Is the Catholic Church showing a sincere and admirable respect for the free will of individuals and encouraging personal responsibility or is she unnecessarily turning away her members who suffer a great degree of doubt about certain Church teachings?
Steve Shiffrin’s article at Mirror of Justice points to some of the many voices encouraging Catholics to leave if they don’t believe:
Placing particular emphasis on the gay marriage issue, John J. Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, maintained in a pastoral letter here that Catholics who cannot assent to the Church’s teachings on marriage and the family “must in all honesty and humility refrain from receiving Holy Communion until they can do so with integrity.” Many reacted to the letter as if it were unprecedented, but I do not believe it is.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2006 here insisted that “If a Catholic in his or her personal or professional life were knowingly and obstinately to reject the defined doctrines of the Church, or knowingly and obstinately to repudiate her definitive teaching on moral issues, however, he or she would seriously diminish his or her communion with the Church. Reception of Holy Communion in such a situation would not accord with the nature of the Eucharistic celebration, so that he or she should refrain.”
Pope Benedict XVI’s Angelus message this past Sunday seems to echo these sentiments:
Finally, Jesus knew that even among the twelve apostles there was one that did not believe: Judas. Judas could have left, as many of the disciples did; indeed, he would have left if he were honest. Instead he remained with Jesus. He did not remain because of faith, or because of love, but with the secret intention of taking vengeance on the Master. . . . The problem is that Judas did not go away, and his most serious fault was falsehood, which is the mark of the devil.
I pray that I will be always obedient to Church teaching, for it is as important as it can be difficult. As Leroy Huizenga said yesterday, ”Benedict praised her [Saint Hildegard of Bingen] for this in a catechetical talk, now published in a collection of his reflections titled Holy Women, saying that ‘the seal of an authentic experience of the Holy Spirit, the source of every charism’ such as St. Hildegard received shows above all ‘complete obedience to the ecclesial authority.’”
Yet, still, this encouragement to leave the Church is troubling to me.
While the pope denounced Judas for staying while not believing, he also made a distinction in his Angelus message between believing and understanding. Quoting St. Augustine, he said:
Do you see how Peter, by the grace of God, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has understood? . . . He does not say we have understood and then we believed, but we believed and then we understood. We have believed in order to be able to understand; if, in fact, we wanted to understand before believing, we would not be able either to understand or to believe.
Many a Catholic—especially many converts, but cradle Catholics as well—who previously denied certain Church teachings, came to find out that the denial was based on a misunderstanding of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. But if it weren’t for the fact that these people stayed in the Church despite not understanding, let alone believing, it’s hard to see how they would ever have come in line with Church teaching.
How are those members of the Catholic Church who now reject Church teaching on contraception, same-sex relations, women ordination, etc. ever to come home again if we kick them to the curb?
God forbid they end up like Judas.
October 5th, 2012 | 10:42 am
How can they ever come home again if they do not realize that they are in error? And, worse yet, think that being in error is compatible with being a good Catholic?
October 5th, 2012 | 10:46 am
How does ‘refrain from receiving Eucharist if you don’t believe’ become equated with ‘leave if you don’t believe’?
October 5th, 2012 | 10:53 am
Don’t believe? Don’t receive.
That is very good advice.
It seems that participating in Eucharistic communion when one is not really in communion with the Church can be very harmful spiritually, and even harmful physically according to St. Paul. Asking those who are not really in communion with the Church to not receive is not kicking them to the curb, it is acting towards them as charitable concern for their well being demands.
October 5th, 2012 | 10:57 am
Thanks for the link. But here’s a question: Are you reading closely enough, or am I missing something? You’re talking about people leaving — or being kicked out of — the Church, while what you’ve adduced speaks of participation in Holy Communion. And I think that’s an important distinction. I don’t think the Pope or Myers want people to leave altogether, either through formal defection or by never attending Mass again (even those in mortal sin are obligated to attend). My sense of it is that the Church would want its erring and straying members, retaining the mark of their baptism as they do, to participate as much as they can in the life of the Church, but, given what Paul says in 1 Cor 11:17ff and the Catholic understanding of communion deriving from that, they shouldn’t take communion.
I wasn’t there, but my understanding was that in the preconciliar days not everyone would go up for communion, that many would refrain from communing for whatever reason, but they were there.
Did I miss something?
October 5th, 2012 | 10:59 am
Ms. Infantine:
There seems to be a conflation here between abstaining from Communion and the Church “unnecessarily turning away her members.” I read your article several times, and could not see the connection you’re making.
