In just nine months Pope Francis has almost trebled the size of crowds attending papal audiences, Masses and other events in Vatican City.
Before 13 March last year, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was expecting to spend his next Christmas in retirement – in an old people’s home in the Buenos Aires district of Flores, where he was born 77 years ago.
But now he carries the hopes and fears of more than a billion Roman Catholics.
What explains this suddenly renewed interest in Catholicism? What need is Pope Francis meeting in people?
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Fr Joseph Kramer, priest of The Most Holy Trinity of Pilgrims church in Rome, says the papacy is needed for practical reasons, to unify clergy who have a propensity to disagree.
“You run the risk of schisms and divisions and arguments”, he says.
“This unfortunately happens in Eastern [Orthodox] churches and Protestant denominations, where you don’t have a central authority.”
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Heh. Yes, but at the risk of tyrannical abuse of authority and power.
#1. Thank goodness the leaders of TEC aren’t tyrannical abusers of authority and power.
With the debatable but certainly tragic exception of the Old Believers, there has not been a doctrinal schism within the Orthodox Church since Rome went her way. Most of what I think the good father is calling schisms are simply inter-jurisdictional quarrels that involve a lot of huffing and puffing and are quickly resolved. Occasionally permission for concelebration between clergy may be briefly withheld, but almost never does this extend to a formal break in communion affecting the laity.
Fr. Kramer goes on to say that the pope will not change doctrines, but maybe allow divorced and remarried persons admission to Communion. I wonder if Father knows that the indissolubility of matrimony is a doctrine.
Sigh…
Ad Orientem… Out of curiosity, how does the Orthodox Church (or you) view the Union of Brest?
The Union of Brest was largely the product of the Polish King Sigusmund III who persuaded a number of Orthodox bishops to apostatize by a combination of bribes, coercion, and theological persuasion. The Union was profoundly unpopular among the lower clergy and the laity and was enforced by rigorous persecution of the Orthodox Church until the end of the 18th century when Poland was partitioned by Prussia, Russia and the Austrian Empire. Those who became the subjects of the Russian Empire rapidly returned to Orthodoxy, in most, though not all cases, voluntarily. In contrast those under the Hapsburgs over time embraced their uniate identity and the Orthodox Church was effectively outlawed until after the First World War.
Ultimately I view the Union of Brest as a tragic extension of the Roman Schism orchestrated for political reasons by the government of Poland.
Charles52, I’m pretty sure Fr. Kramer knows that the indissolubility of marriage is doctrinal and infallible doctrine at that. And I have heard other sources say similar things about admitting divorced and remarried individuals to communion.
I think the question that confronts the Church is– what is the appropriate response to the question, “May I take Communion,” for say, an individual who is married, becomes divorced, remarries, and then enters the Church, or returns to the Church? This was not a very big issue one hundred years ago or maybe even fifty years ago, but now it is a difficult pastoral problem that confronts every Catholic priest serving in a parish, at least here in the U.S.
If an individual divorces, remarries, and his or her former spouse remarries, what does that individual need to do, in the eyes of the Church, to repent? Up to now, the Church’s answer has been, if you divorce and remarry, you need to put away your current spouse, irrespective of whether you have children together, and if you cannot return to your former spouse you need to live as a single person in a state of celibacy. (All this assumes that, for some reason, annulment is not an option or has been attempted unsuccessfully.) Can the Holy Father find a way to permit divorced and remarried individuals to resolve the matter in confession? That, I suspect, is where this is leading.
I was being sarcastic about Fr. Kramer. Sorry that didn’t come across.
Forgiveness is conditioned upon repentance. Therefore a second marriage must be ended in the absence of a decision of nullity for the first marriage. That’s the only way confession resolves the problem.
What happens in the case of a couple coming into the Church with a previous marriage is that the situation is resolved before the couple is received. I’ve been part of two Anglican Use parishes and both involved some serious work with the marriage tribunal.
And it’s not just divorce. A fair number of Catholics lapse, have civil marriages, then come back to the Church as the kids come along. There are easy ways to clear up those cases, as well. Usually those people need Confirmation, and I knew one guy who had never had first communion.
I have a close friend whose husband left her for another woman and later married the paramour. The RCs tell her if she remarries she will be denied communion. She applied for an annulment which was about to be granted but she got a Masters degree and a PA certification. The Canon to theOrdinary stopped the annulment and told her it would cost $15k to get the annulment. So here’s my take. Let’s give all ordained men rocks and they can stone sinners, assuming they are without sin themselves. That’s quite Biblical, isn’t it? But Jesus met the woman at the well and told her she was forgiven and to go a sin no more. As noted by Charles, repentance is required. Since the women at the well had 5 husbands, it seems to me there might be a lesson there.
Regarding divorce and remarriage…
In the first millennium the discipline was quite mixed on this subject. The Fathers were not of one mind and there was considerable diversity of praxis not just between East and West but often between dioceses. However while generally rare, divorce and remarriage was tolerated on some occasions in the Christian West. And St. Basil the Great’s Canon IV (Epistle 188) which deals with second and third marriages and was confirmed by the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh OEcumenical Councils remains the basis for the discipline of the Orthodox Church on the subject of divorce and remarriage.
As [url=http://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2013/07/stump-priest-divorce.html]explained by Fr. John Whiteford[/url] the rule in these tragic cases is not just repentance but also mercy. The two go hand in hand.
David Keller –
That story sounds odd. My diocese doesn’t charge for the annulment prices, and when it did, the price was maybe $400, to cover administrative costs. If memory serves, that was waived if need be. My understanding is that this is common practice. Perhaps we are dealing with a corrupt person, but there should be someone to whom she could appeal, perhaps at the archdiocesan level.
#11–I know, or know of many people, who have had very expensive annulments, including a Kennedy who paid $500K for one. Many of my RC friends tell me they view annulment as modern-day indulgences. My point was that if someone is repentent, or the case of my friend, blameless, the church shouldn’t be denying them communion. And annulment is really made up legal nonsense, because it is pretty hard to say that people who were married, lived together as husband and wife for many years, with multiple children, were somehow magically never married when some bishop signs a piece of paper. I also question why divorce and remarriage are the only sins which are singled out, especially since my friend has a Biblical basis for a divorce, which the RCs also won’t give her. I also know that my firend went to the diocese where she was actually married, in the mid-west, and got essentailly the same response. To be clear, I have issues with the ease of divorce and the mainline Protestant churchs’ respose to it, but denying communion, no matter what the circumstances are, goes too far.
I have no interest in debating Catholic doctrine, but was responding to questions raised above. Your beliefs are your beliefs. However, if you wish to have reject Catholic doctrine, reject what the Church teaches, not what some Catholics say, or what you think the Church teaches.
Best wishes.