Pope Francis preaches during a penance service at St. Peter’s Basilica, March 28, 2014. / Lauren Cater/CNA.
Zamboanga City, Philippines, Aug 26, 2021 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
A Philippines bishop has announced 40 days of fasting and penitence as a way to share in the sufferings of others and heal from the spiritual damage of the coronavirus pandemic. Such penitence and self-reflection, he said, will help the faithful “encounter Christ in the fullness of his generosity and love especially amidst this ongoing pandemic crisis.”
“The pandemic has revealed that we are not only vulnerable to this biological threat of COVID-19, but also to the contagion of hopelessness, depression, selfishness, the abuse of power, the lack of transparency and accountability, and the preoccupation to personal privileges to the detriment of those who continuously suffer,” Auxiliary Bishop Moises M. Cuevas of Zamboanga said in an Aug. 24 pastoral letter “Not by Bread Alone.”
Cuevas is serving as the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Zamboanga, on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, while the sitting archbishop Romulo de la Cruz recovers from a stroke.
He has declared Forty Days of Fasting and Penitence, to begin Oct. 13 and to end on Nov. 21, Christ the King Sunday. Observing these days would be actions “in solidarity with those who suffer readily the effects of the pandemic,” he said. Such a practice aims “to evoke the fasting and time of preparation of Christ in the wilderness.”
To help prepare the Catholic faithful in the months before these forty days, parishes should hold a catechesis in the months before, he said.
“Parishes shall readily make available the Sacrament of Reconciliation for those who wish to engage in a spiritual and moral renewal in this period,” said the bishop.
“I make an appeal to each of you to receive upon your hearts Christ as the word of life, provider and shepherd of us all,” he said. “It is Christ who remains faithful to us in his truth, compassion, and wisdom amidst this ongoing pandemic crisis in the city and elsewhere.”
Cuevas’ pastoral letter reflected on the coronavirus epidemic in light of Christ’s temptation in the desert, where the devil asked him to turn stones into bread.
“The desert experience has subjected Jesus to an extreme examination of his identity, reducing the trappings of his divinity and exaltedness,” said the bishop. “The pandemic crisis has also subjected us to an examination of the threshold of our charity, whether it would remain consistent or altogether fall apart. Jesus refused to change the stones into bread in the desert, even when tempted to do so, telling the tempter that man cannot indeed live on mere bread alone even amidst one’s desolation.”
“Through this crisis, Jesus shares with us what it means to be hungry, isolated, vulnerable,” the bishop said. “As in Christ’s temptation, the devil too presents attractive alternatives to our Christian mission and purpose: the lure of power, invulnerability, and influence to easily bring our notions of God’s Kingdom upon this mortal world – to save humanity from its self-destructive tendencies by choosing the most convenient and gainful promise of domination over a great many.”
The threat of the COVID-19 epidemic continues to “derail” the normalcy of daily life and puts at risk the most vulnerable, said the bishop.
“As a community we are still traversing on the verge of the unknown and most uncertain, while we precariously hold on to our emotional stability and the assurance that we are not left helpless in these present circumstances,” he said.
Close to 1 million people live in Zamboanga City.
The Philippines has had about 1.9 million reported cases and 32,700 deaths, according to Reuters. New infections reported average about 15,000 per day, and less than 15% of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated.
According to Cuevas, Zamboanga City is “greatly blessed” to have people who live “not by bread alone” but seek “the ‘eternal food’ of selfless service and witnessing to the call of communion and solidarity with those who can be left behind and struggle most amidst this crisis.” He specifically mentioned doctors, nurses, essential workers, volunteers, clergy and men and women religious, as well as parents, elders and family members who seek to stabilize their communities and their households.
“They understood that no one is saved alone,” said the bishop, citing Pope Francis’ December 2020 apostolic letter on St. Joseph, Patris Corde.
He stressed the need for true charity, not a false charity that is “manipulated as an affection or sentiment,” or is not “an authentic encounter or engagement with the other.” This is the kind of false charity that attempts to “live on bread alone.”
“As a Church, we encounter Christ as the life-giving word from the Eternal Father and the Bread that gives life in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist,” said the bishop. “But the encounter must begin with our personal journey in confronting ourselves to what makes us cling to our raw instincts for personal survival and selfish gain.”
