Category: Catholicism

Pope Francis declares a one-year moratorium on Hell for those who have had abortions

September 4, 2015 • 11:30 am

I’m not a Catholic, but it’s my understanding, reinforced by a new piece in PuffHo, that abortion, like homosexual acts, constitute a grave sin. In fact, it’s an even graver sin than being gay, for having an abortion leads to automatic excommunication for both those who undergo the abortion and those who perform it. And that means, unless certain designated or high church officials forgive you (these Official Forgivers include “bishops, missionaries or the chief confessors of a diocese”) you’re going to fry—or, according to more liberal theologians, just get “separated from god”.

I’m not quite sure how women who have not confessed an abortion to the proper officials are become excommunicated. I thought excommunication was a formal act of the Church, not of God, and that would require the Church to know who has sinned. But never mind that.  There are big doings.

For now the Reform Pontiff, Pope Francis, has temporarily lifted this punishment—but only for a year. According to PuffHo, during Holy Year every priest now has the ability to forgive women who have had abortions, de-excommunicating them and reinstating their chances of attaining Heaven.

Here’s the bit on abortion taken from the Vatican’s new bulletin (conveniently given in eight languages). The lifted penalties apply only to women who have had abortions, as those who perform the procedure aren’t mentioned:

One of the serious problems of our time is clearly the changed relationship with respect to life. A widespread and insensitive mentality has led to the loss of the proper personal and social sensitivity to welcome new life. The tragedy of abortion is experienced by some with a superficial awareness, as if not realizing the extreme harm that such an act entails. Many others, on the other hand, although experiencing this moment as a defeat, believe that they have no other option. I think in particular of all the women who have resorted to abortion. I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal. I have met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision. What has happened is profoundly unjust; yet only understanding the truth of it can enable one not to lose hope. The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart in order to obtain reconciliation with the Father. For this reason too, I have decided, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, to concede to all priests for the Jubilee Year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it. May priests fulfil this great task by expressing words of genuine welcome combined with a reflection that explains the gravity of the sin committed, besides indicating a path of authentic conversion by which to obtain the true and generous forgiveness of the Father who renews all with his presence.

I suppose this is a step in the right direction, although the step will be reversed within a year. And that’s one big problem with this decision, for it makes no sense.  There are two other issues:

First, who gave the Pope the authority to determine God’s punishment of sinners? Was he speaking ex cathedra in this missive, and thus his pronouncement is, as Archie Bunker once said, “inflammable”? Did God tell Francis that He changed his mind, as implied above (“the forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart”)? The language of the statement does not imply that the Pope’s is speaking as God’s mouthpiece, yet it marks a huge change in the post mortem fate of women who have had abortions.  What I don’t understand is how the Pope, speaking on his own, seems to have the ability to determine whether someone once doomed to Hell is now eligible for Heaven.

And that, more than anything else, shows that these stupid “rules” of Catholicism are not ordained by God, but are made by man. (And by “man”, I mean “males,” since that’s who runs the church.)

Second, why is this change only for one year—Holy Year?  Given the language above about God’s forgiveness for sinners, why is that forgiveness under time limits?  Why just a year instead of forever? Is this just a token move to eliminate the backlog of those who have been excommunicated, or have left the church—a move to make the Church look more progressive?

I would like to join the chorus of those who praise Francis for his modernity, but his reforms, clearly enacted under the joint pressures of changed secular morality and widespread egress from the Church, always have qualifications. Global warming is real, but it’s not due to population growth. Gays should be treated better, but homosexual acts remain a grave sin. Abortions can be forgiven by any garden-variety priest, but only for one year.

The qualifications clearly exemplify the cognitive dissonance of the Vatican. The Church knows it must reform if it is not to die, but if it changes too quickly, or too obviously, it risks violating its own ancient and long-standing dogmas in ways that will discomfit believers.

Once more with feeling: final thoughts on Ireland’s Marriage Equality referendum #MarRef

May 29, 2015 • 4:08 pm

by Grania Spingies

Terry Pratchett once wrote:

“Words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”

Pratchett was right, of course. I don’t think the Vatican can help it much, for Terminal Foot-In-Mouth Disease seems to be afflicting many high-ranking members of the clergy. Hot on the heels of Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin denouncing Ireland’s “Yes” result in its Marriage Equality Referendum as a “disaster for humanity”, we have another senior cardinal, Raymond Burke, pronouncing Ireland as “worse than Pagans and “defying God”.

I’m at risk of appearing obsessive about the subject, so I will try to make my final points and then bow out as gracefully as possible.

First, yes, they really believe this stuff.
 
These men may represent the Old Guard of the Catholic Church, but as Cardinals they can hardly be called radical outliers. Yet their pronouncements are fairly extreme. Whether the issue is born of a desire to arbitrate morality or to maintain a position of power over peoples’ lives; the result is the same: they are aghast at the notion that anybody – let alone a nation of mostly Catholics – could even contemplate same-sex marriage as an issue of equality. The legal rights aspect of the recent Referendum is something that doesn’t appear to register at all in their counter-arguments.

