ABOUT “DIVORCED AND RESPONDED“. THE POWER GRANTED BY CHRIST TO PETER TO "BIND" AND "DISSOLVE"

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There are cases of priests that without ceasing to be such receive the exemption from active exercise the sacred Ministry and dismissal from the clerical State, obtained which they can also marry and receive the sacrament of marriage. In other times this was neither possible nor foreseen by the ecclesiastical disciplines, indeed it was just unthinkable.

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“A te [Pietro] I will give the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and everything you melt on earth will be melted in heaven " [Mt. 16,19]

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In 2011, in a remote country chapel outside Rome I celebrated at 7 on a Monday morning the wedding of a man who could be improperly defined “former priest“, not to mention the pejorative popular term of “spretato“. Neither friends nor relatives were present at the sacred celebration, only four witnesses and the couple's five-year-old daughter, born from this clandestine relationship two years before the priest - at the time pastor - made a request to renounce the exercise of the sacred priestly ministry, pushed to that effect by me, as soon as he became his confessor, in a decisive and even pressing way.

Overflight on the way “indecent“ in which over the years I have seen various bishops manage more or less similar situations. So I take an example among many, that of the classic ill-formed priest, coming from a situation of hardship and poverty in a developing country, just ordered 24 years in Italy by one of our bishops without aspirants to the priestly life and for this reason particularly “hungry of priests”. Between one escapade and another, the young priest ends up establishing a stable relationship with one of his parishioners, who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a creature. The concern of the then diocesan bishop, later of his successor, was to send the priest away by sending him around the world, with results that are anything but positive, because if the priest was not “generated” first, it can hardly be later, especially in the face of certain troubles that are always very difficult to manage. In the meantime, the priest's lover, she goes to the Bishop and informs him that the creature that has come to light belongs to one of his priests and that she needs the necessary financial means to maintain and raise her. Established through DNA examination that the creature really belonged to the priest, the Diocese discreetly took charge of it; I hope not through the Otto per Mille funds paid by our faithful for the sustenance of the Church and its priests, not for that of the lovers and the offspring of some presbyters. In fact, if someone had to provide out of his own pocket to repair the damage of that priest, this was the bishop who had ordained him, that in terms of filling his pockets, among other things, he had not gone slow in making a fuss. The new bishop makes an agreement with the bishop of another diocese hundreds of kilometers away and places the priest elsewhere. Because this is often the “prudent” e “wise” act of many of our bishops: not address the root problem but “solve it” moving the problematic priest from one side to the other. A completely different story than the way I am, moved by different mercy and understanding, but also by acting on severe imperatives of conscience, in my capacity as confessor I imposed on the brother just described to leave as soon as possible the exercise of the sacred priestly ministry and to assume all his responsibilities as a parent. Thank God I'm not a bishop though “wise” and especially “prudent” which speaks of the supreme and intangible values politicians of family and children in other people's homes, except causing disasters in your own home.

These two different examples to point out how sometimes the Church resolves situations of some of those who have been marked with the indelible and eternal character of the Sacred Priestly Order, a prerequisite of which is also the solemn promise to remain celibate. Ma, on the celibate on celibate, the fact remains that this sacred order imprints a new character from which an ontological transformation follows. And let it be clear by the way that celibacy is not, as certain pseudo-scholars have been babbling around for some time, a «mere ecclesiastical law codified only by the Council of Trent» (!?), because celibacy is a tradition that has its roots since the first apostolic era. The first example of celibacy, or becoming "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" [cf. Mt 19, 11-12], it is given to us by the Word of God Incarnate. It is true that several of the apostles, except for young people, they were married, but it is also true that to follow the Lord Jesus they left their families, their riches and their past; it is no coincidence that the radical turning point of several of these Apostles was also marked by the change of their very name, starting with Peter and Paul, born Shimon and Shaul respectively. Those who like the Apostle John were not married, they never married. It's true that in the past, in the first centuries of the life of the Church, there were priests called improperly “married”, but we forget that to receive the sacred order they had to follow the example of the Blessed Apostles: "Left everything they followed him" [cf. LC 5, 1-11]. So, these married men, to become priests they left their families, provided that they were equipped with the necessary means of subsistence. And to receive the sacred order the married man, in addition to leaving their family, he had to have the consent given freely by his wife; just as happens today when the Church ordains permanent deacons of married men.

However, there are cases of priests who without ceasing to be such they receive the dispensation from the active exercise of the sacred ministry and the dismissal from the clerical state, obtained which they can also marry and receive the sacrament of marriage. In other times this was neither possible nor foreseen by the ecclesiastical disciplines, indeed it was just unthinkable, because only one was the way to dismiss a priest from the exercise of the sacred ministry: the excommunication imposed by the Ecclesiastical Authority for reasons related to very serious moral and doctrinal reasons; and to the priests excommunicated and dismissed from the clerical state, in the past it was not allowed to marry, sometimes not even civilly. Article no. 5 of the text of the old Concordat stipulated between State and Church in 1929 [cf. WHO] provided, in agreement with the Civil Authority, some limitations that speak for themselves and which are precisely the result of this ancient heritage:

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"No clergyman can be hired or remain in a job or office of the Italian State or of public entities dependent on it without the authorization of the diocesan Ordinary. The revocation of the nulla osta deprives the clergyman of the ability to continue to exercise the employment or office assumed. In any case, apostate or censored priests cannot be employed or kept in teaching, in an office or a job, in which they are in immediate contact with the public ".

