Paderborn, Germany, Jul 1, 2018 / 02:22 pm (CNA).- According to a regional newspaper report, Archbishop Hans-Josef Becker of Paderborn has decided to allow Protestant spouses of Catholics living in his diocese to receive holy Communion “in individual cases.”
As the newspaper Westfalenblatt reported, the archbishop told his presbyteral council on June 27 that the document formerly known as a “pastoral handout,” which the German bishops’ conference has re-published as “pastoral guidance” following discussions with Rome, offers “spiritual help for the decision of conscience in individual cases accompanied by pastoral care.”
“At the meeting of the Council of Priests of the Archdiocese of Paderborn on 27 June 2018, I presented my interpretation [of the document] and formulated the expectation that all pastors in the Archdiocese of Paderborn will familiarize themselves intensively with the guidance document and will act in a spirit of pastoral responsibility,” the archbishop told the newspaper.
Referring to inter-denominational marriages as “denomination-uniting” marriages in the German original, Becker further said that through baptism, their Christian faith, and the sacrament of marriage, two Christians in such unions “are united”. The Protestant spouse in such cases may have a longing and a strong desire to receive the Eucharist, the archbishop continued according to the German newspaper, and therefore it is “a matter of arriving at a responsible decision of conscience.”
At the same time, the 70-year-old Becker emphasized that his move does not constitute a “general permission” to receive Holy Communion.
Founded in 799 AD, the Archdiocese of Paderborn is situated in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and home to about 1,5 million Catholics. CNA Deutsch, the German language sister agency of CNA, has reached out to the archdiocese for confirmation, but has not yet received a response.
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Dublin, Ireland, Jun 25, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Former Irish President Mary McAleese has said that the baptism of infants is a form of coercion, calling on the Catholic Church to change its practice.
“You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old and you can’t say to them at seven or eight or 14 or 19 ‘here is what you contracted, here is what you signed up to’ because the truth is they didn’t,” she said in a June 23 interview with The Irish Times.
Baptizing babies, she said, makes “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience.”
McAleese, Ireland’s president from 1997-2011, is a student at Rome’s Gregorian University, pursuing a doctorate in canon law. Her doctoral dissertation criticizes Catholic practices regarding infant baptism, The Irish Times reported.
“If your parents are Catholic and you are baptised in a Catholic Church, that baby becomes a member for life – according to the teaching of the church – of the church and it has rights and obligations,” she said.
McAleese said that in previous centuries, Catholics “didn’t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away.”
“But you and I know, we live now in times where we have the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking,”
“What the church has failed to do is to recognise that there has to be a point at which our young people, as adults who have been baptised into the church and raised in the faith, have the chance to say ‘I validate this’ or ‘I repudiate this,’” she added.
In the same interview, she said that the Church must respect the right of Catholics to dissent from Church teaching.
“Let’s be frank about it, very little of the magisterium – there are elements of it that are obviously infallible, things like the teaching on Christ and his divinity – but there are other things that over many, many centuries were taught with great passion that quietly now have been abandoned by the very magisterium that taught them.”
McAleese, who has previously advocated publicly for ending abortion restrictions in Ireland, same-sex marriage, and women’s ordination to the priesthood, drew headlines earlier this year when she spoke March 8 at a women’s conference in Rome held outside the Vatican.
The annual conference, “Voices of Faith,” had previously been held in the Vatican City State. In 2018, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, objected to some speakers, including McAleese, and would not approve use of the Vatican’s space for the conference. Organizers moved the event to the headquarters of the Society of Jesus.
“We are here to shout, to bring down our Church’s walls of misogyny,” McAleese said at that conference.
Referring to the Church hierarchy, she added that “I hope that all the hearing aids are turned up today!”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls on parents to baptize their children as soon as is possible after they are born.
“Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called,” the Catechism says.
“The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism.”
Pope Francis entrusted a meeting of Mediterranean bishops and youth to the Virgin Mary during the first appointment of a two-day trip to Marseille, France, Sept. 22, 2023. The model ships hanging in Marseille’s Basilica de Notre-Dame de la Garde are a testament to the faith of the sailors who have relied on the intercession of Our Lady over the centuries. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News
CNA Staff, Sep 22, 2023 / 14:33 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis on Friday entrusted a meeting of Mediterranean bishops and youth to the Virgin Mary during the first appointment of a two-day trip to Marseille, France.
After landing in the historic port city Sept. 22, the pope made his way to the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, or the Basilica of Our Lady of the Guard, to ask for the intercession of Mary together with local priests, deacons, and religious.
The 19th-century basilica sits on the foundations of an ancient fort on a 489-foot limestone outcropping, the highest point of the city in southern France. Before the basilica, there was a medieval chapel on the same site.
Pope Francis entrusts a meeting of Mediterranean bishops and youth to the Virgin Mary during the first appointment of a two-day trip to Marseille, France, Sept. 22, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis is in Marseille to participate in the Mediterranean Encounter, the “Rencontres Méditerranéennes” — a gathering of some 120 young people of various creeds with bishops from 30 countries. The encounter is a “cultural festival” drawing together associations and groups committed to dialogue and ecological issues.
