Is Your Marriage Valid?

“Hhmmm.. If it doesn’t work, it’s bye-bye and back to Hollywood”?

 

It appears that part of the strategy to go against the Sacrament of Communion and Our Lord’s teaching about adultery is to go against the sacrament of marriage, by actually going against all marriages. Fifty percent of the marriages celebrated in the West could be invalid, the Bishop of Rome is said to have said. It is, at any rate, certain that he has mentioned another bishop saying the same, and apparently not in order to deny the  theory. 

In order to destroy communion by allowing it to adulterers it is necessary that faith in marriage be destroyed in the first place. When that is gone, everything else will crush down from itself. 

Are you sure, then, that you are validly married? What about your neighbours? Your colleagues? Your wife’s childhood friends? There can be, apparently, no certainty about anyone, at least not anyone we do not knew very intimately at the moment he married. 

The consequence of this is that the difference between married couples and concubines or public adulterers  is blurred away. Marriage is not a sacrament anymore, merely a supposition, and one with very uncertain odds; or ask yourself how safe you would feel if the doctor would say to you that you are ill, with a 50% probability of survival. 

Yes, the Joneses down the road live together, but they live like husband and wife. How can we know they are less husband and wife than half the Catholic couples of our acquaintance? She even has his name! Isn’t that cute! Yes, the Church says they are adulterers in theory, but in practice the Church says that there is no way to know who is married and who isn’t, is there now? 

This, in turn, throws a more than sinister light on the entire edifice of the Church. If the Church founded by Christ cannot give even a modicum of realistic assurance that she, as a rule, imparts sacraments validly, what is the Church worth? If that on which the entire human social construct is founded cannot be guaranteed as being the proper way, and the married couple a properly married couple, what is the Church there for? If marriage is at the very basis of human civilisation, but the Church cannot ensure she makes even that function properly, what kind of Bride is this? At that point, the Bride of Christ would be questioned exactly in the same way as all other brides are questioned. 

In order to allow his punters to keep paying, Cardinal Kasper openly attacks not only the sacrament of Communion, and not only Christ’s world on adultery, but the institution of marriage itself. The Bishop of Rome, whether out of great stupidity or evil mind, supports him in any way he can, short of open approval.

In just a few months, you will have to decide to whom to give your allegiance. No Pope has the right to demand that we sacrifice our allegiance to Christ on the altar of “unity”, of “obedience” to earthly authority – and be it the Pope’s – or of a “collegiality” that cannot have any value if it goes against Christ. Much less can it be sacrifice in the name of a supposed “Spirit”, now evidently intentioned to make Christianity obsolete. 

Therefore, no Pope is due obedience in matters in which he puts himself squarely against Christ, and no amount of Clericalist fluff can change anything in that. 

And so I ask again: is your marriage valid? Your neighbours’? Your relatives’? Is the Church able to validly impart Sacraments? Is Christ to be followed in preference to strange novelties? 

I have the impression that the final destination of a great number of souls will be decided from the way they have, in life, answered this question. 

Mundabor 

 

“We Are Satan”

The head of the Austrian group “Wir Sind Kirche” (“We Are Church”) was excommunicated, together with her husband, for playing Mass (and, actually, “priestess”) at home. What I think happened is that these people invited a small number of satanic nutcases at home and, after tea and Sachertorte, “concelebrated” a pretend Mass. 

I hope the Sachertorte was good, because the thing with the pretend Mass had a kind of a bitter outcome.

This group is, in a way, the Austrian Heresy on steroids or, if you prefer, the openly militant Austrian Heresy. A bit what the SA were to the Nazi ideology. They evidently do not limit themselves to dream of, say, priestesses; they actually play priestess themselves.

Ah, these children! They grow up so fast!

In this case, the children are clearly Satan’s willing tools. They refusal of basic Catholicism puts them squarely in the Presbyterian camp, but at least the Presbyterians have the decency to not imagine themselves Catholics.

By the by, the woman  is 67 years old, showing age does not necessarily go together with wisdom, and is apparently using a title of “theologian” without the legal qualifications to do so. Where I come from this is a criminal offence of no small import. I wonder how the Austrian see that. What the matter tells me is that some people would do absolutely everything to attract attention on themselves.

“We Are Excommunicated”

I don’t pity the husband. I pity the neighbours.

Now, it is obviously good that, once in a while, we are informed the rules are enforced. But this here is truly extreme, and to infer from this any kind of “orthodoxy” of Francis would be utterly unrealistic, particularly considering the inquest against the two started in 2011. More probably, Cardinal Müller persuaded Francis that something more robust than a “slap on the wrist” had to take place. We have, anyway, always known this is one madness Francis does not support.

“Wir Sind Kirche” isn’t small fare, as in the German-speaking countries dissent is almost as fashionable now as brown was in the Thirties. They are present in more than twenty Countries, but to my knowledge they are vocal particularly in Germany and Austria. One wonders how the Austrian members will react to the news that their Dear Leader is found guilty of delicta graviora. 

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, because this is one of those events that might open the eyes of the tepid, the ill-informed and the slow. To keep the woman at the head of the Austrian nutcase group would be telling. To oust her would force, perhaps, some soul searching.

When the SSPX bishops are excommunicated, one is forced to inform oneself as to what has happened and, if he is of sound thinking, realise they are excommunicated for refusing to compromise Catholicism. When these two are excommunicated, many will be hopefully led to realise that within this movement Catholicism is not even present in homeopathic doses.

In any way, what is sure is that we can’t infer from the punishment of this really extreme behaviour any return to orthodoxy from Francis.

It would be like praising Stalin because he did not eat children.

Mundabor