We Need Clarity!

From the Pastor:    We Need Clarity!

    A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Fr. Martin Fox, whom I had known previously only through his blog (frmartinfox.blogspot.com), where he posts such things as his Sunday homilies, his always-improving cooking skills, and the everyday happenings at his parish in Ohio. Recently he posted something that dovetails well with my homily of last Sunday, dealing with the absolute need for the Pope to clarify his teaching in Amoris Laetitia. Here are his very clear thoughts on this issue (lightly edited with permission and due to formatting issues), from January 14, 2017, titled, “The Maltese Straw that breaks the Church's back”


    Everyone knows about the debate over Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia, and whether it is ambiguous in places, and whether it needs to be clarified. Many -- four prominent cardinals in particular -- have publicly asked for clarification, saying that without clarification, the ambiguities in the document will invite distortions or even implicit denial of constant Catholic teaching and practice. Others have responded by dismissing, and in some cases, ridiculing, this concern.
    Well, it appears a document from the bishops of Malta may have gone exactly where Cardinal Burke and others' worst fears dreaded. From the "Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia, just issued, we find this paragraph: Paragraph 10: If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).
    If so, then why shouldn’t the following likewise be true: If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” (AL 300), a same-sex attracted person who is living in a same-sex ‘marriage’ manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).
    Or indeed, why not: If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” (AL 300), any person persisting in a state of mortal sin who manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).
    In short, doesn't this mean that all those who, in confession, say they are committing mortal sin of any sort, and because they believe they are "at peace with God" about it won't change that behavior, may receive absolution, and then receive Communion? In other words, must priests grant absolution in such cases? What happens if a priest refuses to do so? Are you telling me this isn’t a break from Catholic teaching? Tell me what I'm missing here. Specifically, please explain how this is not in direct conflict with the Catechism, paragraph 1650, and the explicit teachings of Pope Benedict and Pope St. John Paul II.

    That’s the end of Fr. Fox’s blog. I end with this: Cardinal Caffarra, one of the 4 Cardinals who asked the Pope for clarity, in a great interview said something I will pass on in case you are questioning whether or not those who want clarity are “trouble-makers” or “sedevacantists” or “schismatics”: “Some individuals continue to say that we are not being docile to the Magisterium of the Pope. This is false and calumnious. We wrote to the Pope precisely because we did not want to be un-docile. I can be docile to the Pope’s Magisterium only as long as I know what the Pope is teaching in matters of faith and Christian life. But this is exactly the problem: that which the Pope is teaching on some fundamental points simply cannot be understood, as the conflict of interpretations among bishops shows. We want to be docile to the Magisterium of the Pope, but the Magisterium of the Pope has to be clear.”

With prayers for your holiness,
Fr. Edwin Palka