“We place under [Mary’s] mantle the fruit of the Rencontres Méditerranéennes, together with the expectations and hopes of your hearts,” the pope told clergy at the basilica Sept. 22.
The pope will join in the Mediterranean Encounter on the morning of Sept. 23.
Francis’ 27-hour trip will include an address to religious leaders, a private encounter with the poor, and the celebration of Mass. He will also meet with France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne.
The last pope to visit Marseille was Clement VII in 1533.
Pope Francis entrusts a meeting of Mediterranean bishops and youth to the Virgin Mary during the first appointment of a two-day trip to Marseille, France, Sept. 22, 2023, at the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, or the Basilica of Our Lady of the Guard. Credit: Vatican Media
Father Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, also visited the city and the Basilica of Notre Dame de La Garde when he was a young priest studying in Rome.
Pope Francis said he is “in the company of great pilgrims” who have visited the basilica, such as Pope John Paul II, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and St. Charles de Foucauld.
“In the biblical reading, the prophet Zephaniah exhorted us to joy and confidence, reminding us that the Lord our God is not far away, he is here, near to us, in order to save us,” the pope said.
“In a way, this message reminds us of the history of this basilica and what it represents,” he continued. “In fact, it was not founded in memory of a miracle or a particular apparition, but simply because, since the 13th century, the holy people of God have sought and found here, on the hill of La Garde, the presence of the Lord through the eyes of his holy Mother.”
“That is why, for centuries, the people of Marseille — especially those who navigate the waves of the Mediterranean — have been coming up here to pray,” he said.
Francis encouraged the 119 priests of the Archdiocese of Marseille, which serves approximately 742,000 Catholics, to take Mary and her gaze as an example for their priesthood.
Pope Francis entrusts a meeting of Mediterranean bishops and youth to the Virgin Mary during the first appointment of a two-day trip to Marseille, France, Sept. 22, 2023, at the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, or the Basilica of Our Lady of the Guard. Credit: Vatican Media
“Even with all the many daily concerns, I beg you, do not detract from the warmth of God’s paternal and maternal gaze,” he said. “It is marvelous to generously dispense his forgiveness, that is, to always, always, loosen the chains of sin through grace and free people from those obstacles, regrets, grudges, and fears against which they cannot prevail alone.”
He reminded the priests of the beauty and joy of making the sacraments available to people in both happy and sad moments, “and of transmitting, in the name of God, unexpected hopes for his consoling presence, healing compassion, and moving tenderness.”
“Be close to all, especially the frail and less fortunate, and never let those who suffer lack your attentive and discreet closeness,” he said. “In this way, there will grow in them and also in you the faith that animates the present, the hope that opens to the future, and the charity that lasts forever.”
“Like Mary, let us bring the blessing and peace of Jesus everywhere, in every family and heart,” Pope Francis said.
Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sep 30, 2021 / 14:55 pm (CNA).
A campaigner for assisted suicide in the Netherlands, who is not a physician, has been detained on suspicion of involvement in an assisted suicide.Cooperative Last W… […]
4 Comments
Not a general permission?!?
Who is kidding whom? According to Canon Law, the situation is very rare and usually involves the possibility of immediate death.
Like Fr. Martin and his crusade for homosexuality, this German bishop and his ilk are playing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for fools.
The permission granted by Archbishop Becker for Paderborn was expected as the beginning. Other German Dioceses will folow and presumably other dioceses world wide. What the Church is experiencing is rationale for furthering communion beyond Protestant spouses to D&R, nominal Catholics and likely any non Catholic That rationale is removal of canonical requirements for receiving the Holy Eucharist. The exception per force becomes the universal. This is not a narrowly crafted decision rather it is consistent with the Vatican’s Paradigm Shift and what Cardinal Gerhard Mueller called “Conversion to the World”. New Epoch exigency is their rationale. The revelation of Christ transcends cultural change, the fallacy that truth is subject to time and has no permanency. It is clear devaluation of the very heart of Catholicism. The Holy Eucharist.
Not a general permission?!?
Who is kidding whom? According to Canon Law, the situation is very rare and usually involves the possibility of immediate death.
Like Fr. Martin and his crusade for homosexuality, this German bishop and his ilk are playing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for fools.
And apparently with the Pope’s blessing.
The permission granted by Archbishop Becker for Paderborn was expected as the beginning. Other German Dioceses will folow and presumably other dioceses world wide. What the Church is experiencing is rationale for furthering communion beyond Protestant spouses to D&R, nominal Catholics and likely any non Catholic That rationale is removal of canonical requirements for receiving the Holy Eucharist. The exception per force becomes the universal. This is not a narrowly crafted decision rather it is consistent with the Vatican’s Paradigm Shift and what Cardinal Gerhard Mueller called “Conversion to the World”. New Epoch exigency is their rationale. The revelation of Christ transcends cultural change, the fallacy that truth is subject to time and has no permanency. It is clear devaluation of the very heart of Catholicism. The Holy Eucharist.
“Francis the Inscrutable. Who Brakes To Speed Up (Sandro Magister)”. I had to add this addendum by the witty knowledgeable Senor Magister.
“What a surprise.”