Vatican in an uproar over Francis' recent decision regarding marriage annulments
by Julius Müller-Meiningen
Revolt Against Francis
High-ranking Vatican clerics are rebelling against Francis’ most recent decision regarding marriage annulments. They are accusing him of giving up an important dogma.
by Julius Müller-Meiningen
They’ve had enough. In three weeks’ time, the Catholic bishops of the world will meet in synod to deliberate about the future course of their church. In Rome, the clergy will encounter an apparatus that is dead set against the Pope, definitively. A dossier is being circulated in the halls of the curia, which has been made available to The Christian and the World [newspaper rubric] in DIE ZEIT, which systematically lists the alleged sins of the Pope. “Francis has taken off his mask”, a high-ranking Vatican cleric says. Some prelates even feel physical aggression coming up against the Pontiff, and they’re even willing to say so on condition of anonymity.
The trigger for what one can confidently call the preparations for an organized resistance against Francis, was the most recent decree of the 78-year-old Argentinian. With the document he published last Tuesday [Sep. 8], which enables simpler and faster annulments of marriages in church, he set the Church before a fait accompli. Mitis Iudex Dominus is the title of the edict, which is supposed to be in reference to Jesus the meek Judge. But within the curia, the meekness that Francis wants to show the faithful who find themselves in conflict with ecclesiastical norms, is out of the question. A number of monsignors who are officially in charge of directing the affairs of the church at large, are beside themselves.
This is manifest in an incisively-worded dossier that has recently been disseminated throughout the most important offices of the Vatican, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Secretariat of State. In it, the decree for the simplication of marriage annulments is juridically torn to pieces. The main accusations [against Francis] are that the Pope bypassed the committees that are in charge of this matter that is of such fundamental importance to the church, and that he has introduced de facto “Catholic divorce”. The report, which several pages long, speaks of “unsettling developments” and argues that Francis “circumvented” the regulated process for changing legislation for the universal church. Most of the safeguards found in matrimonial annulment trials were deliberately “eliminated”, the report claims.
The importance of matrimony, especially the question how to deal with divorced spouses who marry again [sic], is at the epicenter of the debate about the future direction of the church. The indissolubility of marriage is the dogma conservative clerics stick to. “Divorce the Catholic way”, enabled by the Pope, would mean the worst-case scenario for the guardians [sic] of doctrine such as the German Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller. On his desk, too, is found the inofficial bill of indictment against Francis. Muller and his friends, who are spread throughout the curia, fear that the entire edifice will collapse if one of its foundations is removed. In their view, this is a matter of the very continuation of the true Catholic Church.
The introducion of a speedy process for discerning the nullity of marriages under the supervision of the [local] bishop is of particular concern to the Pope’s critics. From their point-of-view, a lot of controverial theological problems were ignored by Francis. Thus in the decree are found several extremely vague reasons that suffice for getting a speedy trial started, such as “lack of faith” or other motives that are not clearly defined. If, as is feared by the Pope’s opponents, this should now lead to a flood of annulments, the problem of admitting remarried divorcees to the sacraments, which has long affected the church, would be practically eliminated. From now on they would be able to simply exit their Catholic marriage, supposedly contracted in perpetuity, without a problem. Per papal decree.
The synod, set to begin October 4, is thus in danger of being turned into a merry-go-round of debate. The Pope — such is the tenor — makes his decisions according to his own pleasure anyway. He didn’t stick to the regular process of changing legislation, according to the seven-page document. The bishops’ conferences as well as all curial offices were bypassed, including the Vatican’s own canon lawyers.
A commission put together by the Pope, which had been ordered to keep silent, quietly drafted the [new] legislation. Otherwise it would presumably have been crushed and prevented by the curial apparatus. Although there were loud protests at the previous synod last fall against the idea of a speedy process for determining the nullity of a marriage under the supervision of the [local] bishop, it nevertheless is now a part of church law — even before the synod could take up the matter once more.
Does the Pope want to impose his long-predetermined course of action with all his might? In the most important offices of the curia, the doubts have long turned into certainty. Many of the faithful, however, will be cheering.
In sweeping critique, Vatican Synod father attacks Humanae Vitae—and even the notion of natural law
ANTWERP, Belgium, September 11, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — In a sweeping critique of Catholic teaching, Belgian Bishop Johan Bonny, who will participate in the Ordinary Synod on the Family next month, has attacked not only the Church’s teaching against contraception but even the very notion of the natural law.In a contribution for the recent German book, Zerreißprobe Ehe, published by Herder Verlag, the bishop of Antwerp makes a strong critique of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae and questions the Church’s understanding of sexuality. He also criticizes the natural law as a moral foundation because it describes certain acts as good or bad independently of one’s personal life history and biography.
Bonny claims in his essay, which is entitled “The Synod of Bishops on the Family – Expectations of a Diocesan Bishop,” that the encyclical Humanae Vitae lacked the consensus of the bishops and therefore immediately caused “tensions, conflicts and breaches.” He regrets that the Church does not give more space for “the individual conscience” of the faithful with regard to the question of “methods of family planning and birth control,” and says he hopes that the upcoming 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family will correct this purported defect.
“All constitutions and decrees of the Second Vatican Council, also the difficult ones, were finally accepted with a consensus. Of this kind of collegiality, there was little left three years later, when Humanae Vitae was published,” Bonny writes. “That the pope would make a judgment concerning the problems of ‘population, family, and births’ was foreseen by the Council. But that he would ignore the collegial striving for a greatest possible consensus, was not foreseen by the Council.”
“This ecclesial policy has left behind a broad trace of tensions, conflicts and breaches. This split should not remain such.”
Bishop Bonny also discusses in his article the question of homosexuality and the Church’s traditional rejection of homosexual acts. According to Bonny, “scientific progress allows us to modify this point of view. First of all, one knows that homosexuality exists also in the world of animals.” With his reference to the animal world, Bonny tries to show that the natural instinct for heterosexuality, as put into nature by God, might not exist, after all.
Bonny also argues that “in our personalistic culture, the interdiction of homosexual relationships is regarded as an unacceptable discrimination: there shall be men and women who do not have the right to live out their sexuality, only because they do not live in the same manner as the great majority of the people live!”
Finally, Bonny claims the “externally induced suppression of the sexual practice” is the cause of ailments such as alcoholism, aggressivity and drug abuse.
Related:
http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2015/09/cardinal-muller-warns-of-split-as-big.html
http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2015/08/german-bishops-conference-website.html
http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2015/05/confidential-meeting-seeks-to-sway.html
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