Closing
Thoughts
on the
Infamous
Apostolic Exhortation
Amoris
Laetitia
Apart from presuming
to nullify the 6th Commandment against adultery in Holy Scripture itself
— and the audacious presumption of contradicting the very
Word of God — Francis errs as follows (carefully consider his
following disingenuous argument for permitting Holy Communion
to those living in adultery): “the
Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful
medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
This is fundamentally an ad hominem argument that is a clever
and deliberate variation of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax
Collector, recounted in
Saint Luke 18.10-14,
and which may be summarized thus:
“Holy Communion is not
a prize given to Catholics who refrain from adultery
out of love for God and obedience to Him — those
who wish to appear holy and deserving
of it — and are not. Rather
it is a medicine (clearly adverting to Saint
Luke 5.32:
“I have come to call sick,
not the whole”)
and nourishment for those who are not
hypocrites like the Pharisee in Saint Luke and
the faithful Catholics disparaged above — who try to
avoid sin in order to worthily receive Holy Communion
— when we all know it is a pretense!”
This is Francis’s argument
stripped of its pretext and cleverly written (certainly not by Francis)
in such a way as to invoke our sympathy for the unrepentant sinner
and our scorn for the faithful Catholic — whom, in a parable
of his own making, he contemns.
The Reality of Mortal
Sin that Francis Defies
Much like
his recently acquired mentor — Martin Luther — whom Francis praises
profusely, the reality of Mortal Sin has morphed into a modern fiction.
After all,
as he has said,
no one
goes to Hell:
“No
one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel.”
This is ...
the “Gospel according to Francis”.
Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John emphatically
disagree — to say nothing of 2000 years of Church teaching, the Sacred
Deposit of Faith, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church Fathers,
and Jesus Christ Himself.
Mortal Sin is the separation
of the soul from God Who is Life, and separation from Life is what we
understand by death: in other words Mortal Sin is the death of the soul
before God.
One who is dead can no
longer be “nourished”,
nor will any medicine avail him while he remains dead.
The soul must first be alive (vivified through grace and absolution
in the Sacrament of Penance — and possess a
“firm amendment to sin no more”)
— to be nourished or to receive a “powerful
medicine.” Do you doubt this?
Consider the following statements absolutely irreconcilable with Francis’s
statement above: one from Saint Paul himself, and the others from Saint
Thomas Aquinas:
Saint Paul:
-
“Therefore
whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord
unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the
Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that
bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh
unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning
the body of the Lord. Therefore are there many infirm and weak among
you, and many sleep [die].”
(1 Corinthians 11:27-29)
St. Thomas Aquinas, Question 80:
-
“This sacrament [the Holy
Eucharist] is a medicine given to strengthen, and it ought not
to be given except to them who are quit of sin.”
(Article 1. “Whether there
are two ways to be distinguished of eating Christ’s body?”)
-
“Many receive Christ’s
body unworthily; whence we are taught what need there is to
beware of receiving a good thing evilly . . . For behold, of a good
thing, received evilly, evil is wrought”
(Reply to Objection 2)
-
“It is manifest that whoever
receives this sacrament while in mortal sin, is guilty of
lying to this sacrament, and consequently of sacrilege, because
he profanes the sacrament: and therefore he sins mortally.”
(Article 4)
-
“The fact of a man being unconscious
of his sin can come about in two ways. First of all through his
own fault, either because through ignorance of the law (which
ignorance does not excuse him), he thinks something not to be
sinful which is a sin, as for example if one guilty of fornication
were to deem simple fornication not to be a mortal sin; or because
he neglects to examine his conscience, which is opposed to what
the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 11:28):
“Let a man prove himself,
and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice.”
And in this way nevertheless the sinner who receives Christ's
body commits sin, although unconscious thereof, because the
very ignorance is a sin on his part.”
(Reply to Objection 5.)
-
“The sin of the unworthy
recipient is compared to the sin of them who slew Christ, by
way of similitude, because each is committed against Christ's body.
(Article 5 Reply to Objection 1)
-
“Holy Communion ought not
to be given to open sinners when they ask for it.”
(Article 6)
As we have stated above,
all this is out of our hands and frighteningly in the scandalous hands
of powerful cardinals, bishops, and ecclesiastics whose agenda is not
Christ’s — nor the Church’s: saving souls. Theirs is rapprochement
with the world, and, it would appear, ultimately assimilation
into the world — against which Saint John the Evangelist so forcefully
warned us (especially note the last sentence):
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“Love not the
world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man
love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the
flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride
of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof:
but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever. Little
children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that
Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists:
whereby we know that it is the last hour. They went
out from us, but they were not of us.”
(1 Saint John 2.15-19)
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Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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