Catholics who are conscience of mortal sin should not receive Communion, but they are neither told to receive the Eucharist, nor that their mortal sin turns them away from the Church.
The CCC notes: “The Church obliges the faithful to take part in the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feast days and, prepared by the sacrament of Reconciliation, to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, if possible during the Easter season.” Nothing in the passage notes that, if the faithful attend Mass on Sundays throughout the year, abstaining for whatever reason, they are not members of the Church, or are to be turned away.
Perhaps you could elucidate the connection?
October 5th, 2012 | 11:46 am
“How are those members of the Catholic Church who now reject Church teaching on contraception, same-sex relations, women ordination, etc. ever to come home again if we kick them to the curb?
God forbid they end up like Judas.”
This last also gave me pause. Do you mean to say that Christ or the Church was somehow…responsible…for Judas’s death?
So, if the Church sets certain standards for reception of the Body and Blood of Christ, and someone is upset, leaves the Church and commits suicide, then the Church has had a hand in it?
Or do you mean, “like Judas” in that you believe that Judas’s soul is in hell, despite the teaching of the Church that “The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone.” CCC 597.
I am definitely confused by this article. I would definitely like to see some clarification as to the connections and suggestions you have made. Thank you!
October 5th, 2012 | 12:02 pm
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the idea here that those who do not agree with certain alleged Church teachings should basically “self-excommunicate”? Remember that those who have been excommunicated are still Catholics and are still obligated to behave as Catholics, including attending Mass. So it is not a matter of telling these people they are not Catholic and should leave the Church. It is very similar to telling them they are like excommunicated Catholics and will remain so until they change their views.
It seems to me this is in conflict with the right of conscience and the right to disagree (on non-infallible issues) after sufficient reflection.
The effort of the Church in this regard seems not to be to convince those who disagree of the truth of the Church’s position, but to impose a punishment of sorts until they comply with a command to believe.
It is interesting to see issues like same-sex marriage put at the top of the Church’s “must-believe” list. I just quoted elsewhere a 2008 Georgetown survey that said only 57% of Catholics believe in the Real Presence. Is it really the priority of the Catholic Church to demand assent to teachings regarding sexual morality rather than absolutely fundamental issues of faith?
October 5th, 2012 | 1:38 pm
Thank you all for your very helpful comments.
I do concede that I have perhaps conflated the caution not to receive holy Communion with kicking members of the Catholic Church (permanently marked by the Sacrament of Baptism) to the curb.
(Good thing this blog is called “First Thoughts.” Here are my second thoughts.)
I also do acknowledge that members are still obligated to attend Mass while not receiving Communion, as I saw much of this in my time in Ecuador. It actually came as quite a shock to me the first time I saw my parish church full to the brim for a Sunday Mass, but only a handful of people go up to receive Communion.
I guess the reason for my conflation comes from a specifically North American viewpoint, and fear. While I realize that the Pope’s and bishops’ cautions not to partake in holy Communion, an outward display of being truly in communion with Christ and his church (although not, of course, merely that), when not truly in communion with Church teaching is not a rejection from the Church, I fear that practically speaking, in the United States at the very least, it is more likely to result in complete disengagement with the Church on the part of the dissenter.
While in South America I knew many people who did not take Communion but were otherwise fully engaged in daily Mass, church fundraising, devotional events, etc. (as I mentioned in another post on this blog, these were usually people who withheld from receiving Communion because they had been civilly married but the spouse did not want to marry in the Church), I have yet to come across this in the United States. I hardly ever attend Mass where great numbers of congregants attend without receiving.
Thus, my suggestion that these messages to dissenters kicks them to the curb or unnecessarily turns them away is not a doctrinal matter but rather a fear of what this will mean for the Church in the U.S. practically.
Oh, and on the questions about Judas. I do not, by any means, mean to say that Jesus was responsible for Judas’ death or that the Church would be responsible for the suicide of an ex-communicant. I meant, rather, that it is clear from the example of Judas that one who turns away from Christ finds himself in a very dark place far from the presence of God, and, while the Church is not “responsible” so to speak for the free dissent or personal sin of her members, it would be a shame if she were to somehow encourage a member of the Church already struggling to comply with Church teaching to stray further away.