“Whenever we refuse to come out of ourselves, comfortable in the cocoons of our own satisfaction and privilege, Christ cannot come to us—and we cannot come to one another,” he added. “Our vicious obsession for self-preservation gives us this illusion of contentment and achievement that effectively cuts us off from the rest of struggling, barely-surviving humanity. Only in our willful and sustained encounter with Jesus can we realize what it means to share our lives and give the best of ourselves for others in a similar manner to His willful self-giving for humankind.”
He called anyone who had sinned against charity and justice to repent and make reparation:
“to those who have obsessively consumed and hoarded bread for themselves, those who have taken more than what they can collect, I say to them: return that which is stolen, remit that which needs accounting, in the name of charity and justice.”
He also sought the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Pillar, saying her first encounter with God’s word “led her to wholeheartedly embrace her vocation as the Mother of the Redeemer and of the redeemed as well.”
“In our personal encounter with Christ in his word, who also shepherds and provides for us during this pandemic, we imitate and honor Mary’s humility and openness to charity and service for others,” he said. He cited Mary’s words from the Gospel of Luke: “Let it be done unto me according to your word.”
[…]
Pope Francis says “homosexuality is a sin” but is pushing its legalization?
Pope Francis keeps allowing one James Martin to seduce him into these ideas?
Pope Francis and James Martin have a merit to hide who else is involved?
Pope Francis equates buggery with “sexual intercourse outside marriage”?
Pope Francis wants to make this into a “Magisterium” and into acts of piety?
The “conversational tone” of an interview makes up for what really should be taught but isn’t?
Pope Francis says if you do not join in you are Pelagian and/or Jansenist?
Pope Francis calls this clarification? …. when …. James Martin asked for it?
James Martin merits this welcome and specific clarification, but not the four cardinals who authored the dubia?
I think there’s an abiding ambiguity in the Pope’s thinking on the relationship between sin and culpability. According to the Church, my lack of full knowledge or deliberate consent may mitigate or nullify my culpability for an objectively disordered act, but this does not mean that the act is permissible for me even in a qualified or provisional sense, even for the sake of avoiding a greater evil.
Pope Francis suggests just the opposite in his response to the Argentine Bishops’ Letter, which argues I could discern that it is not presently possible for me to avoid sex outside marriage if to do so would lead to a greater sin, though it may become possible in the future with the help of grace. The issue here is not really a lack of full knowledge or deliberate consent. On the contrary, I have deliberated on my options, and have decided that it is necessary for me to consent to sex outside marriage in order to avoid some consequence that I judge to be a greater evil (e.g., subjecting my children to divorce, etc).
This is not the Church’s teaching. It is consequentialism with a smiling face. No matter how difficult my present circumstances may be, I can keep God’s law with the help of His grace. To say otherwise is not Christian mercy, but moral determinism. It is to strip us of agency and dignity, to deny the share Christ gives us in the victory of the Cross.
All this, of course, is old news, but it makes it difficult for me to take the Pope’s much-welcome correction of James Martin at face value. Francis tends to stretch the Church’s teaching on mitigated culpability from something like a distinction between degrees of murder to a distinction between murder and self-defense. If it is sometimes impossible for divorced and remarried couples to avoid sex outside marriage, and if we must treat all sexual sins alike, could it sometimes be impossible for gay couples too? If so, what is the point of re-affirming that homosexual acts are always sins?
“…of course, one must also consider the circumstances, which may decrease or eliminate fault.”
Yes, in individual cases, but from this will James Martin now manufacture the endorsement he needs to proclaim that LGBTQ as a category (!) is exempt from the natural law, the dubia and the Magisterium’s Veritatis Splendor?
What would such an endorsement mean when, instead, the homosexual tendency is triggered or locked in by early sexual abuse, by random sexual experimentation, by the trauma of absentee or abusive fathers, by cultural victimization? Ought the Church to truly affirm the victim persons and call for confronting and healing the entire package of such background abuses–at, say, the “aggregated, compiled and synthesized” Synod on Synodality? Fat chance. But perhaps James Martin will supply Cardinals Hollerich and Radcliffe with the needed wording!
But then there’s also the science–a literature review, plus the lab finding of a few genome “markers” of little explanatory value, and no gay gene:
One recent STUDY in the mix is a review of two hundred peer-reviewed studies on sexual orientation and gender identity. The conclusion: gender identity is not an innate, fixed property of human beings independent of biological sex (Mayer/McHugh, The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society, Ethics and Public Policy Center, No. 50, Fall 2016).
