A Reminder of A Superb Article on The Synod

http://guildofblessedtitus.blogspot.com/2015/06/gradualism-instrumentum-laboris-and.html

Excellent Post on Gradualism

http://guildofblessedtitus.blogspot.com/2015/06/gradualism-instrumentum-laboris-and.html

better than my posts earlier this year and last year...although I covered the points on grace.

And previous post leading up to this one...from same author:

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

What's at Stake at the Synod? Everything!

By PAUL PRIEST.

We are not equal - God isn't a democrat - in just the same way as there is a hierarchy of ranks among the 

angels there is a hierarchy of human souls and their perfectibility - it's known as Predilection. God loves us 

all infinitely and calls us to fulfill our created perfectibility - but some are created to be more - to do more

 [remember the parable of the sower? 30, 60, a hundredfold?]

God loves them more because they are created to be more lovable because they have a vocation to be more

... I know it doesn't sound fair but He's God: We're not - we have our place in His divine plan as either tiny cogs or

 hard-working pistons or massive power-wheels - whatever that position we were made for it - and can achieve 

perfection within it and be fulfilled with absolute joy and happiness in being everything we were called to be. 

God made us so we ultimately wouldn't ever wish to be anything but ourselves in our perfection in our part of 

His Divine plan [this is why envy - wanting to be another - is the greatest sin against oneself]

Finally on this point it must be noted that in regard to Predilection how we repent from and amend for our sins 

will also be variant - for some it will be easy and lengthy - for others it will be more grueling and intermittent.

Now, secondly we have to understand what the Holy Spirit is about - for most of us the Holy Spirit keeps us in 

existence, He inspires our intellects with truth, beauty and the notion of the good - which motivates our will to 

carry out this inspiration freely towards the good - this is what Love is. The Holy Spirit provides us with Sufficient 

Grace to never sin - He provides our intellects and consciences to be aware of the Good, the True and Beautiful - 

and we can conform to this and be truly free. Remember the only thing we are ever free to do is to do good - 

sin is always a denial of our freedom and actually traps us and makes us less free.

Alternatively, we can hoodwink ourselves into thinking happiness may be achieved through another route - 

a short-cut - an easy way - and hence we lie to ourselves and our God and our created reality and the rest of 

creation and we commit sin - and in the process we as temples of the Holy Spirit in whom we live, move and 

have our being - abuse and defy the Lord, the Giver of Life with our lies and sin. These are the only two things 

we can say we possess - every other thing comes from God, is worked by God and returns to God - every other 

thing is Grace of which we are unworthy but in which we we happy receivers can and should boast.

Normatively, the Holy Spirit works through Sufficient Grace, but there are times where through an extraordinary 

act of predelictive Love, the Holy Spirit acts upon us with what's known as efficient Grace - unstoppable, 

unpreventable grace which compels us towards an act.

There's an old Fulton Sheen story of a wayward alcoholic actress who accepts his invite to see the Church on the 

proviso he would not ask her to go to Confession - he kept the promise in his own way for as they were touring 

the 

Church he opened the confessional door and threw her inside.

Divine Providence decrees that God does this to some of us in extraordinary circumstances. God does not work 

against our wills - but instead He takes over with Efficient grace to ensure something happens. Think the Conversion 

of St Paul and other profound conversion stories. Think Miracles. Think the imposition of the knowledge of God 

upon the Prophets or all who lived and believed during the Incarnation or the appearance of the Sacred Heart or 

Our Lady. Think of the Promises of Christ regarding Papal Infallibility and the inability of the Gates of the 

Underworld to prevail against the Church. All this is Efficient Grace - unpreventable, unthwartable - 

it has nothing to do with the arbitrary, discretionary choices within human free will. God just does it!

Sometimes God uses efficient Grace upon us to actuate His will. Otherwise, it is sufficient grace where we are at 

the helm of our wills - the Holy Spirit inspires our intellects and carries out our wills - but we choose - we decide. 

The Holy Spirit does not treat us like puppets or cosmic chess pieces - He limits himself to inspiration of the 

intellect to motivate the will - we choose whether to conform to that will or not. Hence in matters of the Church 

the Holy Spirit may inspire - but the Pope and his Brother Bishops and clerics and religious act according to their 

own either conformed or refusenik wills. The Holy Spirit does not choose a Pope - Cardinals choose a Pope. 

The Holy Spirit does not appoint 

Bishops - The Pope does. The Holy Spirit does not gerrymander or rig Synod or Oecumenical council votes - 

The Pope and Bishops vote.

Now, there is only one real argument against the existence of God - all the others fall apart when rationally 

confronted with reality but one remains - one so confrontational that it compelled Ivan Karamazov to refuse to 

participate and return his invitation to belong to God's creation: The problem of Evil and there is only one rational 

response:

"How else can evil be allowed to exist, save for a greater good?"

God permits evil - He permits sin. Yes - nothing happens but what God wills - but there is a profound difference 

between what God wished [His Antecedent will] and what God permits [through which He will actuate a greater 

good] - i.e. His Consequent Will. God's antecedent will was for none to fall, for all to share Heaven in their created 

perfection with Him for eternity - for all to be saved. God's consequent will - because angels fell, because we fell, 

because we continue to sin and because ultimately some of us will not wish eternity with Him if the price means 

dying to our selfish vices - is axiomatically very different from God's original antecedent will.