All this being said, I completely agree that we must take all precautions not to take for granted the merciful and mysterious gift in which God gives himself to us in the Eucharist, not to make ourselves one with Him while really only living a lie. I just think that these messages of caution need to be accompanied by more talk of the immense love that Christ and his Church have for each member and the great pain that is caused by each dissent and each sin. If it comes across as merely “If you don’t believe a Church teaching then you can’t have Jesus,” it will push people away rather than point out the urgency and necessity of working through these dissenting ideas until they find the truth about these doctrines and more importantly unity with Christ and his Body, the Church.
October 5th, 2012 | 1:40 pm
Hello, David Nickol,
Below is a link to a document on the Vatican web site that contains some comments of JP II on infallibility:
The Successor of Peter Teaches Infallibly
You might find it helpful.
The Church believes in everyone’s right of conscience. If one’s conscience does not conform to the teachings of the Catholic Church one is free to not be Catholic. A problem arises when one pretends that beliefs concerning grave moral issues that are irreconcilable with the Catholic faith may be professed and one can still remain a Catholic in good standing.
If one wants to be Catholic one must accept the teachings of the Church. If one doesn’t believe in the Real Presence or actually believes that taking the life of the innocent child in the womb is moral, then one isn’t really a Catholic, as such a one does not accept the teachings of the Catholic Church. This is true whether the teaching of the Church that one does not accept has to do with sexual morality or not.
October 5th, 2012 | 2:54 pm
We are a church of sinners. Indeed, that is the reason for the church: to help us sinners become something more. Here in North America, we sometimes forget that. Hence, everyone receives Communion on the Sundays they attend and there are no lines at Confession. It will require the bishops to teach, and teach well, to change that, not to mention a desire on our, the laity’s, part to learn.
Mark 2:17
and for David
And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
October 5th, 2012 | 5:40 pm
Well, American Catholics are becoming more Roman and less American in their Catholicism, and so are likely to nod and then decide to receive anyway. Drives folks from an Anglospheric legal culture batty, but there you have it.
October 5th, 2012 | 8:28 pm
Not everyone is meant to come back home. The road more traveled is way more easier to follow than the road less traveled.
In ‘Faith and the Future,’ a young Joseph Ratzinger wrote about the small Church: “She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. … It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek…”
October 5th, 2012 | 11:54 pm
“certain alleged Church teachings”
Now, this is silly. It’s like refering to your “alleged” comment on this topic. Anyone who doesn’t know what the actual Church teachings are isn’t half trying.
October 6th, 2012 | 7:55 am
I love it, Mary!
“What do you believe? And when did you first believe it?”
October 6th, 2012 | 10:52 am
Katherine Infantine
“It actually came as quite a shock to me the first time I saw my parish church full to the brim for a Sunday Mass, but only a handful of people go up to receive Communion.”
When I was prepares for my First Holy Communion (by French Nuns) I was told that one should never, ever receive the sacrament without the leave of one’s confessor.
We were also taught that, to do so worthily, one must be free, not only of grave sin, but of all attachment, even to venial sin..
In particular, after sixty years, I recall their very words that “the penance that prepares us for the Eucharist, must be genuine, constant, resolute, and not languid and sluggish, or subject to after-thoughts and relapses.” [que la pénitence qui prépare à l'eucharistie doit être véritable, constante, courageuse, et non pas lâche et endormie, ni sujette aux rechutes et aux reprises] To judge this takes time.
They also taught us that there is no difference between Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and Jesus Christ in heaven, except that here he is veiled, and there he is not, so that, just as the Holy Souls are unworthy of Him, until they are freed from every trace of sin, neither are we, until we have so purified ourselves on earth by penitence, as they are by the fires of purgatory.
October 6th, 2012 | 2:01 pm
And of course “We were also taught that, to do so worthily, one must be free, not only of grave sin, but of all attachment, even to venial sin.” is not what the Catholic church teaches or requires of the faithful. That is a legacy of Jansenism.
October 6th, 2012 | 2:02 pm
Here’s a nickol’s worth of reflection. Sometimes the loss of something valuable is what first moves people, who took it for granted, to realize what they have lost. And maybe to re-acquire it–the Pearl of Great Price which is the Catholic Faith.
Those who have lost the faith, through non-belief, yet continue to think of themselves as Catholics in good standing, might benefit thereby from an encounter with reality.
How will they find their way back? By for the first time realizing what was lost.
October 6th, 2012 | 4:04 pm
Mike Melendez and Mary,
There are a number of examples I can give to justify the use of alleged teachings rather than just to say teachings. Here they are in no particular order.
First, I think many people were quite taken aback (and me among them) in April 2007 when the Church “abolished limbo.” That babies who died before baptism went to limbo was just a fact, we had all learned in Catholic school. But actually, many of us learned to our surprise, it was never an official teaching of the Church.
