Commentary by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

This article (click above) is one in many of fraudulent reports by “Silere non possum”, (I cannot be silent), a website which packages itself in the clothing of a journalism which would expose the lies and misinformation going round, but which is notorious for doing the opposite.

In the above article, Silere Nimis Possum — what should be its true name, “I can be exceedingly silent” — quotes Cardinal Eijk has if to make him say that the Church has always allowed divorced and remarried couples to receive the Sacraments if they are chaste.

This is a patent lie. The contrary is true: the Church has never allowed divorced and remarried persons to receive any sacrament, so long as they remained divorced and remarried.

Even in the case where a person who was divorced and remarried, after the death of their spouse — that is after the death of the spouse from the Sacramental union — that person MUST be refused all Sacraments, even in the hour of death, IF they do not repent of their sin.

And if their spouse is not deceased, then then the Church has never allowed them to receive the Sacraments, until they return to their spouse of their sacramental union and reject their adulterous spouse.

I have not found Eijk’s actual statements, nor do I know in which language he was speaking. I will leave it to my readers, if they find a source, to share it in the comments below.

However, it is clear that if he did actually say what he is claimed to have said in the above article, that he has uttered heresy against the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church and contradicted the teaching even of Pope John Paul II.

John Paul II’s problematic teaching on Divorced and Remarried

The teaching of Pope John Paul II, that those who are divorced and remarried must be chaste, with the implication that they could receive the Sacraments if they were, is a half truth, since it is impossible to be spiritually chaste if you are cohabiting with an adulterer in an adulterous union.

In fact, the perennial teaching of the Church contradicts John Paul II’s implication. However, implications are not teachings, even though failure to teach clearly is a mortal sin even for a Roman Pontiff.

I remember when he made such statement back in the 80’s, and all sound theologians rejected them as aberrant. It has come out since that John Paul II, from the earliest days of his pontificate, was personally involved in a sex-trafficking ring which found minors for clergy at the Vatican. So there is reason to believe that he was morally totally compromised.

There are many cases in the history of the Church where Popes have not taught clearly — the history of the interpretation of the Rule of Saint Francis is a glaring example — and in such cases, we must hold with Apostolic Teaching and the unbroken consensus of Catholic Fathers and Doctors of the Church, eschewing all novelty in dogma and morals.

“Amoris Laetitia’, the heretical document published by the antipope Bergoglio has no authority whatsoever, and contained numerous outrageous teachings, such as the one which denied that God had any intention to send the wicked to eternal damnation. — The document in no way represents the Magisterium and is not a document of the Catholic Church.

John Paul II corrects the ambiguity in Familiaris Consortio

As for Pope John Paul II, he corrected his faulty presentation, 16 years later, in his address of  January 24, 1997, when he said:

3. As I wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, the divorced and remarried cannot be admitted to Eucharistic Communion since “their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist” (n. 84). And this is by virtue of the very authority of the Lord, Shepherd of Shepherds, who always seeks his sheep. It is also true with regard to Penance, whose twofold yet single meaning of conversion and reconciliation is contradicted by the state of life of divorced and remarried couples who remain such.

However, there are many appropriate pastoral ways to help these people. The Church sees their suffering and the serious difficulties in which they live, and in her motherly love is concerned for them as well as for the children of their previous marriage: deprived of their birthright to the presence of both parents, they are the first victims of these painful events.

The Faulty Passage in Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation of Nov. 22, 1981

The passage in Familiaris Consortio which was ambiguous, was this, in n. 84 of that document:

However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.”[180]

Similarly, the respect due to the sacrament of Matrimony, to the couples themselves and their families, and also to the community of the faithful, forbids any pastor, for whatever reason or pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry. Such ceremonies would give the impression of the celebration of a new sacramentally valid marriage, and would thus lead people into error concerning the indissolubility of a validly contracted marriage.

By acting in this way, the Church professes her own fidelity to Christ and to His truth. At the same time she shows motherly concern for these children of hers, especially those who, through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by their legitimate partner.

The ambiguity is in the second paragraph, where Pope John Paul II says, “which opens a way”, without specifying, that so long as they cohabit, they cannot receive the Eucharist.

Sound confessors all agree, however, that granting absolution to two persons in such a situation, even if they promise chastity, because they need to raise their children, is an impossible condition to fulfill in practice, even if scandal could be avoided. This is a hypothetical case of a couple in a distant place unknown to others and yet living like angels. No confessor with a conscience would even expect or presume that such a case could exist, even if hypothetically it could be speculated to be possible, since in actuality it is never found, without some sort of game-play with the meaning of “separated” and “divorced”.

The Power of the Sacrament of Penance requires an honest intention to sin no more

The Sacrament of Penance, which we can only receive in absolution, requires that we remove ourselves from real occasions of sins before we go to confession, that is, before we receive absolution. — A well formed priest, hearing confessions, will NOT grant absolution until such occasions of sin are removed. By “real” occasions of sins, there is meant any avoidable condition or thing, the presence of which would make morally impossible the keeping of any promise to amend one’s life. Real occasions of sin refer to things which are allowed to remain in place, when a will to remove them could remove them, and which are conditions or things the mere presence of which in practice guarantees that the sin will occur again, and whose presence is avoidable. Because if it is avoidable, then it can be removed if there is a true will to repent. Thus separation from one’s adulterous partner is absolutely necessary in the practical order to demonstrate a true and honest will to repent, without which the Confessor would risk damnation for himself if he granted absolution to such a person, promising not to sin again, but taking no honest effort to remove real conditions.

This True Catholic Doctrine promotes Matrimony

This true Catholic Doctrine is why honest clergy urge Catholics to marry upon reaching the age of adulthood, since God not only intended men and women to marry, when He conceived the idea of what men and women were to be, but because on account of the Fall of Mankind wrought in the sin of Adam, our race is disposed to commit many horrible sins if men and women do not marry, baring exceptional graces such as the vocations to be a priest, monk or nun, or graces to live mortified lives. Thus, being single, when it becomes a real occasion of sin, for many persons, leads to the moral requirement to marry, so as to avoid sin, and to have children, so as to avoid idleness.

The opposite diabolic heresy of ‘Amoris Laetitia’ induces men and women to violate the laws of marriage, abstain from sacramental marriage, and multiply sins not only of impurity and injustice, scandal and bad example, but sacrilege against the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist, not to mention, in doing all this, to drag the souls of priests and their entire congregations down to Hell.

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