Therefore when anything happens - we are absolutely forbidden from the presumption that what God's 

consequent will has permitted remotely conforms to that which His antecedent will desired.
Just because something happens - be it some remarkably fortuitous or ostensibly miraculous event or a revolution 

or a restoration or discovery or victory over an evil aggressor in war, or alternatively the horror of war and famine 

and personal tragedies or holocausts upon Jews, Chinese, Russians, the Unborn, our euthanised sick and unwanted,

 or the ravages of Spanish flu or AIDS or ebola we cannot attribute to God's antecedent will. In fact, we are 

absolutely prohibited from ever presuming it is part of God's antecedent will [eg Divine vindication/reward or

Divine retribution]. It is merely the case that what happens is what God permits. Nor can we surmise His will from 

the ostensible benefits or the blatantly obvious ravages of what God permits. We are guaranteed that God's 

resolution of it all is assuredly a greater Good.

Now comes the big crunch question: What in the name of all sanity has any of this to do with the impending 

Synod on Marriage and the Family? It's about the proposed reception of Holy Communion for civilly divorced 

and remarried Catholics and active homosexuals, isn't it? That the ongoing mortal sin of adultery and fornication 

should not be a barrier from being one in communion with one's neighbours? By appealing to mercy and tolerance 

and the notion of integration and unity and even [ironically] appealing to the notion of solidarity that no-one is i

isolated or alienated 

or ostracised? That we all be one?

What has any of this to do with God's sufficient grace or the Holy Spirit not treating us like puppets or God's 

antecedent and consequent will? Well the answer is quite simple: It has EVERYTHING to do with it! Primarily 

you have to understand how the world has been contaminated in two ways over the past two centuries - 

and how this ideological contamination has infected the mind-frame of those within the modern Church.

The first is easily recognised and understood contamination is Evolutionism. This is not meant in the limited 

biological sense regarding certain developments within certain species, but universal development of everything - 

absolute ever-fulfilling progressivism summed up by "things can only get better" or rather the promise that 

"things only do get better"  This is a serious error. For further reading look at the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, 

Emile Mersch and Karl Rahner and a host of moderns to understand this notion of everything evolving to some i

neffable ethereal omega point where we all become so like God we collectively usurp His role in some Buddhist 

nirvana of everything and nothing.

Secondly we have to get a bit philosophical - and although I'll skip the background of the whole metaphysical

 potency/act problem in presocratics through stoical pantheism and enlightenment naturalism and pantheism - 

[which Aristotle and Aquinas perfectly refuted and dealt with], we end up with the nightmare philosophy of 

Hegel which like a virus has infected every socio-cultural and political ideology of any wing and flavour - 

be it nazism or Stalinism, capitalism or revolutionary Marxism, libertarianism or totalitarianism.

Now I suppose yet again you're asking - what has Hegel to do with the Synod? Please bear with me for a few 

more minutes before I tell you. Hegel's philosophy is grounded in two main principles:

The Dialectic - This rests upon the premise that there is no actual truth or understanding of reality, that there 

cannot be as there is division and dissension and alienation. Therefore all is merely a movement towards a more 

truthful understanding through a position of compromise and unity between the extremes and tensions of all 

aspects of reality. In this paradigm, one takes two seemingly opposing positions and seeks the underlying truth 

within both to synthesise this thesis and antithesis into a higher thesis - which in turn is still imperfect and has 

opposition through an antithesis and must again be synthesised into a higher thesis into infinity as the process 

continues.

Now how can we be certain this process works and we won't be misguided or misdirected throughout this? 

Ah, but that's impossible because there is a 'universal spirit' within reality that seeks this unfolding, flourishing, 

unifying. coalescing synthesis of the dialectic. The principle at work here is that a spirit is leading ever onward and 

upward in all spheres of reality towards a universal holism - this spirit is known as The Geist. The Geist ensures the 

validity and integrity of the ideological system itself and its ultimate destiny in perfection. This, resting not on 

objective truth but something very tenuous can easily morph into something similar to all our 'utopianisms' of 

reichs, or a communist world-state, or universal randian liberty, or the integrationist wonderland of the 

multiculturalist or the feminist or the eco-warrior? We are enslaved to the machinations and functions of the 

Geist - we are part of a system which 

is inseparable from this unstoppable force leading humanity towards its inevitable destiny.

Now are you beginning to see where I'm coming from? The development of Doctrine? It being the will of the 

Holy Spirit ? In this world view, we are mere pawns and puppets of this Divine Will - this movement of this 

religious geist - the Holy Spirit - towards this evolving ever-re-flourishing progressive end.

In such a spiral,  or vortex, we are to seek an end to division and synthesise into uniformity and unity via a 

compromise dialectic which will placate and satisfy - where tolerance and 'mercy and charity' dwell - via 

acceptance of all and the elimination of alienation and ostracism. For we are all equal in the sight of God and 

none are loved more or less - and equality indicates sameness and uniformity and homogeneity where 

dissociating divisive factors like difference or independence or non-conformity are anathematised.


The Synod's proposed 'theology of mercy', the Kasperite position, is going to be grounded upon what I call 

"three great heresies and a lie". The first two heresies are going to be promoted at every opportunity in order

 to introduce a third with which the Church has been contaminated for centuries and which has manifested itself 

in three forms of a heresy against God's sufficient grace {Neo-Pelagianism/Molinism- then Jansenism- then 

Gradualism}. Rebel Bishops sought to impose at the Synod on the Family 35 years ago, but were halted in their 

tracks by Pope St John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio.

The first heresy is quite obvious:

That everything that happens within the Church conforms to the antecedent will of God - that God wished this 

for the Church from before creation - and that all movements of the Holy Spirit are manifestations of this Church 

progression - forward ever forward - we cannot go back - all is development and what God planned.

