How to read the Exhortation of Desolation, Joy of Love (Sex) on Friday.
Crux is already working overtime to spin the document as no biggie. That is likely to be a load of horse hockey. So I thought I would tell you how to read it.
First, know this. The document will contain:
2% Actual Catholic teaching on marriage and the rest. This will provide all the cover necessary for the “everything is awesome” toadies to crow about how beautiful and orthodox it is. “I mean, did you read the second paragraph on page 98, that almost sounds like Pope Pius X. All is well.” It will be a load of crap, but there will be those who just eat it up and call it ice cream.
97% Jesuitical blather and pious sounding non-sequiturs. How do I know? 200 pages.
And then 1% will be where all the action and all the danger will be. Buried deep within the text will be the cryptic marching orders. Clear to those who have eyes to see, these marching orders will be done in such a way as to give plausible deniability. But the damage will be done and all will go from there. The wise will point to these paragraphs as the danger they truly represent, but the Catholic mainstream media and the defenders of the status quo will ignore them or criticize those who point out the dangers.
I have been insisting for some time that the danger was not from the synods themselves but from a post-synodal document. Well, we are here now. This is what I wrote a long time ago and said in multiple speeches I gave over the past year and a half.
The post synod apostolic letter or statements from the Pope might make a basic statement about the indissolubility of marriage with no specific mention of the divorced and remarried receiving communion, knowing that anything other than this is impossible now. But the documents might also contain the now boilerplate calls for pastoral consideration. In conclusion, either the synod itself or perhaps the Pope himself in a following document may make a request for local Bishops and Bishops’ conferences to explore ways for the divorced and remarried to be better integrated into parish life.
With those vague statements giving plausible deniability to the hierarchy, several Bishops’ conferences starting with Germany will issue norms allowing the divorced and remarried to receive communion after confession or some such other nonsense, which they are already likely allowing.
And the Church will do nothing. And then the practice will spread like wildfire. Think Communion in the hand. With the barn door left open, the horses are gone.
After the practice has spread globally, the Vatican will issue some weak statements about avoiding potential abuses, but essentially allowing the practice. That is when the real misery begins.
After the majority of Episcopal Conferences adopt the practice, we will begin to see persecution of those few bishops and priests that refuse to go along; which, in fact, was always the goal.
A bishop, who refuses to accept the unacceptable in a country where the practice is adopted, will find himself ostracized. Perhaps he will be the subject of complaints from fellow bishops or letter campaigns from some minority of his own priests complaining about his excessive rigidity and general lack of pastoral sensibilities. Perhaps then he will be the subject of an Apostolic Visitation to investigate these serious allegations. Then six months later, he is gone and without a word about Communion for the divorced and remarried ever being mentioned.
Faithful priests in unfaithful dioceses will not even have the courtesy of that dog and pony show. They’ll be placed on the eternal sabbatical for the crime of “unpastoralness.” Their pleas for help and justice will fall on deaf ears.
Faithful Catholics will have nowhere to turn. Persecuted by society, government, and even their own Church for simply refusing to accept what cannot be accepted.
Do any of you think that this scenario or a similar one is impossible? Or even implausible?
This is how to understand and read the Exhortation. Don’t be fooled. If it turns out I am wrong, I will be the first to admit it and praise God for my foolishness. But don’t hold your breath.
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