Saturday, July 02, 2016

Is the Catholic Church Inching Towards "Open Communion?"

Possibly, according to Sandro Magister...

ROME, July 1, 2016 – In his way, after encouraging communion for the divorced and remarried, in that it “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,” Pope Francis is now also encouraging Protestants and Catholics to receive communion together at their respective Masses.

He is doing so, as always, in a discursive, allusive way, not definitional, leaving the ultimate decision to the individual conscience.

Still emblematic is the answer he gave on November 15, 2015, on a visit to the Christuskirche, the church of the Lutherans in Rome (see photo), to a Protestant who asked him if she could receive communion together with her Catholic husband.

The answer from Francis was a stupefying pinwheel of yes, no, I don’t know, you figure it out. Which it is indispensable to reread in its entirety, in the official transcription:


Read the rest here.

This Pope is a one man theological train-wreck.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think he has a good heart, but he needs to step down as soon as possible.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

He's a good hearted parish priest who needs to be kept in check by his bishop. Except he's the bishop.

rick allen said...

And if I had a dime for every time over the last forty years I was assured that a pope was just about to do something (including all those things that John Paul I was just about to do when he was murdered by the Vatican mafia) I could retire now.

Can you imagine what bloggers would have written about Jesus had the internet then been up and running? "He says he's not changing on adultery, but he obviously doesn't favor doing anything about it."

The remarkable thing to me is that the secular mainstream press and the conservative/traditionalist web sites are in full agreement about Pope Francis. Both agree he's just chomping at the bit to conform the Church to the progressive agenda. They only differ in whether that's a matter of hope or fear.

John (Ad Orientem) said...

This Pope doesn't openly repeal traditional church discipline or doctrine. He subverts them by making it clear that no unpleasant consequences attach to these kinds of actions. He encourages people to break the rules or preach "conscience" over church teaching and thus effectively accomplishes what he knows he cannot do directly.