Of course, we have absolutely no idea whether it does or not. By such time, we will have dispensed with the holy 

doctrines and the integrity of the Church's discipline, which has been guided by the Holy Spirit. In truth, we are not 

open to the innermost mysteries of the Divine plan - but it would be the gravest presumption to not believe that 

the mass exodus out of the Church - that its secularisation and desacralisation - and its loss of the apologetic, 

its cultural identity and the falling away of so many are not merely what God permits in His consequent will - 

and were never part of His antecedent. But this naive ludicrous Hegelian optimism that it's all happened 

because it's what God always wished is a heresy.

The second heresy is simple. It is the idea that we are but pawns and puppets of the Holy Spirit in our wills - 

our Bishops and clerics and bodies of our reformist laity by their very existence and every thought, word and 

deed is all subsumed into the system by which the Holy Spirit moves them all towards the desired end. Of course 

this is a heresy - the Holy Spirit inspires our intellect - and we accept or reject and act accordingly - free will - 

defy and choose to sin.

Thus these two heresies will be promoted at every opportunity to lay the groundwork for the third. This is the 

heresy that you can guarantee through the major soundbites and buzzwords from the lips of all those who seek 

to change Catholic teaching via a perversion of its pastoral implementation by simply desiring it. This will be one of 

Lebensraum:

"We must allow the Holy Spirit space to reform the Church"

The third heresy is quite confusing, which is probably why during the last Extraordinary Synod there was almost 

universal ignorance of what the heresy entailed among Catholic journalists, commentators and media 

representatives who all spoke at great length while claiming great understanding about it, but every last one of 

them got it wrong.

In Familiaris Consortio Pope St John Paul II refers to the law of gradualism - an easily recognisable phenomenon - 

our gradual progression through the consequences of our sin after our repentance and absolution we are still weak ,

 weary and scarred and that it will take us a while to gradually heal.

BUT Pope St John Paul II rejects absolutely the heresy known as the Principle of Gradualism.
 I could go into this heresy at great length and explain its intricacies and consequences and the way it destroys 

the very fabric of the notion of grace and God's love for us and the integrity of the human person, but all you 

really need to know about it is that quite simply it denies God's sufficient grace to immediately repent of all sin or 

sinfulness - and the sufficient grace to not sin again.



In other words, using this 'principle' God does not provide sinners with the grace which will prevent them from 

being able to stop sinning or to not start sinning again. The underlying great lie in it all is 'God doesn't love us 

enough to get us out of our mess" Therefore, in this heretical viewpoint, all sinners cannot be expected to stop 

sinning immediately - they must be treated with compassion and understanding to be weaned off from their 

sinfulness - go on a sin-controlled diet - enter into a sin-reduction spiritual fitness plan, like methadone as 

replacement for heroin. It cannot be expected for severe or long-term sinners to immediately stop their sins - 

it is simply 'not possible' for them.

In other words the underlying message of this heresy is that when it comes to repentance and turning away from 

sin - GOD COMMANDS THE IMPOSSIBLE. This is a diabolical lie. The lie is that God has not provided the sufficient 

grace - therefore they cannot do it.

Now you see this is where the heresy comes undone and, incidentally, many Church fathers, St Augustine & the 

Council of Trent absolutely repudiate and refute Gradualism.

The heresy is not going to be very palatable to the collective faithful when it comes to the conclusion that God 

commands the impossible from sinners. This heresy has its ultimate conclusion that:

We sin and can't stop: and it's God's fault.

Hence the Gradualists - of which Kasper and his cronies are mere successors - have to now insert a lie into the 

equation. It's irrational - yes it's mendacious - yes it is the actions of anti-intellectual scoundrels, but this is what 

the Gradualists do if a heresy gives you the principle you want but not the conclusion you desire. You simply 

change the conclusion.


In order to retain this "Principle of Gradualism" they have to twist the argument on its head. It is not that God 

commands the impossible. How could He? He's a merciful, tolerant, forgiving, ever-loving and always charitable 

and inclusive God? 

It's not God that's demanding the impossible from these poor sinners trapped in their sinful ways needing slow, 

pastoral assistance and reassurance to slowly reduce their sinfulness. It's not God who is lacking in Love and Mercy.

NO - IT'S THE CHURCH!

It is the Church which is cruel and uncharitable and merciless and intolerant with its hyper-proscriptive 

alienating legalism and Donatism - its judgmentalism upon the sinner [actually it's judging the sin but they're

 on a roll here]. It is the Church's heartless, calcified, rigorist legalism which is to blame and this is NOT WHAT 

GOD WANTS!

We are therefore not walking in God's ways. We are not living according to His Gospel and the values of His 

kingdom. We are standing in the way of His message of welcoming love which calls all sinners to Himself. 

Remember the ludicrous tag-line to the 

film "Love Story"? "Love means never having to say you're sorry". Well gradualism considers God's love means 

'we have nothing to ever say sorry about'

In other words when Our Lord said, "If you love Me you will keep My commands" He never really meant we had to 

do it! That's Donatism - that's heartless legalism. Haven't both Donatism and legalism been recently condemned 

by our Bishops Conference and Pope Francis?

Do you see what's at stake now? Have a little think about the ramifications of a single gradualist principle 

being inserted in any moral adjudication on pastoral practice and praxis within Holy Mother Church - even 

to something as seemingly remote as using it to justify the slow reception of people still in mortal sin to 

reception of the sacraments. A single gradualist principle sets a moral precedent which may subsequently be 

applied to any and every aspect of Catholic moral teaching and its pastoral applications.

