U.S. Bishop: No funerals, Communion for people in same-sex ‘marriages’

Claire Chretien

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SPRINGFIELD, Illinois, June 23, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Those in same-sex "marriages" shouldn't present themselves to or be admitted to Holy Communion, nor may they receive a Catholic funeral if they died without showing signs of repentence, Illinois Bishop Thomas Paprocki says.

Paprocki is the Catholic bishop of Springfield, Illinois and well-known to the pro-life and pro-family movements for his defense of Catholic orthodoxy and morality.

On June 12, Paprocki signed a "Decree Regarding Same-Sex 'Marriage' and Related Pastoral Issues." It was sent to priests and diocesan staff last week and subsequently leaked to media sympathetic with the homosexual cause. 

"The Church has not only the authority, but the serious obligation, to affirm its authentic teaching on marriage and to preserve and foster the sacred value of the married state," Paprocki explained after reminding his flock of "the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church since her founding by Our Lord Jesus Christ."

Paprocki wrote that he has a "responsibility as diocesan bishop to guide the people of God entrusted to me with charity but without compromising the truth." Because of this, he outlined diocesan policy on issues related to same-sex "marriage," citing the Code of Canon Law throughout.

Paprocki holds a licentiate and doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, in addition to a civil law degree from DePaul University and theology degrees. (Paprocki co-founded the South Chicago Legal Clinic to offer legal services to the poor when he was a parish priest.)

No diocesan facilities – such as parishes, schools, or "dedicated, consecrated or used for Catholic worship" – are to be "used for solemnization or blessing of same-sex marriages or hosting of receptions for these events," Paprocki instructed. Priests and diocesan employees are not to assist at or solemnize same-sex "weddings." Doing so could result in "just punishment" for them.

Citing Canon 915 and 916, Paprocki wrote, "Given the objectively immoral nature of the relationship created by same-sex marriages, persons in such unions should not present themselves for Holy Communion, nor should they be admitted to Holy Communion."

Canon 915 says that those "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

Canon 916 instructs Catholics conscious of grave sin not to "receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession."

Paprocki instructed his priests to privately meet with people living in such situations, "calling them to conversion." They can receive Holy Communion after they have been "restored to Communion with the Church through the Sacrament of Reconciliation."

In the case of someone in a same-sex "marriage" in danger of death, he or she may be given Holy Communion as part of Viaticum (the Last Rites) provided he or she "expresses repentence for his or her sins."

Paprocki's instructions also outlined how to deal with the reception of the sacraments for children whose parent or guardians are living in a same-sex relationship. If there is "well-founded hope that he or she will be brought up in the Catholic faith," it's okay to baptize him or her. Pastors should "use due discretion in determining the appropriateness of the public celebration of the baptism."

Children living with same-sex couples may receive First Holy Communion and Confirmation provided they are "otherwise qualified and properly disposed."

They won't be denied admission to Catholic schools or catechetical programs, Paprocki said, but the children will be taught "according to the Church's teachings on marriage and sexuality." So "parents or those who legally take the place of parents" should be aware of this if they choose to enroll their children in diocesan schools. They must agree to follow the Family School Agreement.

Those who have publicly entered same-sex "marriages" may not be Baptism or Confirmation sponsors. They are not to receive the sacrament of Confirmation unless they have "withdrawn from the objectively immoral relationship." They are also not to serve in "public liturgical ministry," like being a reader at Mass or extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.

The risk of 'pubic scandal'

"Unless they have given some signs of repentence before their death, deceased persons who had lived openly in a same-sex marriage giving public scandal to the faithful are to be deprived of ecclesiastical funeral rites," the letter continues. "In case of doubt, the proper pastor or parochial administrator is to consult the local ordinary, whose judgment is to be followed (cf. c. 1184)."

It was this section in particular to which the liberal media drew attention. 

The Code of Canon Law states in Canon 1184:

Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals:

1/ notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics;

2/ those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith;

3/ other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines scandal as "an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil" (CCC 2284).

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia issued similar guidelines last summer.

