Wednesday, November 16, 2016

This Bishop is Wrong

In what is now becoming a civil war in the Catholic church, at least one Bishop is just plain wrong (assuming that his remarks are correctly reported.)

Amoris Laetitia opens a new door that goes beyond Familiaris Consortio and does away with unnecessarily harsh requirements from the Catholic Church with regard to chastity, according to a recent presentation on the Apostolic Exhortation by Bishop Marcello Semeraro in Spain....

(Significant is the fact that this address was delivered at a Jebby university, no?)

...Regarding the regulation for Catholics who have entered a second civil union after a prior sacramental marriage (and civil divorce) to live as brother and sister in order to receive the sacraments, Bishop Semeraro qualified: “What would it mean that people who have children live as brother and sister? The step forward of Amoris Laetitia, with respect to Familiaris Consortio, is that they [the civilly remarried] can express their affection in their situation, and this is where the accompaniment and guidance of the spiritual director would enter into play.” He added with more clarity: “It is not a brother and sister relationship but a conjugal relationship. They are people who have children and have responsibilities in their relationship.” He claimed to support his interpretation with earlier Church magisterial teaching: “Gaudium et spes says that spouses who abstain from marital relations endanger their relationship and may commit infidelities.”...

That is--without a doubt--the clearest piece of backwards logic I have ever seen from a Bishop, or anyone else, for that matter.  He claims that an adulterous relationship demands sexual 'expression' according to Familiaris--or expressed the other way around, that Famliaris requires conjugal relations even in an adulterous relationship.

Stunning.  And wrong.

1 comment:

GOR said...

Semeraro is the bishop of Albano – my erstwhile diocese 50+ years ago. But at that time it was Cardinal Pizzardo who was bishop with Raffaele Macario as auxiliary – both men cut of a different cloth than the current pathetic incumbent.

Yes, he’s wrong - and so is Pope Francis. What they are advocating is what we knew as ‘Situation Ethics’ many years ago. But it is now cloaked in the guise of ‘mercy’ and ‘pastoral discernment’. Nothing is intrinsically evil – everything “depends on the situation”. Nothing is intrinsically evil.

This has been condemned by the Church. No Pope or Bishop of Albano can change that!