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It is soon said what a miserable end it was reserved for those priests who abandoned the ministry without having a family behind them capable of supporting them, or if with premeditated calculation they had not previously subtracted from the parishes entrusted to them the necessary money to be able to support themselves, always assuming that they had been parish priests or rectors of churches where money circulated. This is the reason why in the past situations of concubinage of clerics were partly known and partly tolerated, because a priest is no longer able to sustain the commitments undertaken through sacred ordination, or lived in a state of serious irregularity, or he would have condemned himself to civil death and a miserable life, also because in certain past situations of so-called caesaropapism, to the harsh excommunication that would have struck the fugitive priest the even greater political harshness of the secular arm would follow.

Some might object that the Sacrament of Orders and the Sacrament of Marriage they are two different Sacraments regulated as such by two different disciplines, and it is true, just think that the first, it imprints an indelible and eternal character which entails an ontological transformation; the second, however, does not imprint a new character and is not eternal because it lasts for the entire life of the spouses.

If according to current disciplines a married man, with wife and children, he cannot be ordained a priest as he does not meet the requirement of celibacy, vice versa a priest cannot receive the Sacrament of Marriage, Why “not compatible” - always according to current canonical disciplines - with the Sacrament of Orders, except dispensation given by the Apostolic See and as such regulated by precise ecclesiastical laws, the last in serial order is the Apostolic Constitution Anglican groups of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI [cf. WHO]. In fact, there are rare and very particular cases which as such always require to be treated separately. Precisely that concept which today scares certain rigorists and legalists so much when it is mentioned that there is no monolithic casuistry of “the divorced and remarried“, because often, each of these human situations, it's a whole situation in itself, not treatable as such according to the rigid and well-defined schemes of “Traffic laws”. Or as I recently responded to one of our readers: «When faced with certain problems, it is not possible to install thespeed cameras and then say: the limit was 130, you were going to 140, so you're wrong, you get the fine, you pay it and the matter is closed. In Catholic morality and the discipline of the Sacraments, things don't really work that way; and if so someone claims to make them work, in this case the wise maxim must be applied that any rigorism applied with mathematical rigor makes morality and law inhuman and immoral".

What happened when some fugitive priest he contracted a Catholic religious marriage without having received the required dispensation and hiding his own status of cleric? The marriage was declared invalid, the sacred priestly and episcopal ordinations of married men carried out by some bishop who has left ecclesial Communion have been declared invalid, as in the recent case of Emmanuel Milingo, former Archbishop of Lusaka; and this goes beyond the validity of his apostolic powers. In fact, it is worth remembering that this elderly bishop was excommunicated for his various “extravagances”, however, he remains a bishop endowed with all the sacramental powers of the episcopate; power the exercise of which was previously prohibited with the suspension from the gods and then with excommunication, but the sacramental fullness of the apostolic priesthood received remains an indelible seal that no one can remove from it.

The sacramentaria it has always been one of the most complex and delicate branches of dogmatic disciplines and anyone who wishes to be serious does not launch into certain topics by bringing excerpts from the Catechism and misunderstood scraps extrapolated from the Magisterium of the Church to support their own far-fetched opinions, starting from the aforementioned n. 84 from the Family member company, least of all citing how the word of God articles by journalists whose supreme merit is an iron spirit “anti-bergogliano“, which has now made them sink into the most painful and pitiful sedevacantism, in defense it is not clear which faith and which Church [cf. article by Giovanni Cavalcoli, WHO].

The pontifical academic Giovanni Cavalcoli, with all its authority, I have much less authority, we have written and spoken about these issues of extraordinary doctrinal and disciplinary delicacy in the columns of’Patmos Island, obtaining two different results: people predisposed to listening, they reasoned and often found answers to their questions. People closed to listening, therefore to the possibility of any discussion, instead they branded us as heretics, modernists and traitors, only to then launch into authentic rants arising from one “faith” changed into ideology policy, or assuming you can easily practice gods “mined lands” so delicate as to frighten even talented and expert theologians, but not particularly familiar with these specific and delicate issues. And precisely in the face of such delicate complex doctrinal and legal issues, Peter himself deemed it appropriate to convene a special Synod on the Family, to listen to the opinion of a suitable representation of the world episcopate.

In a conciliar or synodal assembly, as the Fathers of the Church have been repeating for weeks’Patmos Island of these columns, all possibilities must be explored and examined, even the most absurd; even those bordering on heresy, because arguing doesn't mean anything at all “sanction”,”to establish”, “modify”, “to deny” O “delete” in any way of the disciplines, least of all to undermine the dogma or the substance of the sacraments.

