Today's press conference from the Synod to destroy the family featured Brisbane Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge.
Shall we take a look at what this episcopal eunuch had to day?
Perhaps Fathers Lombardi or Rosica might wish to comment and let us know.
Shall we take a look at what this episcopal eunuch had to day?
The Church has traditionally spoken that the second union is adulterous and I understand why. I understand the teaching and what lies behind it, including the biblical background. But at the same time, not every case is the same and that’s where a pastoral approach needs to take account of the different situations. For instance, just to say that every second marriage or second union whatever you want to call it is adulterous, is perhaps too sweeping. For instance, a second marriage that is enduring and stable and loving and where there are children who are cared for is not the same as a couple skulking off to a hotel room for a wicked weekend. So the rubric, adultery, in one sense, it’s important but in another sense it doesn’t say enough and I think what a pastoral approach requires is that we actually enter into what the synod is calling a genuine pastoral dialogue or discernment with these couples and the start of that is for people like me to actually listen to their story not just swamp them with doctrine or Church teaching. (Coleridge's commentary begins just before the 24:00 mark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=timmt6EvF-0)
I had a conversation, not too long ago, with a priest - someone who should have been a bishop except he would not dissent on Humanae vitae back in the late 1970. He opined how angry it made him when he would hear Pope Francis say that priests were not "pastoral" or "merciful." He could not understand who it was that the Pope was speaking about. I have certainly not seen a priest any less than pastoral and merciful provided I was repentant for the wretched things that I had done and brought them to either the confessional or spiritual direction.
Coleridge waxes on that a "second marriage or second marriage" if it is nice and all is well, is "different from skulking off to a hotel room" and therefore, not really adultery. Well, what if the second marriage began because one or both skulked off to a hotel room? Would it be adultery then?
What if the first wife is at home with the other children and struggling? Is there no sin in that for the person who caused the break-up and now lives in something other than adultery?
Truly, who educated these men? Have they all been emasculated?
There is something, however, even more troubling.
We see and hear lots of heterodox commentary at these daily briefings. Why is there no bishops speaking orthodoxy.
Perhaps Fathers Lombardi or Rosica might wish to comment and let us know.
We're waiting.