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Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Edward Peters Nails It: What About Canon 915?

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Edward Peters is an American canon lawyer and an adviser to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court. Edward Peters is an American canon lawyer and an adviser to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court.

This from a Cruxnow.com article by canon lawyer Ed Peters, entitled: Conscience can’t be the final arbiter on who gets Communion:

Amoris, never mentioning Canons 915 or 916, seems to think that some process of pastoral “discernment” or “accompaniment” can lead divorced-and-remarried Catholics, even those not committed to a continent relationship as befits all non-married persons, to the point where, having satisfied themselves that they are not sinning, may approach for holy Communion, and the minister, irrespective of the communicant’s objective public status, must distribute it to them.

In other words, Canon 915, the central, historically uncontested, and canonically unambiguous norm controlling ministerial decisions to distribute holy Communion in such cases, is simply ignored.

It is the pervasive and steadfast refusal of nearly all “Amoris supporters” (I dislike the term, but it saves time) to face squarely the ancient tradition behind, and the unambiguous interpretation of, Canon 915 that dooms virtually all defenses of Amoris so far to irrelevance at best and to pastoral and even doctrinal disasters at worst. One cannot coherently discuss reception of holy Communion by divorced-and-remarried Catholics while ignoring the plain text of Canon 915. READ MORE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: There is no coherent, valid argument being raised in defense of AL’s fatal flaw—that in some cases, marriage is dissoluble and/or public adultery and/or bigamy can be blessed by the Church.  What we have here are lukewarm Catholics who essentially don't give a damn about Christ's teaching and the infallible teachings of the  Church when said teachings conflict with their own personal opinion on the way things ought to be.  Nothing is 'carved in stone,' in other words, and everything must evolve--even Christ.

In lieu of an actual argument, the defenders of Amoris simply WILL this change to the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage to the rejection of the words of Jesus Christ. Why? Because it makes life so much easier when we all surrender to the world, the flesh and the devil.  And, besides, to oppose it would be to become fully Catholic, a transition for which most of them are thoroughly ill-prepared. But make no mistake: They are not missing Cardinal's Burke's point when it comes to the fundamental flaw in Amoris Laetitia... they're simply ignoring it.  

The Catholic Church today is teeming with de facto Protestants for whom the Code of Canon Law, the catechisms of the Catholic Church, the infallible teachings of the Church, doctrine, dogma and the reiteration of the constant and magisterial teachings of Popes from Peter to Benedict--mean nothing or can evolve or MUST evolve over time...and, at any rate, are no longer applicable to the modern world and its set of 'sophisticated' modern problems -- problems which even Christ Himself didn't anticipate when He said that "any man who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery."  His is a 'rigidity' the neo-Catholics are no longer prepared to accept.  

The Church, they tell us, failed miserably in the mercy department for 2,013 years, and it is for this reason that Christ the Judgmental must bow to Francis the Merciful. This is nothing short of blasphemy, of course, and yet it is this pernicious non serviam that they actually trot out as an 'argument' in defense of Amoris Laetitia.

The very fact that so many Catholics today refuse to get exercised about the fundamental Moral Order- and Sacraments-destroying nature of AL is in and of itself proof that they've lost the faith (if they ever had it) and that the Church today is suffering from an unprecedented crisis of belief.

Kudos to the magnificent exceptions, such as Mr. Peters, for having the courage to defend the Truth of Jesus Christ Our King in that arena of spiritual and moral chaos that is the modern "Catholic Christian Community".

 

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Last modified on Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Michael J. Matt | Editor

Michael J. Matt has been an editor of The Remnant since 1990. Since 1994, he has been the newspaper's editor. A graduate of Christendom College, Michael Matt has written hundreds of articles on the state of the Church and the modern world. He is the host of The Remnant Underground and Remnant TV's The Remnant Forum. He's been U.S. Coordinator for Notre Dame de Chrétienté in Paris--the organization responsible for the Pentecost Pilgrimage to Chartres, France--since 2000.  Mr. Matt has led the U.S. contingent on the Pilgrimage to Chartres for the last 24 years. He is a lecturer for the Roman Forum's Summer Symposium in Gardone Riviera, Italy. He is the author of Christian Fables, Legends of Christmas and Gods of Wasteland (Fifty Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll) and regularly delivers addresses and conferences to Catholic groups about the Mass, home-schooling, and the culture question. Together with his wife, Carol Lynn and their seven children, Mr. Matt currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.