Second, on hot button issues like same-sex marriage or abortion, what I will call the “primary” teachings of the Church are clear. Catholics may not procure abortion or enter into same-sex sexual relationships. Period. Then, there are the “secondary” teachings, such as what the law ought to be regarding the hot button issues. Then there are the “tertiary” teachings about such matters as how one may vote, or who (if anyone) should be barred from receiving communion.
Third, there are some very fundamental teachings, for example, about human origins. Archbishop Myers says in the opening paragraph of his pastoral letter that is linked to in Steve Shiffrin excerpted post above, “Thus marriage can be seen as the ‘primordial sacrament’ predating the Fall and surviving original sin.” What, exactly, is the Fall, and once one has answered that, what is original sin? Pope Benedict himself is accused of being a heretic by those who vehemently disagree with some of his writings (before he was pope) on original sin. Must a Catholic believe that there were two and only two individuals who were to be the “parents” of the human race, who committed some personal sin, resulting in the Fall? The Catechism seems to imply that:
But is it really a teaching of the Church that all of us can trace our ancestry back to two and only two people—our great-great-great- . . . great grandparents?
Fourth, let’s take the saying, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” There have been people (the Feeneyites) who have been excommunicated based on a very narrow interpretation of that saying, and yet there followers of Fr. Feeney (including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary) who still maintain he was correct, and they are, as far as I can tell, accepted as “orthodox” Catholics.
October 6th, 2012 | 10:05 pm
If anyone is interested, I have responded to Ms. Infantine at greater length on my blog, here: http://sardonicexcuria.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-response-to-katherine-infantine.html.
I would be interested in your response as well, Ms. Infantine.
October 7th, 2012 | 6:18 pm
It seems to me it would be extremely easy to draw up a little examination of conscience that would take about two minutes to run through before communion to weed out what some here consider to be unworthy receivers. Here’s a suggestion:
I think it would be a terrible idea, but it would certainly be easy enough to do.
October 9th, 2012 | 2:19 pm
David,
I’ve seen similar examinations in print, though generally much longer and intended for preparation for the sacrament of Reconciliation. I would ask why you think it a terrible idea especially as you are no longer Catholic, or so I have been led to believe.
“Alleged” is still a funny usage in this context. We have enough trouble with our own consciences let alone having much insight into those of others. The argument is about awareness not legal proceedings. Awareness is better raised through teaching.
October 9th, 2012 | 7:24 pm
I would ask why you think it a terrible idea especially as you are no longer Catholic, or so I have been led to believe.
Mike Melendez,
I am not sure exactly what you are asking. If you think I am saying that some kind of formal examination of conscience is a terrible idea, then you have misunderstood. What would be a terrible idea would be to halt Mass right before the distribution of communion and try to weed people out of the line with something like my eight-point quiz. Surely the appropriate time for a formal examination of conscience led by the priest saying Mass (if such a thing were to be contemplated) would be in the penitential part of the introductory rites.
“Alleged” is still a funny usage in this context.
I’m sticking with it. What I think we’re really talking about here—or in any case what often comes up on blog discussions—is some “conservative” Catholics thinking some “liberal Catholics ought not to receive communion, or if they are well known (e.g., politicians) they ought to be refused communion. Some “conservatives” see it as a sign of weakness or timidity on the part of the American bishops that won’t start getting tough on those whom the the conservatives see as dissenters. If, by saying that “[w]e have enough trouble with our own consciences let alone having much insight into those of others,” you mean it’s not up to groups who consider themselves “orthodox” to put pressure on bishops to start turning people away from communion, then we are in agreement.
October 10th, 2012 | 9:21 am
I’ve seen similar examinations in print, though generally much longer and intended for preparation for the sacrament of Reconciliation.
I was reviewing the history of Reconciliation from the early Church to the present, and it has evolved quite dramatically over 2000 years, reaching its present form after about a thousand years. Perhaps it is time for further evolution, with general absolution within the Mass and oral/aural confession made optional. If the role of the priest hearing confessions were more that of a spiritual director or a therapist, it might make more sense to require a personal meeting between priests and penitents. But it seems to me that the transaction between a priest and a penitent generally expected to take only a few minutes, since there are others waiting in line. It’s kind of like waiting in line to see a bank teller. If you really have something significant to discuss with your bank, you need to spend some time with an officer, not take fifteen minutes talking to a teller while the line builds behind you.
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