In other words the entirety of moral and pastoral theology - contaminated with the lethal virus that sin is 

something with which we have to deal with, to negotiate with, compromise with, excuse and slowly wean people 

off from and lead people away from, becomes a hellish nightmare of counter-productive self-contradicting

heterodoxy, lie, fallacy and heresy-in-itself.

Catholic morality in one fell swoop would collapse and fall dead in the water - not merely ineffectual but directly 

counterproductive - but lethally destructive and toxic! Now, if you wish any further clarifications or explanations 

please ask in the combox - but I've already spent way too long writing and taken up far too much of your time.
Gradualism underfoot. For if the Gradualists were to succeed? The price would be too high for us all....

Yes, more on gradualism....

Yes, more on gradualism

Garrigou-Lagrange reminds us in Reality, that sufficient grace is given to all men, otherwise sin would not be sin. The freedom of the will chooses either sufficient grace to avoid sin and do good. One may look up the many, many posts on this blog on grace and free will.

Grace to make come to pass the excellence of the Catholic life is called efficacious grace, again discussed here many times.

The choice is ours., whether to follow the urging of efficacious grace or not. If one refuses sufficient grace, one refuses efficacious grace as well.

Gradualism denies grace, as noted in earlier posts under the label synod. God gives us the movement of the will to do good actions, and also brings about the good action itself, as nothing good can be done without God's direct will.

However, one forgets, and Garrigou-Lagrange reminds us that impediments stop the flow of grace. We set up these impediments, and one is adultery, or the living in sin with another person rather than one's lawful, sacramental wife or husband. Justice, states Garrigou-Lagrange, demands that God will not give efficacious grace if sufficient grace is refused.

The great Dominican quotes Thomas Aquinas on this interaction of will and grace. “The will is related to things as they are in themselves with all their particular circumstances. Hence we will a thing simply (simpliciter) when we will it with all its concrete circumstances. This will we call the consequent will. Thus it is clear that every thing which God wills simpliciter comes to pass.”

Now, until one is in the illuminative state, that state described by the great saints who wrote about this, such as Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, one does not know for sure if one is a child predestined by grace to be saved. One of the torments of the Dark Night is the doubt of one's own salvation. Again, see my many, many posts on the illuminative state. I refer to it here again because of the confusion in the synod on the nature of grace and free will.

Garrigou-Lagrange, thankfully, as backup for all of us who have written on the synod, writes, “God does not command the impossible.” God has His efficacious consequent will and His antecedent will, the source of sufficient grace.

Here is G-L: “All that God wills, He does. This principle has no exception. All that God wills (purely, simply, unconditionally) comes to pass without our our freedom being thereby in any way forced, because God moves that freedom sweetly and strongly, actualizing it, not destroying. He will efficaciously that we freely consent and we do freely consent. The supreme efficacy of divine casuality, says St. Thomas, extends to the free mode of our acts.”

We does not have to marry someone outside of sanctifying grace. We do not have to stay in an irregular marriage. We do not have to succumb to the pressures of work to compromise our Faith. We do not have to become bitter, unforgiving, angry with God or His Church, and so on.

God's will allows us to respond to grace. Here is Garrigou-Lagrange again on the decisive statement from the Council of Thuzey (860): “Whatever He has willed in heaven or on earth, God has done. For nothing comes to pass in heaven or on earth that He does not in mercy bring to pass or permits to come to pass in justice.

The teaching of the Church tells us God's Will. What God gives us for salvation and beyond, for perfection comes in and through the Catholic Church. Grace is necessary, and gradualism denies this, relying on false ideals of modern psychology and false ideas of cheap grace, that one can flaunt the laws of God in the Church and still be saved.

Does this mean that everyone caught up in irregular marriages cannot be saved? Of course not. Some people choose to live and brother and sister for the sake of the children, not taking part in receiving Holy Communion. Some do make the brave decision to separate, to take themselves out of the way of further temptation to sin.

What is missing from the synodal discussion, besides this necessary teaching of the ages on grace is the nature of real love. The previous posts on St. John Paul II's encyclical reveal what true love is-sacrificial, hard, leading to perfection.

By the way, we do not merit our predestination, it is given. It is grace. Holiness is gratuitous, not earned.

Some people never commit mortal sin in their lives, and this is a mercy, a gift from God.

And, an extremely important note from G-L on disorder. As there is much disorder, or chaos, in the world regarding marriage and so-called ssm, one must know that God does not cause disorder or chaos. The disorder of sin is caused by man himself. God permits human beings to use their free will daily. We choose daily His way or not.

I repeat a bit here, but the gradualists forget four important things about grace and free will.

One, a person wills to be in an irregular marriage, or to leave such.

Free will may be clouded by the passions, but God gives to all sufficient grace to control the passions.

Two, grace trumps nature. If one cooperates with grace, with the mercy of God, one will have clarity of mind and discernment as to what to do in a disordered situation, and the first things would be to repent.

Three, no one in mortal sin can receive any merit or any subsequent or sanctifying grace. One's soul is dead and incapable of receiving grace except for the completely gratuitous prevenient actual grace, which moves one to metanoia. A person must decide to leave the path of mortal sin when offered the grace of conversion.

Four, God is not passive. He gives us opportunities for conversion over and over again.

More later...

Yes, I am getting to gradualism-Three

So, how is St. John Paul II against the heresy of gradualism, which denies free will and grace?

Here, he is clear that marriage is a decision which demands the virtue of faith, given to all in baptism. In this grace, we all become prophets to the truth. We, through our lay lives in marriage, strengthen the Church and evangelize the unbelieving.

