Thursday, April 16, 2015

Sed Contra: The Spirit Is Willing

The President of the Polish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Gadecki, on Spiritual Communion ... or Not:


“The divorced and remarried cannot make spiritual communion” , Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, President of the Polish Episcopal Conference affirmed in an intervention at the Convention “What God joined together…” Marriage, Family and Sexuality in the Context of the Synod of Bishops 2014-2015” which took place on April 14that the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. Archbishop Gadecki, who stood out during the Synod of Bishops in 2014 for his defense of Catholic morality, wanted to respond to those, such as Cardinal Kasper who sustain that if the divorced and remarried can receive spiritual communion, they can also receive the Sacrament. The use that is made of the term “spiritual communion” in order to justify the admittance of the divorced and remarried to the Sacraments is absolutely improper, explained Archbishop Gadecki. Spiritual communion refers, in fact, to people in a state of grace, who, on account of a physical impediment, cannot receive Communion (as happened for example, in the part of Poland occupied by the Soviets after the Second World War).

On the contrary, it cannot refer to those who are forbidden to receive the Eucharist on account of a moral impediment they can freely remove, by abandoning the situation of sin they are in. All those who are in a state of God’s grace can make a spiritual communion. Those who are in a state of sin, can pray, attend Mass, develop their relationship with God, but this relationship cannot be defined as spiritual communion. Pastoral care cannot contradict the Magisterium of the Church, reaffirmed Archbishop Gadecki, recalling that individual Episcopal Conferences do not have the authority to introduce doctrinal novelties, even if they were requested by the majority of Catholics in that [particular] Country. The Church, in fact, must express the sensus fidelium, which does not reflect the sociological majority of the faithful, but the consonance of the faith experienced with the perennial Magisterium of the Church. ~ Rorate caeli

Sed Contra, Your Excellency:


Lord, Thou knowest all,
Thou canst do all things,
and Thou lovest me!
 
‘Those who are not able to receive Communion, because they have not fasted or are in a state of serious sin (e.g., irregular marital situation) or are not Catholic, are encouraged to make a "spiritual Communion,” whereby one expresses one’s desire to receive by acts of love and thanksgiving to God which prepare the person to receive grace. ‘Communion, Holy’ in “Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia,” edited by the Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.L., Our Sunday Visitor Press (Huntington, Indiana), 1991, p.237

Act of Spiritual Communion

Most loving Jesus, I adore Thee with a lively faith, Who art present in this Sacrament by virtue of Thine infinite Power, wisdon, and goodness. All my hope is in Thee. I love Thee, O Lord, with all my heart, Who hast so loved me; and therefore I desire to receive Thee now spiritually. Come, therefore, O Lord, to me in spirit, and heal my sinful soul. Feed me, for I am hungry; strengthen me, for I am weak; enliven and sanctify me with Thy saced Body and Blood; deliver me from all sin, and make me always obedient to Thy commandments; and let me never be separated from Thee, my Savior, Who, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, livest and reignest one God, world without end. Amen.


How consoling it is to remember that national episcopal conferences - and their office-holders - have no theological authority thereby in any authentic ecclesiology of the Holy Catholic Church. Amen. ~ Triregnum



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