Other GENOME RESEARCH points to some genetic markers—it does not find a gay gene— and concludes that these markers do not account for same-sex behavior. https://news.yahoo.com/no-gay-gene-study-finds-180220669.html
Well to have clarified his remarks, although Pope Francis apparently doesn’t distinguish between sexual sins in the natural order, and those moral injustices that are a form of hostility to the natural order. Such are homosexual sins. Why the difference?
God ordained human sexual behavior exclusive to a man and woman. The sin then offends God as a sin outside marriage, and a sin against natural law. Also, the common opinion of late is that the predilection toward same sex is not sinful described as such ‘attraction’. The error in this while it’s apparently true that some have a deep seated same sex attraction that of itself may not be sinful -similarly, the historical evidence shows homosexuality behavior can be an acquired sexual dysfunction.
Francis clouds this distinction. That leads many to assume a form of liceity in that sodomy is no less grievous than natural sexual activity between a man and woman, adding to the willingness to engage in unnatural sex. As well as the Pontiff’s frequent admonition, this is how God made you, he loves you as you are. Hearing this from a pontiff weakens resistance to homosexuality, often for some encourages it.
Well said! The pope’s comment was rather shocking. As we read in scripture God condemns homosexuality which is an abomination to Him and for the pope to suggest that those who choose to disobey God should be given any consideration is wrong and speaks volume for a person in his position.
I could just imagine all the heads exploding in “America” offices all over the land as they hear Pope Francis saying that homosexuality is a SIN.
“He can’t say that!” they all cried out at once. James Martin swooned and had to be helped to the nearest fainting couch.
“We need to get him to issue a clarification right away” all the world’s Jesuits screamed in unison. “No one can know that homosexuality is sinful in any respect! We must have full papal approval of homosexuality, at least in the public mind!”
And so, Pope Francis did what he was told.
Pope Francis says “of course, one must also consider the circumstances which may decrease or eliminate fault.” The catechism, however, clearly states that homosexual acts “under no circumstances can they be approved.” The catechism makes things clear, the pope’s statement does not. Some could claim that love for a same sex partner eliminates the moral fault of homosexual acts,
Agreed. I posted a rather over-longish comment about this above.
Pax
Rene, this conflated concept of mitigation is the lever used in Amoris Laetitia to neutralize intrinsically evil acts. John Paul II warned not to make mitigation [in Amoris as you correctly note mitigating circumstances] a category, as a classification of moral acts. Grace is what’s absent in Ch 8 Amoris Laetitia, a surreptitious omission. When the Apostle Paul complained of Satan’s thorn in his side [Aquinas considered Paul’s affliction a moral temptation] Our Lord answered him, ‘My grace is sufficient. My power is perfected in weakness’.
Dear, dear Francis,
I stopped listening to anything you say or write a long, long time ago. Issue an encyclical or make pronouncements ex cathedra on a matter of faith and moral and then I’ll listen and obey. But your day to day remarks are not only confusing but you’re forever contradicting yourself.
Absolutely! Thank God that Francis hasn’t made any doctrinal ex cathedra edicts and pray that he doesn’t.
Up against the abyss, Pope Francis?
The Holy Spirit protects the Deposit of Faith.
I am deeply concerned over this pontiff and his comments.
I wish there was a way, outside of prayer, that we can address our concerns in a spirit of filial love and correction to this Holy Father, similar to St Paul’s rebuke of St Peter, or that of an adult son to his elderly father.
An interesting, albeit sad,turn of events. James Martin left his two audiences with Francis feeling encouraged and supported, probably due to his sense that the pontiff was on his side. But this is just another example of Francis doublespeak. Homosexual acts are sin. The church has taught this for centuries. There really is no need for clarification. Martin needs to either repent or be laicized.
I vote for laicization, as repentance seems to be off the table.
Last time I checked (okay, I never did, but still) mixing ammonia and bleach is not a crime, or even a sin as far as I know, but it is still an incredibly stupid thing to do, and carries with it the possibility of very, very scary breathing difficulties, if not death.
.
Maybe sodomy should be looked at that way. Not a crime, but incredibly stupid and harmful on many, many levels. Not something that can ever be approved of and should always and everywhere be discouraged–including in marriage–an institution that is exclusively between and man and woman.
A sound and sensible take on the issue.