Again, God does not ask the impossible, and we all are given the theological virtue of faith, which like all the virtues, is made perfect in practice.

Do gradualists think the saint's words are mere poetry? Do they not believe this infallible document themselves? Have they never experienced the growth of faith through suffering in their own lives?

Maybe, maybe not...The entire point of gradualism is that people should be allowed the sacrilege of receiving Christ while they are in sin, instead of following the teaching of sacrifice and suffering put forward by St. John Paul II and others.

At the time of the wedding vow, faith is operative in both couples, unless there is an impediment, which only the Church can decide. In that moment, the couple agrees not only to love each other and subsequent offspring, but to evangelize through the sacrament and to build up the Church through their real, total love. They enter into the love of God Himself.

To throw this away, and worse, to turn against this sublime teaching mocks God, and God will not be mocked.

As a sharer in the life and mission of the church, which listens to the word of God with reverence and proclaims it confidently,[120] the Christian family fulfills its prophetic role by welcoming and announcing the word of God: It thus becomes more and more each day a believing and evangelizing community.
Christian spouses and parents are required to offer "the obedience of faith."[121] They are called upon to welcome the word of the Lord, which reveals to them the marvelous news--the good news--of their conjugal and family life sanctified and made a source of sanctity by Christ himself. Only in faith can they discover and admire with joyful gratitude the dignity to which God has deigned to raise marriage and the family, making them a sign and meeting place of the loving covenant between God and man, between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.
The very preparation for Christian marriage is itself a journey of faith. It is a special opportunity for the engaged to rediscover and deepen the faith received in baptism and nourished by their Christian upbringing. In this way they come to recognize and freely accept their vocation to follow Christ and to serve the kingdom of God in the married state.
The celebration of the sacrament of marriage is the basic moment of the faith of the couple. This sacrament, in essence, is the proclamation in the church of the good news concerning married love. It is the word of God that "reveals" and "fulfills" the wise and loving plan of God for the married couple, giving them a mysterious and real share in the very love with which God himself loves humanity. Since the sacramental celebration of marriage is itself a proclamation of the word of God, it must also be a "profession of faith" within and with the church, as a community of believers, on the part of all those who in different ways participate in its celebration.

Marriage is not just between two people to control lust. The witness of marriage in the Church transcends the sub-human and brings people to a chance for perfection.

This profession of faith demands that it be prolonged in the life of the married couple and of the family. God, who called the couple to marriage, continues to call them in marriage.[122] In and through the events, problems, difficulties and circumstances of everyday life, God comes to them, revealing and presenting the concrete "demands" of their sharing in the love of Christ for his church in the particular family, social and ecclesial situation in which they find themselves.
The discovery of and obedience to the plan of God on the part of the conjugal and family community must take place in "togetherness," through the human experience of love between husband and wife, between parents and children, lived in the spirit of Christ.
Thus the little domestic church, like the greater church, needs to be constantly and intensely evangelized: hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith.
52. To the extent in which the Christian family accepts the Gospel and matures in faith, it becomes an evangelizing community. Let us listen again to Paul VI: "The family, like the church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates. In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized.

Here we are back to my theme yesterday, that we are all called to evangelize and no one is left out of this command, not even the mother at home, or the dad at work.

We HAVE the grace to stay married and to be married in Christ. We are given that grace and we only have to agree to living in that grace.

This apostolic mission of the family is rooted in baptism and receives from the grace of the sacrament of marriage new strength to transmit the faith, to sanctify and transform our present society according to God's plan.
Particularly today the Christian family has a special vocation to witness to the paschal covenant of Christ by constantly radiating the joy of love and the certainty of the hope for which it must give account: "The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come."[125]

Remember how I wrote yesterday that I had a missionary heart? All who are married are given that for their children and for the parish, the entire Church.

It should not be forgotten that the service rendered by Christian spouses and parents to the Gospel is essentially an ecclesial service. It has its place within the context of the whole church as an evangelized and evangelizing community. Insofar as the ministry of evangelization and catechesis of the church of the home is rooted in and derives from the one mission of the church and is ordained to the upbuilding of the one body of Christ,[128] it must remain in intimate communion and collaborate responsibly with all the other evangelizing and catechetical activities present and at work in the ecclesial community at the diocesan and parochial levels.
54. Evangelization, urged on within by irrepressible missionary zeal, is characterized by a universality without boundaries. It is the response to Christ's explicit and unequivocal command: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation."[129]

Anything less is not the individual or couple living out their baptismal calls.

The Christian family's faith and evangelizing mission also possesses this Catholic missionary inspiration. The sacrament of marriage takes up and reproposes the task of defending and spreading the faith, a task that has its roots in baptism and confirmation,[130] and makes Christian married couples and parents witnesses of Christ "to the end of the earth,"[131] missionaries, in the true and proper sense, of love and life.
A form of missionary activity can be exercised even within the family. This happens when some member of the family does not have the faith or does not practice it with consistency. In such a case the other members must give him or her a living witness of their own faith in order to encourage and support him or her along the path toward full acceptance of Christ the savior.[132]
Animated in its own inner life by missionary zeal, the church of the home is also called to be a luminous sign of the presence of Christ and of his love for those who are "far away," for families who do not yet believe and for those Christian families who no longer live in accordance with the faith that they once received. The Christian family is called to enlighten "by its example and its witness those who seek the truth. "[133]
Just as at the dawn of Christianity Aquila and Priscilla were presented as a missionary couple,[134] so today the church shows forth her perennial newness and fruitfulness by the presence of Christian couples and families who dedicate at least a part of their lives to working in missionary territories, proclaiming the Gospel and doing service to their fellow man in the love of Jesus Christ.
Christian families offer a special contribution to the missionary cause of the church by fostering missionary vocations among their sons and daughters[135] and, more generally, "by training their children from childhood to recognize God's love for all people."[136]

Do some of the fathers in the synod not get it that marriage sanctifies? Adultery leads to perdition. Period. How is it that they think that those in mortal sin, according to Divine Law and the mystery of the sacrament, can receive grace? They cannot, and, in fact, insult God by putting their sin in His Face, as it were. Again, those who insists on this position cannot understand the freedom of will we all have, and grace, given to all.

