An Argentine bishop has reaffirmed Church teaching on Communion for the remarried, in a pastoral letter which addresses “confusion” following Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
Bishop Pedro Daniel Martinez Perea of San Luis praised Amoris Laetitia as “a great message of hope” and said that there was “no basis” for arguing that the text could alter Church teaching.
Some prominent figures have claimed that Amoris Laetitia had changed Catholic practice on Communion. The two bishops of Malta issued a letter saying that it might be “impossible” for lovers to avoid having sex outside marriage. Therefore, they said, the divorced and civilly remarried could receive Communion without resolving to live as brother and sister.
But Bishop Martinez said the document must be read in line with the traditional teaching of the Church, which says that sex outside marriage is wrong and that the divorced and remarried can only receive Communion if they resolve to live “as brother and sister”. This traditional teaching has also been affirmed recently by the bishops of Poland, the Alberta region in Canada and the Ordinariate, among others. Last month Cardinal John Onaiyekan became the latest member of the College of Cardinals to affirm that Amoris Laetitia had not altered Church teaching on Communion.
However, others such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary bishop in Kazakhstan, have suggested that Amoris Laetitia is dangerous because it might cause Catholics to doubt some teachings.
In Bishop Martinez’s letter, which was published in June but has been brought to light by the Catholic News Agency, he reaffirmed that Communion can only be received by those who have confessed grave sin with a firm purpose of amendment.
He remarked that, if the divorced and remarried could receive Communion without resolving to live “as brother and sister”, this would also mean that unmarried couples who are sleeping together could receive the Eucharist.
The pastoral letter argues that Amoris Laetitia must be read in “continuity” with the rest of the magisterium, and cites texts including Pope St John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, Benedict XVI’s Sacramentum Caritatis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1994 Letter to Bishops – all of which reaffirmed the traditional prohibition on Communion for the remarried.
Catholics should be angry at US migrant policy, says bishop
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, has defended the federal Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, and said that Catholics “should have the courage to speak out to people against their politically motivated assaults against the innocent”.
DACA allows certain immigrants administrative relief from deportation. The aim of the programme is to protect eligible immigrant youth, who first arrived in America when they were children, from deportation.
Bishop Seitz was referring to the threat by 10 state attorney generals to sue the federal government to end the DACA programme if the Trump administration did not do so by September 5.
“Christians are fundamentally loving, giving people, just as Jesus was,” Bishop Seitz said during a press conference call organised by Faith in Public Life. “But there were some things that angered Jesus, and they should anger us as well.”
Bishop Seitz likened the attorney generals to “the big bully on the playground not happy already that we’re forcing 11 million people back into the shadows” – a reference to increased enforcement against undocumented immigrants.
Cause to open for China delegate
The beatification process for Cardinal Celso Costantini, the first apostolic delegate to China, will soon begin, according to ucanews.com
Costantini, who died in 1958, helped to establish Catholicism in 20th-century China. He set up seminaries, organised the first episcopal conference, and founded the Congregation of the Disciples of the Lord.
An unnamed source told ucanews.com that the Cause may be held up by ongoing Vatican-Beijing tensions.
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