These are not equal comparisons as mixing bleach & ammonia are not known from research or millenia of human experience to be a “dysfunctional behavior against Natural Law” – as IS sodomy and all homosexual sexual behaviors. The ramifications of homosexual sexual behaviors are immediately harmful both naturally & eternally to the people involved, and the consequences of harm and destruction from even one encounter can expand like an algae bloom in summer, and from the common on-going behavior (“gay culture”) explode with far-reaching and forever consequences like the radiation from nuclear explosion/melt-down.
A very good analogy there, the mixing of ammonia and bleach. Unfortunately, with sodomy some have apparently to learn the hard way or, worse yet, never do.
As soon as you read “Pope Francis clarifies comments” you know it is safe to stop reading.
You got it!
I get your point and agree in part. However, I’m not sure it’s ever safe. He is rather like the old uncle or grandpa who keeps coming to family reunions and embarrasses (almost) everyone with his inappropriate comments and behavior. It’s egregious stuff, but nobody seems to be able to stop him. So he keeps roiling things up and fouling the air until, finally, he falls asleep in a rocking chair. Then, then we have a moment of peace and sanity.
God said homosexuality is a sin both in the old and new testament LONG before any pope meekly mentioned it. It’s really sad that you all rely on a catechism made up by sinful men that doesn’t correspond exactly to God’s word. The world is watching as the Catholic church crumbles before their very eyes.
The Old and New Testaments were written by sinful men.
Inspired by the Holy Spirit
Still sinful (the men, that is).
Sinful men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so God’s word that the Catholic Church took liberty with and altered it to suit their purpose.
The Pope is implying the realities of voluntary and involuntary homosexuality. The former are sinful and the latter possibly not, as especially when in youth under non-cognitive exploration, a person discovers sexual response though no one taught him nor did one learn it from a source (i.e. ‘it just happened’). If one does not know, then culpability is indeed mitigated. But the one who has already gained full knowledge of disorder (has taken the eternal curriculum of heterosexuality and chastity) and acts out still, ‘will be severely beaten’, in consequence.
Dr/Fr Ripperger has covered this area called ‘involuntary vice’. But someone should write an entire book on this topic, because the tendency of the creature who has already voluntarily or involuntarily wired or configured his body to same-sex attraction (or any other disordered intoxication) preference, searches for every cognitive instance that will legitimize his configuration, to make licit the acting out in the preference. Addicts and compulsives do the same gymnastic of malaprop ‘understanding’ of commentary.
The pope is plying mercy to these vast grey areas, but unawake sinners/the misconfigured accept only what conforms to intoxication preference. Scripture often gets misinterpreted in the same way, in a twilight before facing the fact of disorder.
It is a very complicated area, arriving at actual moral culpability, because inner physical/psychological adolescent maturation often lacks guidance and occurs in total secrecy, and gets ‘locked’ into disordered patterns before cognition, reason or knowledge can undo them.
Conversion is a slow awakening to what got misconfigured, how it should have been configured, and where to get the desire to desist the old and find a home in the new: to change, to be reconfigured: redemption. For many it will take a lifetime of struggle to overcome the Beast who wants to gain the interior permanent upper hand. Which many do not want to make since the misconfiguration is not their fault and because there is deep unfortunate attachment to the intoxication preference.
These are some things the Pope could share with the press, which would have the impossible(!) effect of awakening, remorse, shock, release, amazement, understanding. That’s my prayer. Speak actual truth from the inner world of the sufferer, so he can come to freedom.
Very sad and disappointing that the Holy Father was so quick to clarify his comments in response to the inquiry of Fr. Martin; yet… 4 Cardinals of the Church asked for clarification of the Holy Fathers writings over 6 years ago (the dubia) and these have still not been addressed.
The lackadaisical “clarification” only compounded confusion about what constitutes a sin by persons experiencing same sex attraction. Sexual misbehavior is often a mortal sin, particularly such acts between persons of the same sex. While there are always mitigating circumstances, and only God can judge any particular soul, the Church should always strive to emphasize the “narrow gate” and that obstinate ignorance is not an excuse. Moreover, this would have been a most opportune occasion to strengthen the understanding of what is a God recognized marriage and Holy Matrimony. Instead we received a nuanced response from the Pope that “sex outside marriage” is a sin without soul saving instruction on either. Is there any wonder that Biden and Co Catholics may really believe that same sex “marriage” and funded abortion is supported by the Church?
Pope Francis said the homosexual act is not a crime. Well in some Muslim countries it is a crime.