56. The sacrament of marriage is the specific source and original means of sanctification for Christian married couples and families. It takes up again and makes specific the sanctifying grace of baptism. By virtue of the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ, of which the spouses are made part in a new way by marriage, conjugal love is purified and made holy: "This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts, healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity."[138]

So we become saints in marriage. Yes, this is possible, with free will choosing real love through grace.


The gift of Jesus Christ is not exhausted in the actual celebration of the sacrament of marriage, but rather accompanies the married couple throughout their lives. This fact is explicitly recalled by the Second Vatican Council when it says that Jesus Christ "abides with them so that just as he loved the church and handed himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal...For this reason, Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfill their conjugal and family obligations they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ, who fills their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they increasingly advance toward their own perfection as well as toward their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God."[139]
Christian spouses and parents are included in the universal call to sanctity. For them this call is specified by the sacrament they have celebrated and is carried out concretely in the realities proper to their conjugal and family life.[140] This gives rise to the grace and requirement of an authentic and profound conjugal and family spirituality that draws its inspiration from the themes of creation, covenant, cross, resurrection and sign, which were stressed more than once by the synod.
Christian marriage, like the other sacraments, "whose purpose is to sanctify people, to build up the body of Christ, and finally, to give worship to God,"[141] is in itself a liturgical action glorifying God in Jesus Christ and in the church. By celebrating it, Christian spouses profess their gratitude to God for the sublime gift bestowed on them of being able to live in their married and family lives the very love of God for people and that of the Lord Jesus for the church, his bride.

And if people fail, we have the sacrament of confession. One does not have to dump the conjugal relationship. One can forgive, one can ask forgiveness.

 An essential and permanent part of the Christian family's sanctifying role consists in accepting the call to conversion that the Gospel addresses to all Christians, who do not always remain faithful to the "newness" of the baptism that constitutes them "saints." The Christian family too is sometimes unfaithful to the law of baptismal grace and holiness proclaimed anew in the sacrament of marriage.
Repentance and mutual pardon within the bosom of the Christian family, so much a part of daily life, receive their specific sacramental expression in Christian penance. In the encyclical Humanae Vitae, Paul VI wrote of married couples: "And if sin should still keep its hold over them, let them not be discouraged, but rather have recourse with humble perseverance to the mercy of God, which is abundantly poured forth in the sacrament of penance."[146]

There is much in this encyclical on children, the family and preparation for marriage, but I am going to skip to these next selections.

And here the Pope-Saint addresses priest directly:

Priests and deacons, when they have received timely and serious preparation for this apostolate, must unceasingly act toward families as fathers, brothers, pastors and teachers, assisting them with the means of grace and enlightening them with the light of truth. Their teaching and advice must therefore always be in full harmony with the authentic magisterium of the church, in such a way as to help the people of God to gain a correct sense of the faith to be subsequently applied to practical life. Such fidelity to the magisterium will also enable priests to make every effort to be united in their judgments in order to avoid troubling the consciences of the faithful.

In the church, the pastors and the laity share in the prophetic mission of Christ: The laity do so by witnessing to the faith by their words and by their Christian lives; the pastors do so by distinguishing in that witness what is the expression of genuine faith from what is less in harmony with the light of faith; the family, as a Christian community, does so through its special sharing and witness of faith.

and again....the synod referred to here is the one in 1981
. ...the church cannot ignore the time of old age with all its positive and negative aspects. In old age married love, which has been increasingly purified and ennobled by long and unbroken fidelity, can be deepened. There is the opportunity of offering to others in a new form the kindness and the wisdom gathered over the years and what energies remain. But there is also the burden of loneliness, more often psychological and emotional rather than physical, which results from abandonment or neglect on the part of children and relations. There is also suffering caused by ill-health, by the gradual loss of strength, by the humiliation of having to depend on others, by the sorrow of feeling that one is perhaps a burden to one's loved ones, and by the approach of the end of life. These are the circumstances in which, as the synod fathers suggested, it is easier to help people understand and live the lofty aspects of the spirituality of marriage and the family, aspects which take their inspiration from the value of Christ's cross and resurrection, the source of sanctification and profound happiness in daily life, in the light of the great eschatological realities of eternal life.
In all these different situations let prayer, the source of light and strength and the nourishment of Christian hope, never be neglected.

Yes, I am getting to gradualism--2

St. John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio explains exactly the situation we see today, in 2015. He quotes the truly prophetic document, Humanae Vitae.

"The spouses participate in it as spouses, together, as a couple, so that the first and immediate effect of marriage (res et sacramentum) is not supernatural grace itself, but the Christian conjugal bond, a typically Christian communion of two persons because it represents the mystery of Christ's incarnation and the mystery of his covenant. The content of participation in Christ's life is also specific: Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter--appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility (cf. Humanae Vitae, 9). In a word, it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values."[33]
14. According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider community of the family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love is ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom it finds its crowning.