Instead, I note with deep and authentic pain than an army of lay people in the mood for pure clashes politicians carried out under false doctrinal pretenses, they move with incredible confidence like elephants in a crystal display case, issuing warnings, lessons and reminders to the Bishops, but above all to the Roman Pontiff. Because when in a writing written by two self-elected fools supreme defenders of the true faith, we read «The Pope must learn that …» therefore «if he hasn't learned it is better for him to learn», unfortunately the discussion is sadly closed in the microcosm of all their pseudo-theological and pseudo-doctrinal foolishness. Not closed by me or anyone, but closed by the will of people in the name of an unspecified name “faith” they refuse to reason, thus not grasping the basic philosophical and metaphysical element of Faith and Reason, and then also boasting of not wanting to use any ratio and putting the phrase before it: «There is no arguing about this!». And said in both theological and pastoral terms, all of this constitutes a dangerous closure to the actions of God's grace.

Dear Catholics, men and women in the mood for political clashes on doctrinal pretexts, do you realize that if many of the Fathers gathered in Nicaea and subsequently in the other great dogmatic councils of the Church, they had said: «There is no arguing about this!», thus acting accordingly, today we would not have, I am not referring to the evolution of the discipline of the Sacraments over the centuries, we would not even have had the correct perception of the Incarnation of the Word, of the human and divine nature of Christ God [hypostasi]? But there's more: we wouldn't even be Christians, but only one “heretical sect” of Jew-Jesus developed in ancient Judea and then spread around the world.

I recently wrote a long article in which I indicate what in my opinion are certain human defects of man Jorge Mario Bergoglio [cf. WHO], but reiterating that certain of his human defects do not in any way affect what by mystery of grace are his powers as Roman Pontiff, of rock on which Christ built his Church, giving it a burdensome vicarious function linked to one of the founding elements of the deposit of credit. To Pietro, the Word of God has given the power to "bind" and "loose" [cf. Mt 16, 13-20], therefore the problem should not be the foolish hypothesis, well as impossible, of the Supreme Pontiff who falls into heresy or apostasy from the faith; the problem should instead be the docility of the sheep towards the Shepherd, together with the certainty of faith that however defective the Shepherd may be, in certain of his acts of teaching and governance he enjoys special assistance from the Holy Spirit. The problem should therefore be to avoid heresy on the part of certain sheep pumped by certain rigorist theologians who do not distinguish dogma from human laws and from their own opinions, the unalterable substance of the Sacraments by the discipline of the Sacraments repeatedly modified over the centuries. It is therefore certain theologians and certain lost sheep who seriously risk slipping into a heresy generated by the first of the deadly sins, why think arrogantly of being able to review what Peter may eventually decide to "bind" or "loose", or what to leave tied up and what to never untie, and in and of itself impiety, and sometimes even heresy, because not even the opinion of an ecumenical council is superior to the will and decisions of Peter, to whose will and decision the conciliar or synodal assembly must always submit, and today, our Pietro, It is the Holy Father Francis.

It is therefore a painful and foolish thing that certain rigorists write triumphantly: "That “ambiguous phrase” it passed the Sionodo by just one vote!». And note well, to attach to “votes” e “majorities” they are the penalty takers, those who in the chest the glories of the old Papal State return again, the tiara, the gestatorial chair and the flaubelli, the union throne and altar, but even though he ignorantly forgets that Peter listens to whoever he wants and if he wants, deciding regardless of votes and majorities, because he has a special grace of state deriving from a vicarious power that comes to him from Christ God himself, not by the majority or minority votes of the assemblies. The Holy Father could get up tomorrow morning, take a guy who passes by on the street and consecrate him bishop and then confer the dignity of cardinal to Sor Romoletto who sells chicory in Campo dei Fiori. He could canonize the late Sora Lella on the spot, former peanut seller in Trastevere, without following any of the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law and without asking the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to give any account. And no one could invalidate his work, because everything falls within his powers which are not subject as such to any control. But all this, the rigorists, they seem to have forgotten.

Even today, some reproach me for having been "irreverent" towards Cardinal Raymond Leonard Burke. Sincerely, I was more severe than irreverent, because a cardinal who lends himself to being exploited by certain circles of “traditionalist halberdiers” who launch unacceptable criticism of the work of the Supreme Pontiff, towards whom they even stage illogical trials of his intentions, he is neither prudent nor wise; and as such and as such it does not deserve to be taken seriously, but only to be taken cheerfully, together with all his supporters and his rich benefactors of the American ultra-right who scream «heresy, to heresy!», «to the schism, to the schism!». So let's not turn the cards on the table by turning professional offenders into vilified virgins, because it's them, written after written and conference after conference to seriously disrespect the Supreme Authority of the Prince of the Apostles, I'm certainly not the one disrespecting a Cardinal by allowing myself to be invited, interview and raise the banner of opposition to a Supreme Pontiff who is nothing less than "guiding the Church towards doctrinal drift" - and all without ever making a clear denial in this regard regarding certain people who use him for this purpose in opposition to the Holy Father -, it actually reveals itself for what it is: an irresponsible imprudent.

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Where Peter, Church was there.

Amen!

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