The vote comprehensively rejected the Church position. That ought to cause concern among the clergy, and it clearly does in the case of Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin as it doesn’t bode well for the future of the religion. But even Martin’s comments didn’t show that he might be reconsidering whether his Church’s position was wrong, merely that it had clearly failed to impress its position on its members.
 
Its official position, lest we forget, is this:

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

This quote is not from some hard-line lunatic fringe. It is from the Catholic Catechism on the Vatican’s own website.

This is why weirdly offensive letters were written by Bishops to be read to the faithful of Ireland at Mass during the Sunday Homily. However progressive and liberal the local parish and its priest may be, there is no getting around what the Church actually has to say about homosexuality.

Second, they are so out of touch with people that they have no idea how unintentionally funny and simultaneously insulting they are.
 
I think I can speak for everybody here when I say being called “worse than a pagan” is not the worst thing one can be called in life, nor is it likely to cause most atheists a moment’s pause. However, one has to remember that the overwhelming majority of people voting Yes in the Irish Referendum were Catholics. Those Catholics presumably do have an opinion about being told that they have defied God for ratifying the idea that people are entitled to equal rights regardless of their sexual orientation. These sorts of pronouncements do the Church’s reputation a great deal of harm, so it’s telling that even now the Vatican permits its leading men to tell the world how they really feel rather than instructing them to maintain a dignified silence on an issue where they cannot fail to look archaic, intolerant and downright offensive. Gay Catholics who were hoping for the Church to start moving towards a more progressive and tolerant position must be profoundly disappointed and wary. 

Third, they fear the Internet
 
This is either because the Internet is the plaything of demons, or because it gives every Catholic access to opinions and ideas that may not coincide with those of the Church. With the Vatican going to enormous trouble to put an exorcist into every parish in the world, it is not impossible that it is the former that worries them the most as if the world were literally an episode of Supernatural, only with slightly less subtext.

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Realistically, it is also because ideas have to fight hard for credibility when they are forced to go up against a world of alternative ideas. “Because the book says so” is a pretty useless argument when your opponents also have books that say different things. However, it is pretty hard to exorcise the Internet, so it seems that people will “imbibe this poison that’s out there” and will ask harder questions and make better arguments. Terrible stuff really.
 
Fourth, they have no intention of changing the Church’s position
 
In spite of recent papal soundbites along the lines of “Who am I to judge?”, the official Church position is going to be difficult to alter or undo—assuming of course that those in power have any intention of changing the status quo. Religions are not democracies, and popular vote is not generally an option. Liberal academic Catholics can point to sound analyses of scriptures that show the original texts are not a particularly good source for justifying the intense homophobia displayed in the official Catholic position. Unfortunately, the usual reaction from the Vatican on this sort of issue is to completely ignore the arguments made, or as last resort to point out: “There seems to be a certain element who think that the Synod has the capacity to create some totally new teaching in the Church, which is simply false.”

I’ve never been so proud of Ireland as when the Yes result came in on Saturday 23rd May; even though I think that equality is something that shouldn’t even have been put to the vote in the first place. Nevertheless, Ireland was wonderful in every possible way. It’s not going to change the Catholic Church’s position. Perhaps that doesn’t matter, because Ireland is already changed in the very best way and the battle about morality and equality has already been won. I’ll leave you with this quote from the  heart-warming piece by Irish blogger and journalist Donal O’Keeffe on his experiences canvassing for the Marriage Equality referendum.

Then two young men, walking close together, came toward me from Rory Gallagher Plaza. “Hello,” I said. “Are you voting on Friday?” They gave me the most beautiful smiles and held up their joined hands.
I thought that was a really mean thing to do, to make a grown man cry in public like that.

The ageing cohort of nuns

May 26, 2015 • 11:00 am

I can’t vouch for this fact myself, but it seems credible since it appears in an ABC News article about how some aging nuns, rather than living out their days in their nunnery, have had to move to a Jewish old-people’s home in the Bronx. Why? Because there aren’t enough younger nuns to take care of them. The article gives this astounding fact for the U.S. (my emphasis):

There are now more sisters over age 90 than under age 60, said Mary Gautier, a researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. The center’s 2009 study found that 80 percent of the nuns in the country were over 60.

 

This is just additional evidence that Catholicism is one the wane in America.

By and large, the nuns at Jewish Home Lifecare in the Bronx have few beefs, but they also have a paucity of ham:

While Jewish Home Lifecare is now nondenominational — most residents are Christian — its Jewish heritage remains apparent, with a resident rabbi and kosher-style meals in the independent living residences.

“I miss the bacon,” Richards said. Added Sister Maria Goretti Mannix, 83: “I notice that we never get ham or pork chops. The food is good, though.”

h/t: Malgorzata