Where is this emphasis on purity in the words of some synod members? Have they forgotten that God always gives one grace sufficient to the task at hand-always? God never asks the impossible, which means that some of the false leaders in the synod have little faith, or simply, do not believe in grace.

And, as Pope Paul VI predicted, once marriage is undermined in a society, the Kingdom of God is damaged by compromise and laxity, or worse, serious sin. And, virginity is only understandable in the light of holy marriage as well. If human sexuality is denigrated in marriage, so, too, it is in celibacy.

When marriage is not esteemed, neither can consecrated virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not regarded as a great value given by the creator, the renunciation of it for the sake of the kingdom of heaven loses its meaning.
Rightly indeed does St. John Chrysostom say: "Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent. What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be particularly good. It is something better than what is admitted to be good that is the most excellent good."

And, hey, where is the example the married should expect from the holy celibates? Or have they left the path of celibacy themselves so that they no longer understand real love? If so, I personally feel sorry for them-what they are missing is the Love of the Bridegroom, Christ Himself.

Christian couples therefore have the right to expect from celibate persons a good example and a witness of fidelity to their vocation until death. Just as fidelity at times becomes difficult for married people and requires sacrifice, mortification and self-denial, the same can happen to celibate persons, and their fidelity, even in the trials that may occur, should strengthen the fidelity of married couples

Self-knowledge, THIS IS THE KEY.

Every man and woman in the world knows that adultery is a great evil to individuals, to children, to society. Self-knowledge allows one to be honest about one's sins. We all have to face our sins. All.

And without love in the world as an example for us all, we fall back into fear and self-conceit.


The inner principle of that task, its permanent power and its final goal, is love: Without love the family is not a community of persons and, in the same way, without love the family cannot live, grow and perfect itself as a community of persons. What I wrote in the encyclical Redemptor Hominis applies primarily and especially within the family as such: "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.

Love can be seen in suffering. I see this daily, in myself, in those I love who are experiencing great pain either physically or mentally, in those who have lost a spouse to death or abandonment. Suffering does not deny love, Never....and it is only in the true sacrament of marriage that the Holy Spirit resides, not in false marriages of convenience or comfort. He will not be present unless those who underwent such a free choice contrary to God's Plan allow themselves to suffer in a new way of abstinence and even breaking-up for the sake of God.

What has been forgotten in the Synod is that love for God trumps all over loves, and that we cannot truly love another outside of love for God.

This conjugal communion sinks its roots in the natural complementarity that exists between man and woman and is nurtured through the personal willingness of the spouses to share their entire life project, what they have and what they are: For this reason such communion is the fruit and the sign of a profoundly human need. But in the Lord Christ God takes up this human need, confirms it, purifies it and elevates it, leading it to perfection through the sacrament of matrimony: the Holy Spirit who is poured out in the sacramental celebration offers Christian couples the gift of a new communion of love that is the living and real image of that unique unity which makes of the church the indivisible mystical body of the Lord Jesus.

Outside of life in the Holy Spirit, there is no life, only death. And the dignity of a man and a woman is seriously compromised by divorce and remarriage without the annulment of the Church. We see this clearly in false man-made religions which think polygamy is OK.

God loves each one of us too much for such a half-love, or quarter-love instead of total love.

I am reminded of a powerful scene in the newer movie on Anna of Siam, not the musical, where the king finally comes to realize what it means to love one woman. In this scene, he dances with Anna and admits that one woman can suffice a man, if that man truly loves. True love comes with total love.

The gift of the spirit is a commandment of life for Christian spouses and at the same time a stimulating impulse so that every day they may progress toward an ever richer union with each other on all levels--of the body, of the character, of the heart, of the intelligence and will, of the soul[47] --revealing in this way to the church and to the world the new communion of love, given by the grace of Christ.
Such a communion is radically contradicted by polygamy: This, in fact, directly negates the plan of God which was revealed from the beginning, because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women, who in matrimony give themselves with a love that is total and therefore unique and exclusive. As the Second Vatican Council writes: "Firmly established by the Lord, the unity of marriage will radiate from the equal personal dignity of husband and wife, a dignity acknowledged by mutual and total love."

This paragraph is so powerful, I hardly know how to unpack it. That love is unity, you have read on this blog regarding the pursuit of perfection. But, St. John Paul II really experienced God's union, or he would not have been able to write this passage below. The Catholic couple reveals Christ to us. How beautiful.

Christ renews the first plan that the creator inscribed in the hearts of man and woman, and in the celebration of the sacrament of matrimony offers "a new heart": thus the couples are not only able to overcome "hardness of heart,"[51] but also, and above all, they are able to share the full and definitive love of Christ, the new and eternal covenant made flesh. Just as the Lord Jesus is the "faithful witness,"[52] the "yes" of the promises of God[53] and thus the supreme realization of the unconditional faithfulness with which God loves his people, so Christian couples are called to participate truly in the irrevocable indissolubility that binds Christ to the church, his bride, loved by him to the end.[54]

The gift of the sacrament is at the same time a vocation and commandment for the Christian spouses, that they may remain faithful to each other forever, beyond every trial and difficulty, in generous obedience to the holy will of the Lord: "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."[55]

We daily see religions which do not hold the spiritual or physical equality of women in marriage.

Here is the Pope on this....

In creating the human race "male and female,"[64] God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity, endowing them with the inalienable rights and responsibilities proper to the human person. God then manifests the dignity of women in the highest form possible, by assuming human flesh from the Virgin Mary, whom the church honors as the mother of God, calling her the new Eve and presenting her as the model of redeemed woman. The sensitive respect of Jesus toward the women that he called to his following and his friendship, his appearing on Easter morning to a woman before the other disciples, the mission entrusted to women to carry the good news of the resurrection to the apostles--these are all signs that confirm the special esteem of the Lord Jesus for women. The apostle Paul will say: "In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith . . . There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."[65]

And here...

