Friday, September 26, 2014

Cristina Odone: doublethink on divorce and remarriage

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Forgiveness is never impossible. You just need to repent and queue up here.
I knew Cristina Odone had some odd views on divorce, and I even referred to them the other day, but I was taken aback by this passage in an article by her in the Telegraph.

How can my Church bar Suzanne, a friend whose husband spent the nights at his laptop, gambling away the family’s income? If she had not divorced him, after his broken promises to reform added up to nought, she risked her children’s future. Surely no priest can say she’s guilty of breaking God’s law? Nor is Suzanne’s case the worst: one priest, who offered to give me communion despite Church rulings, knew battered wives who’d finally found the courage to divorce their abusers – only to realise they would be divorcing their Church as well.

Such tales anger me. As did the practice of annulment, where you could effectively buy the Church’s collusion in untying the marital knot.


Is it possible that she is so muddle-headed that she thinks the Church bars people from Holy Communion for separating from an abusive spouse?

As someone who has written about the issue a good few times, been involved personally as the wife of a divorcee, and taken an interest in the cases she cites, her failure to find out what the Church teaches, if that is what has happened, is itself bizarre. More likely, however, is that she does have at least a dim understanding, but feels justified in simplifying the situation for the benefit of her readers. The result, however, is a vicious libel against the Church. .

So what is the Church's teaching? The obligation to share one's life with one's spouse is overridden if the spouse is impossible to live with. If you don't believe me, go and read Canon 1153 in the Code of Canon Law.

Furthermore, there is no question of being barred from communion for having walked out on your spouse, or even obtained a civil divorce, for insufficient reasons. The sufficiency of those reasons is a matter of the internal forum: it is between you and your confessor.

There are very few things you can do to get yourself barred from Communion, and they all depend on taking up a public state which is objectively out of line with the Church's discipline. Politicians legislating for abortion is one way. Getting civilly married to someone while still married, in the eyes of the Church, to someone else, is another. Neither of these situations, or anything like them, is supposedly at issue in Odone's test cases.

And what's this? When a marriage fails, and on investigation it is established that it failed because it was invalid, for example when one party had no intention of observing marital fidelity, or was incapable of giving consent because of serious mental illness, Cristina Odone tells us that this is a case of the Church 'colluding' in a wrong.

This is extremely insulting to those many people who have been through the process of annulment in good faith, after marrying a person who whose marriage vows were an empty sham. Cristina wants those people to be trapped in their invalid marriages, and simultaneously says that, on divorce,
'Catholics have been cruel, not kind'. Are you talking about yourself, Cristina?

What is her view, anyway? She thinks that annulments are wrong. On the other hand, she thinks that remarriage after divorce, without an annulment, is fine.

Marriage is sacred, and not a temporary contract. I believe that, wholly. But this wonderful institution, where a couple love one another through sickness, poverty and even betrayal, is an ideal.

What on earth does this mean? It isn't mercy Odone wants, it is doublethink: marriage is indissoluble, and yet soluble; annulment is a wrongful way to end a invalid marriage; divorce and remarriage are good and necessary.

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7 comments:

  1. This Odone person does sound like she has muddled Catholic teaching.

    If I may ask, something not too important but had me confused was the line "As someone who has written about the issue a good few times, been involved personally as the *wife* ..........."

    Are you Dr. Shaw or someone else :O?

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    1. 'She' - it is Cristina Odone I'm talking about, not me!

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    2. Oh, now when I re-read the sentence, that makes so much sense :)

      For some reason when I read it before, it always computed in my brain as reasons you were taking her on.

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  3. The 'relax-annulments-for-mercy' bloc only have power because they exploit the ignorance of the uncatechized. They've repeatedly been shown to have no reasonable arguments and more or less exploit the emotions of the crowd by chanting key words like "pastoral" and "mercy". Today the media talking points are all about "Communion for the divorced" as if this wasn't already a settled matter and has anything to do with the Synod.

    When I was still an undergrad at the Catholic University of America, a certain lady in one of my theology classes opined to our professor that the Church was still in the dark ages because she disallowed divorce even in the case of spousal abuse. The professor did nothing to correct this assumption--I had to carefully explain to her in private, after class, about her fundamental error. If many graduate accredited Catholic schools believing such nonsense, what hope hath the world?

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  4. This is just another example, and an extreme one, of how the liberal/Relativists have succeeded in focusing on the right of everyone to receive Holy Communion, regardless of their state of Sin, Mortal or otherwise.

    As has been said no one is barred from the Church. All sinners, the divorced and remarried, that is those leading a "married life", and any other grave sinners, for example those guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins, should certainly go to Mass and pray for their Redemption.

    But they must not receive Holy Communion without Confession and a firm purpose of amendment.

    After all we are required to receive Holy Communion once a year, yes that’s it, only once a year. The desire of the divorced and remarried has, mostly, little to do with receiving the Body and Blood of Christ and a lot to do with receiving social acceptance. For those who genuinely wish to receive Our Lord I am sure they would be happy to kneel during Mass and just pray for a resolution of their difficulties.

    We really must get away from this post-Vatican II idea that everybody, but everybody must receive Holy Communion at every Mass, regardless.

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  5. This is just another example, and an extreme one, of how the liberal/Relativists have succeeded in focusing on the right of everyone to receive Holy Communion, regardless of their state of Sin, Mortal or otherwise.

    As has been said no one is barred from the Church. All sinners, the divorced and remarried, that is living a “married life” and any other grave sinners, for example those guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins, should certainly go to Mass and pray for their Redemption.

    But they must not receive Holy Communion without Confession and a firm purpose of amendment.

    After all we are required to receive Holy Communion once a year, yes that’s it, only once a year. The desire of the divorced and remarried has, mostly, little to do with receiving the Body and Blood of Christ and a lot to do with receiving social acceptance. For those who genuinely wish to receive Our Lord I am sure they would be happy to kneel during Mass and just pray for a resolution of their difficulties.

    We really must get away from this post- Vatican II idea that everybody, but everybody must receive Holy Communion at every Mass, regardless.

    ReplyDelete