
A drug dealer
Adolph Eichman, one of the masterminds of the Jewish Holocaust
A computer programmer who shaves pennies off payments and mails the money to himself
are all leading sinful lifestyles. According to Fr Martin that’s where it ends. None is worse than the other.
NB: I was tempted to include the sinful lifestyle of obfuscators who confuse others about Truth.
This is all so sad :(.
I have read Fr. J. Martin’s book “The Jesuit Guide To Almost Everything”. In it he shares a lot of autobiographical details (which, I think, is very brave). On p123 he says about the novitiate: “Before entering the Jesuits, I had never been to a daily Mass and so didn’t know what to expect. What did people do during a weekday Mass, anyway?” And on the next page: “My favorite part of Mass was the readings from the Old and New Testaments. Since I had had little formal religious education, I was familiar with only a few of these stories. While most of the other novices knew by heart the story of, say, Joseph in Egypt, I had no idea what was going to happen. For me, it was like following an exciting novel or a movie.” And while I think it is brave of him to share this, I am wondering 1) what it was that made him, at that point, want to be a religious and a priest; and 2) why the Jesuits were taking young man into religious life who had never even been to a weekday Mass…? (But maybe these are inappropriate questions to ask… a priest of God is a priest of God: He has accepted him for His service.)
I don’t really have a problem with specific groups organizing for Masses for special or particular needs, and if certain groups are upset with the Church I for one have always been willing to listen to see what we could do better to help where we have failed. But, I still think that confession is important towards reception of communion, no matter one’s lifestyle or political ideology or whatever it may be that defines or labels one’s identity at any given time. I know where I grew up, and in certain places, the confessionals were torn out and confession never spoken of again. To say the sacrament was de-emphasized is an understatement. I don’t really understand the reasoning there as it wasn’t transparently explained — people were just merely denied the sacrament by and large. I for one feel that examining conscience and receiving the sacrament, even if I am convinced in my righteousness or entitlement to communion, is important and worthy. How else would I be able to overcome a tendency to say, harassing or harming someone in my parish for political reasons, children, if I didn’t examine certain commandments and determine how they impacted where I failed to live up to God’s love? Or, that I was using or manipulating another and depriving her of a living wage because she was female and from as far as I could gather of small potatoes to my career’s advancement? Or that I was accusing others of being this or that slur or reputation harming descriptor, even false ones patently and provable, just to make political hay or become powerful over that person and push them down? I for one think morality of the commandments, the beatitudes, searching one’s conscience, worthy confession, really still extremely needed and important no matter our lifestyles or identities or group political protest needs. Let’s hope it’s all of the nonviolent sort, of dialogue and compassion. I still am hoping and looking for it.
While misrepresenting Church teaching by concealing the distinction between venial and mortal sin, Fr. Martin asserts that the Church has failed at its mission of evangelizing people with same sex attraction. Makes you wonder when Fr. Martin has considered being of any help to the Church with its mission as opposed to conveniently using his assertion of Her failure as a premise to propose “updating” the Catechism’s language pertaining to homosexuality.
The states of marriage, religious life, and single life are not inherently sinful. The state of being heterosexual is not sinful. Those suffering from SSA are not automatically sinful. People in all of these states can sin, but they are not automatically sinning. It sounds like Fr. Martin is saying that no one can actually resist their sinful inclinations/temptations in real life. That view is anathema according to the Council of Trent.
Why can’t the Church shut him up?
@SundaySilence, you said, “Shoukdn’t that be “O God, please help us to clean up this mess.”
After all, He didn’t make the mess.”
No, what I said is exactly what I meant. My dearly departed spiritual director taught that prayer to me almost 20 years ago. Seven little words carry so much power. He said that it is a most effective prayer and that God knows what all the messes are and so to pray this prayer covers everything. We just can’t tell God how to do it, when to do it, where to do it, etc. We just have to ask and wait on the Lord. Believe me, I have seen great messes cleaned up after praying this prayer. You see, when we pray this way we are also praying for messes that we don’t even know exist.
But you feel free to pray in whatever way that is most effective for you. ;0)
Just about any “media priest” you see has more than the usual share of narcissism, it seems to go with the territory. The same can be said of almost any public person. It really doesn’t matter if the ideology is progressive or regressive. [A sweeping generalization.]
I think we have about as much to learn about sexuality at the beginning of this millennium as they did about cosmology in the middle of the last. Galileo:1640::Martin:2017. Pretty much sums it up. [One of the worst, silliest, analogies I’ve seen in a long time.]
Gay people are called to celibacy just as I, a single woman, am. I cannot have sex outside of marriage, and neither can they. Full stop.
The Church is not against gay people. How ridiculous to say that. The Church is against sinful behavior! How often people forget that Jesus didn’t say to the adulteress, “go on with your life.” He said, “Go, and sin no more .” Same deal 2,000 years later…..
“I think we have about as much to learn about sexuality at the beginning of this millennium as they did about cosmology in the middle of the last. Galileo:1640::Martin:2017. Pretty much sums it up.”
Really? The inspired writer of Genesis, even, got it exactly right. How about learning – or rather refreshing one’s memory – about sin, and that stinking hole the devil has prepared for each one of us that he wants to hoodwink you and me into?
Frjim4321, I don’t mean this in a mean-spirited way at all, but I pity your parishioners if that is really what you believe and how you teach at your parish. Comparing modern sexual mores to medieval cosmological arguments is silly, short sided, and leaving the sheep on the woods among the wolves.
Another parish denied the glorious teachings of the Faith.
Short-sighted (silly autocorrect).
There are a series of articles online that covers the Galileo controversy in some detail. The series is titled “The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown.” The URL for the table of contents is:
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http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html
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The author of these articles gives a very lively presentation of the era.
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The progressives seem to worry about every orientation except for a person’s God orientation.
Absolutely agree.