Authentic conjugal love presupposes and requires that a man have a profound respect for the equal dignity of his wife: "You are not her master," writes St. Ambrose, "but her husband; she was not given to you to be your slave, but your wife.... Reciprocate her attentiveness to you and be grateful to her for her love."[69] With his wife a man should live "a very special form of personal friendship."[70] As for the Christian, he is called upon to develop a new attitude of love, manifesting toward his wife a charity that is both gentle and strong like that which Christ has for the church.[71]

So, you are thinking, what has this to do with gradualism?

Here we go...individuals want to blame God for their sins. They want to deny both their own freedom to choose sin or holiness, and they want to change the teaching of the Church to accommodate this lie. But, the Church did not make up all these beautiful thoughts and rules of guidance for a holy life. God did and He entrusted His Church to share these truths.

The second lie is the denial of grace, which I have written about here on this blog under the tag grace and synod.

St. John Paul II again....

In the field of conjugal morality the church is teacher and mother and acts as such.
As teacher, she never tires of proclaiming the moral norm that must guide the responsible transmission of life. The church is in no way the author or the arbiter of this norm. In obedience to the truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the nature and dignity of the human person, the church interprets the moral norm and proposes it to all people of good will without concealing its demands of radicalness and perfection.

And is it hard to be holy, to give in total love?  Yes, yes, yes....Love is in the will. 

But it is one and the same church that is both teacher and mother. And so the church never ceases to exhort and encourage all to resolve whatever conjugal difficulties may arise without ever falsifying or compromising the truth: She is convinced that there can be no true contradiction between the divine law on transmitting life and that on fostering authentic married love.[91] Accordingly, the concrete pedagogy of the church must always remain linked with her doctrine and never be separated from it. With the same conviction as my predecessor, I therefore repeat: "To diminish in no way the saving teaching of Christ constitutes an eminent form of charity for souls."[92]
On the other hand, authentic ecclesial pedagogy displays its realism and wisdom only by making a tenacious and courageous effort to create and uphold all the human conditions--psychological, moral and spiritual--indispensable for understanding and living the moral value and norm.
There is no doubt that these conditions must include persistence and patience, humility and strength of mind, filial trust in God and in his grace, and frequent recourse to prayer and to the sacraments of the eucharist and of reconciliation.[93] Thus strengthened, Christian husbands and wives will be able to keep alive their awareness of the unique influence that the grace of the sacrament of marriage has on every aspect of married life including, therefore, their sexuality: The gift of the Spirit, accepted and responded to by husband and wife, helps them to live their human sexuality in accordance with God's plan and as a sign of the unitive and fruitful love of Christ for his church.

What the synod fathers of a certain bent, and bent is the word, are forgetting is that evil moves governments not to support marriage and children. Too many governments have passed laws contrary to both natural and revealed law.

Yes, it is hard to be happily and comfortably married today. But, that is because, primarily. societies have fallen into the hands of the enemies of marriage. JPII is too aware of this...


...the church openly and strongly defends the rights of the family against the intolerable usurpations of society and the state. In particular the synod fathers mentioned the following rights of the family: --The right to exist and progress as a family, that is to say, the right of every human being, even if he or she is poor, to found a family and to have adequate means to support it;
--The right to exercise its responsibility regarding the transmission of life and to educate children;
--The right to the intimacy of conjugal and family life;
--The right to the stability of the bond and of the institution of marriage;
--The right to believe in and profess one's faith and to propagate it;
--The right to bring up children in accordance with the family's own traditions and religious and cultural values, with the necessary instruments, means and institutions;
--The right, especially of the poor and the sick, to obtain physical, social, political and economic security;
--The right to housing suitable for living family life in a proper way;
--The right to expression and to representation, either directly or through associations, before the economic, social and cultural public authorities and lower authorities;
--The right to form associations with other families and institutions in order to fulfill the family's role suitably and expeditiously;
--The right to protect minors by adequate institutions and legislation from harmful drugs, pornography, alcoholism, etc.;
--The right to wholesome recreation of a kind that also fosters family values;
--The right of the elderly to a worthy life and a worthy death;
--The right to emigrate as a family in search of a better life.[112]

Satan and individual sin attack marriage, but the solution is not to change the institution, but one's interior life.

Sin is our choice in following the easy ways out of suffering, and I would state that most sin if not all, is an attempt to avoid sacrifice and suffering.

Gradualists believe not only in the two lies above, the denial of free will, and the denial of grace, but in the connection between the building of the Kingdom of God on earth and marriage. Gradualists do not seem to have Faith. They have lost the ability to think like Christ, like the Church, in believing that with grace all things are possible. ALL. And less some people think I write out of ignorance of suffering in marriage, let me assure them this is not so. I learned to accept grace and love in the will. I learned Love. And love gives life.

The Christian family also builds up the kingdom of God in history through the everyday realities that concern and distinguish its state of life. It is thus in the love between husband and wife and between the members of the family--a love lived out in all its extraordinary richness of values and demands: totality, oneness, fidelity and fruitfulness"[118]--that the Christian family's participation in the prophetic, priestly and kingly mission of Jesus Christ and of his church finds expression and realization. Therefore, love and life constitute the nucleus of the saving mission of the Christian family in the church and for the church.

And, yes, there will be one more on this subject....later on today...