"Two persons in an active, public same-sex relationship, no matter how sincere, offer a serious counter-witness to Catholic belief, which can only produce moral confusion in the community," wrote Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput. "

Such a relationship cannot be accepted into the life of the parish without undermining the faith of the community, most notably the children…those living openly same-sex lifestyles should not hold positions of responsibility in a parish, nor should they carry out any liturgical ministry or function."

Chaput's guidelines also instructed priests that those actively participating in adultery – another sexual union the Church labels immoral – are not to receive Holy Communion.

Pro-gay Jesuit Father James Martin seemed to accidentally explain consistent Catholic teaching on marriage and public scandal with the following tweet:

James Martin, SJ 

✔@JamesMartinSJ

If bishops ban members of same-sex couples from funeral rites, they must also ban divorced and remarried Catholics without annulments....

• 1,051 likes

"And?" asked TradStrips, a Facebook page that posts traditional Catholic memes.

"When you're so liberal that you accidentally wrap around to being conservative again," one commenter posted. 

"Brilliant deduction," wrote another. 

Martin went on to release a storm of tweets suggesting Paprocki's guidelines should ban from Catholic funerals women who have given birth out of wedlock, people who haven't been "forgiving," and people who don't respect the environment. He did not appear to make a distinction between a person committing, and then repenting, of a sin like fornication versus continually and publicly living in defiance of Church teaching on homosexual activty. 

He also tweeted links to statements from New Ways Ministry and Dignity USA, two groups that reject Catholic teaching on sexuality. The New Ways Ministry post went as far as to suggest that Catholics who "deny climate change" ought to be denied funerals under Paprocki's reasoning. It also said that Paprocki's upholding of Church teaching was telling employees not to "adhere to a most fundamental church teaching and follow their properly formed consciences."

"Channeling Fr. James Martin’s outrageous claim that 'Pretty much everyone’s lifestyle is sinful', [New Ways Ministry's] Shine apparently thinks that, because it is manifest that everyone sins, everyone’s sins must be 'manifest,'" observed canon lawyer Dr. Ed Peters. "But Paprocki, having actually studied canon law, knows what canon law means by the phrase 'manifest sinners'."

"Paprocki’s decree is not aimed at a category of persons (homosexuals, lesbians, LGBT, etc., words that do not even appear in his document) but rather, it is concerned with an act, a public act, an act that creates a civilly-recognized status, namely, the act of entering into a 'same-sex marriage,'" Peters explained. "That public act most certainly has public consequences, some civil and some canonical."

***Paprocki's former secretary was murdered by a gay activist after she suggested he change his lifestyle.

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Pope Francis: Loss of the Sense of Sin Leads to ‘Christian Mediocrity’

January 31, 2014

Reflects on Those Who Suffer the Consequences of Other’s Sins

Losing the sense of sin causes others to pay for our “Christian mediocrity.” This was the central point of Pope Francis’ homily today at Casa Santa Marta.

The Holy Father reflected on the first reading which spoke of David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba which led to the murder of her husband, Uriah. David, he said, rather than seeing his adultery as a grave sin, sees it as a problem that needs to be resolved.

“This thing can happen to all of us,” he said. “We are all sinners and we are all tempted and temptation is our daily bread. If one of us said: ‘I never had a temptation’, either you’re a cherubim or a bit stupid, no?”

“Struggle is normal in life and the devil is never calm, he wants his victory. But the problem – the most serious problem in this passage – is not so much temptation and the sin against the 9th commandment, but how David behaves. And David here does not speak of sin, he speaks of a problem that he needs to resolve. This is a sign! When the Kingdom of God is lessened, when the Kingdom of God decreases, one of the signs is that the sense of sin is lost.”

The Holy Father went on to say that in praying the Our Father, we pray for God’s kingdom to come, meaning “thy Kingdom grow.” When the sense of sin is lost, so is the sense of the Kingdom of God lost. In its place, he said, “emerges a very powerful anthropological vision, in which ‘I can do anything.’”

“The power of man in place of the glory of God! This is the daily bread. For this [reason] the everyday prayer to God ‘Your kingdom come, your kingdom grow’ [is important], because salvation does not come from our cleverness, our astuteness, in our intelligence in doing business. Salvation comes from the grace of God and from the daily training that we do with this grace in Christian life.”

