The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, under the new leadership of now-Card. Fernandez, responded to a series of Dubia sent in by Dominik Card. Duka, OP, of Prague on 13 July 2023 about administration of Holy Communion to the divorced and remarried.
The responses in PDF, in Italian, Documento PDF.
This is signed off on by Francis, dated, 25 September 2023.
There is an interesting note at the beginning about how the DDF thought the QUESTIONS were not sufficiently clear. So they redid them!
Here’s an extreme NUTSHELL summary, not intended to be exhaustive. I’m sure a full English translation will come out, which will leave people equally confused and in need of explanations. Boiled down…
- Can a diocese establish a different practice from that of the conference? Priests make up their own minds. Maybe diocese can have a policy to help them.
- Is the response of the bishops of Argentina, now in the ACTA considered Ordinary Magisterium? It’s “velut Magisterium authenticum”… “like… as if”.
- Is a decision of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church based on the document Amoris Laetitiae? Francis said that couples should live in full continence, but if that’s hard in certain cases, after adequate discernment, they can be given Communion.
- Is Amoris to institutionalize this solution through a permission or an official decision for individual couples? They refer to the Argentinian bishops. Also, Amoris speaks of attenuation of culpability.
- Who has to make decisions about couples like this? Each individual person. All priests must accompany people in their discernment.
- Would it be opportune for these cases to be treated by a tribunal? Mitis Iudex simplified the process for processes. But in cases where there is not a declaration of nullity, there is a process of personal discernment.
- Should this principle be applied to both parties of a civilly divorced marriage, or distinguish the degree of fault and proceed accordingly? More discernment.
- What about an individual in one of these marriages? People have to examine their consciences.
- Shouldn’t this whole thing be better explained by competent authority (DDF)? Nope. The response of the Argentinian bishops is enough.
- How to go forward in unity in the Church but also to not make the Magisterium confused? Maybe local conferences of bishops can establish minimum criteria.
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One of the things that amazes me is when priests do not work tirelessly to free people from their sins but rather work in an excessively lazy way (that is with a lot of bloviating activity that accomplishes nothing but signals everything) to insulate people in their sins. It is so tiring to argue against limp noodles.
I left the Episcopal Church because it changed its teaching. I found an independent Latin Mass community because I assumed that they had not and would not change their doctrine. The group joined the Diocese after Summorum Pontificorum (sp?). Most of the congregation did not go along with it and joined some crazy group, and only one priest stuck with the Church. I waivered for a few weeks but because I trusted this priest I became reconciled to the Church. I so far have not regretted it, but these lunatics could make me change my mind.
It seems that everything now is a matter of your own conscience. Unless of course you want to assist at the Mass of the Ages, that is the only thing that is anathema. That and using fossil fuels maybe.
The question of divorced and remarried people receiving the Communion has been around for a long time. Sometimes the feelings of the children of the union are considered. I have never seen the Church consider the first spouse and the children of the first marriage. The message to them is very clearly that they don’t matter. Or rather, in the discernment of your fleeing father/mother accompanied by Fr., you don’t matter.
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I always thought dubia were to be answered in a straightforward way, Yes or No, and then perhaps additional clarity or nuance would be given. I’m seeing the current practice is to skip right over the Yes or No and go right into increasing, rather than decreasing, confusion. Has anyone read Matt. 5:37 recently? “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”
Yes? No?
@ProfessorCover
This is not a change of teaching. It is a longwinded statement of refusing to live up to the teaching of the Church.
Thus the ambiguity. They would be clear if they could, and I’m sure they want to so very badly. But they aren’t allowed.
Dubium : Estne Papa Catholicus ?
So for any sin, it requires the discernment of the local priest.
So I guess it’s the same about the TLM. It’s not up to Rome or the local bishop. The local priest is the one who must discern. Leaving these decisions up to Rome or the Ordinary is rigid and must be avoided. And if the priest and laity find it difficult to conform to the post conciliar books and the rigidity harms them in any way, they should just stick with the 1962 or pre 1955 books. Because doing otherwise would be rigid and harmful. No?
Sorry misclick.
As to the “ordination” of women, Pope Saint Gelasius I forbade ALL Bishops from doing so, and then Pope Saint John Pail II stated ex cathedra that this is a dogmatic teaching of the Church.
It is an infallible teaching.
Canon 1379 §3 states : “Both the one who tries to confer a sacred order on a woman and the woman who tries to receive it, incurs a penalty of excommunication “latae sententiae” reserved to the Holy See; the responsible cleric may also be punished by exclusion from the clerical state.”
For Bergoglio to write that :
“c) On the other hand, to be rigorous, let us recognize that a clear and authoritative doctrine on the exact nature of a “definitive statement” has not yet been fully developed. It is not a dogmatic definition, and yet it must be adhered to by all. No one can publicly contradict it and yet it can be a subject of study, as with the case of the validity of ordinations in the Anglican Communion.”
… constitutes at the very least an outright LIE (this is in fact established Dogma), and an active attempt to overthrow Holy Dogma in a manner penalised in Law by automatic excommunication.
Should a Pope commit such an offence, only a Pope could lift it, except that no Priest can absolve himself.
This outrageous document is an open call to straightforward schism, Protestantism, and factionalist Heresy.
Well, to be honest, it isn’t rigid. Maybe that’s what they intended. Clarity is so rigid. It’s so much better to be nuanced these days.
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