Referring to Pius XII’s assertion that “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin”, the Pope reflected on Uriah, who represents the innocent victims who suffer as consequence of our sins.

“I must confess, when I see these injustices, this human pride, also when I see the danger that would happen to me, the danger of losing the sense of sin, it does me well to think of the many Uriahs in history, the many Uriahs who even today suffer from our Christian mediocrity, when we lose the sense of sin, when we let the Kingdom of God fall.

Concluding his homily, Pope Francis called on the faithful to take a moment to “pray for ourselves so that the Lord give us always the grace to not lose the sense of sin, so that the Kingdom does not fall from within us.”

https://zenit.org/articles/pope-francis-loss-of-the-sense-of-sin-leads-to-christian-mediocrity/

What is Truth?

What is Truth?

WHAT is truth? That was the question Pontius Pilate posed after Jesus said to him:

For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. (John 18:37)

Pilate’s question is the turning point, the hinge on which the door to Christ’s final passion was to be opened. Until that point, Pilate resisted handing Jesus over to death. But after Jesus identified Himself as the source of truth, Pilate caves into the pressure—to the alternate "truths" about the Lord—and decides to leave Christ’s fate to the people. Pilate washed his hands of Truth itself.

If the body of Christ is to follow its Head in its own passion, what the Catechism calls "a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers" (CCC 675), then we too will see a time when our persecutors will ask "What is truth?"  When the world will also wash its hands of the "sacrament of truth," the Church itself.

Tell me brothers and sisters, has this not already begun to be the case in our day?

TRUTH… UP FOR GRABS

The past four hundred years has seen the development of humanist philosophical structures and satanic ideologies that have laid a foundation for a new world without God (see Living the Book of Revelation). If the Church has laid the foundations of truth, then the dragon’s aim has been a long process of laying a foundation of "anti-truth." This is precisely the danger pointed out by the modern popes, that a human society not firmly rooted in truth risks becoming inhuman:

… ideological rejection of God and an atheism of indifference, oblivious to the Creator and at risk of becoming equally oblivious to human values, constitute some of the chief obstacles to development today. A humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, n. 78

This is no doubt the result of a massive "confusion" in our times:

This struggle parallels the apocalyptic combat described in [Rev 11:19-12:1-6, 10 on the battle between" the woman clothed with the sun" and the "dragon"]. Death battles against Life: a “culture of death” seeks to impose itself on our desire to live, and live to the full… Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong, and are at the mercy of those with the power to "create" opinion and impose it on others.  —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Cherry Creek State Park Homily, Denver, Colorado, 1993

The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin. —POPE PIUS XII, Radio Address to the United States Catechetical Congress held in Boston; 26 Oct., 1946: AAS Discorsi e Radiomessaggi, VIII (1946), 288

This loss of the sense of sin has further cultivated a moral relativism that, while appearing to "free" a soul, actually leads to an internal, if not external, slavery to sin. This in turn can leave a soul incapable of hearing of the voice of the Shepherd, leading one to despair. 

There is also something sinister which stems from the fact that freedom  and tolerance are so often separated from truth. This is fuelled by the notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives. Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made “experience” all-important. Yet, experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good or true, can lead, not to genuine freedom, but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect, and even to despair. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, opening address at World Youth Day, 2008, Sydney, Australia

Ultimately, moral relativism leads to a rejection of anyone or any institution that would impose moral absolutes. That is, it leads to a "dictatorship of relativism" as Benedict XVI put it—a dictatorship that will likely dictate the terms on which the Church can or cannot exist. 

REACHING CRITICAL MASS

Yet, it is hidden from many eyes. Others refuse to see it. And still others simply deny it: the Church is entering a universal phase of persecution. It is being propelled in part by a Deluge of False Prophets who are casting doubt not only on the Catholic faith, but in the very existence of God. In his new book, The Godless Delusion-A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism, Catholic apologist Patrick Madrid and co-author Kenneth Hensley point out the real danger facing our generation as it pursues a path without the light of truth:

…the West has, for some time now, been sliding steadily down the escarpment of the Culture of Doubt toward the precipice of atheism, beyond which lies only the abyss of godlessness and all the horrors contained within it. Just consider notable modern mass-murdering atheists such as Stalin, Mao, Planned Parenthood, and Pol Pot (and some heavily influenced by atheism, such as Hitler). Worse yet, there are fewer and fewer "speed bumps" in our culture formidable enough to slow this descent into darkness. —The Godless Delusion-A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism, p. 14 

Perhaps Cardinal Ratzinger hinted at what the very last "speed bump" would be before the wholesale acceptance of a godless culture—or at least, a wholesale enforcement of one:

Abraham, the father of faith, is by his faith the rock that holds back chaos, the onrushing primordial flood of destruction, and thus sustains creation. Simon, the first to confess Jesus as the Christ… now becomes by virtue of his Abrahamic faith, which is renewed in Christ, the rock that stands against the impure tide of unbelief and its destruction of man. —Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (POPE BENEDICT XVI), Called to Communion, Understanding the Church Today, Adrian Walker, Tr., p. 55-56 

It wasn’t until Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was struck, that the sheep were scattered and the passion of Our Lord began. It was Jesus who told Judas to go do what he must, resulting in the Lord’s arrest. So too, the Holy Father will likely draw a final line in the sand that will ultimately result in the terrestrial shepherd of the Church being struck, and the persecution of the faithful taken to the next level.

I saw one of my successors taking to flight over the bodies of his brethren. He will take refuge in disguise somewhere; after a short retirement [exile] he will die a cruel death. The present wickedness of the world is only the beginning of the sorrows which must take place before the end of the world. —POPE PIUS X, Catholic Prophecy, p. 22

TOWARD TOTALITARIANISM

In a talk given by Fr. Joseph Esper, he outlines the stages of persecution:

Experts agree that five stages of a coming persecution can be identified: 

1. The targeted group is stigmatized; its reputation is attacked, possibly by mocking it and rejecting its values. 
2. Then the group is marginalized, or pushed out of the mainstream of society, with deliberate efforts to limit and undo its influence. 
3. The third stage is to vilify the group, viciously attacking it and blaming it for many of society’s problems. 
4. Next, the group is criminalized, with increasing restrictions placed on its activities and eventually even its existence.
5. The final stage is one of outright persecution. 

Many commentators believe the United States is now in stage three, and moving into stage four. —www.stedwardonthelake.com

In our current state of affairs, an outright persecution of the Church is unlikely. But a collapse of the global economy, a war in the East coupled perhaps with a pandemic, food shortage, or some other crisis, would be enough to throw much of the Western World into a revolution that would profoundly affect every nation on the globe. Interesting it is that after Pontius Pilate posed that infamous question, the people chose not to embrace the Truth that would set them free, but a revolutionary:

They cried out again, "Not this one but Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a revolutionary. (John 18:40)

The warning from the Holy Fathers is absolutely clear. Unless we embrace Jesus Christ, the author of creation and redeemer of mankind who came to "testify to the truth", we risk falling into a godless revolution that will result not only in the Passion of the Church, but in the vast destruction of the planet by a godless "global force": 

…without the guidance of charity in truth, this global force could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions within the human family… humanity runs new risks of enslavement and manipulation… —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, n.33, 26

If this all sounds too incredible, too much of an exaggeration, we need only turn on the news and watch what is unfolding daily. That, and above all, turn to the voice of the Good Shepherd who continues to speak through his vicars on earth:

We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because it is only in this way that the Church can be effectively renewed. How many times, indeed, has the renewal of the Church been effected in blood? This time, again, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong, we must prepare ourselves, we must entrust ourselves to Christ and to His Mother, and we must be attentive, very attentive, to the prayer of the Rosary. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, interview with Catholics at Fulda, Germany, Nov. 1980; www.ewtn.com

Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test. (Luke 22:46)  

RELATED READING

Deluge of False Prophets – Part II

Fullness of Sin

Benedict and the New World Order

The Restrainer

Can an atheist be "good"? The Good Atheist

Atheism and science: A Painful Irony

Atheists attempt to prove God’s existence: Measuring God 

God in creation: In All of Creation 

Jesus the Myth