A corporal work of mercy.

A corporal work of mercy.
Click on photo for this corporal work of mercy!

Monday 19 October 2015

Mark Benedict Coleridge. Is he our latest heresiarch?

Today's press conference from the Synod to destroy the family featured Brisbane Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge.

Shall we take a look at what this episcopal eunuch had to day?
The Church has traditionally spoken that the second union is adulterous and I understand why. I understand the teaching and what lies behind it, including the biblical background. But at the same time, not every case is the same and that’s where a pastoral approach needs to take account of the different situations. For instance, just to say that every second marriage or second union whatever you want to call it is adulterous, is perhaps too sweeping. For instance, a second marriage that is enduring and stable and loving and where there are children who are cared for is not the same as a couple skulking off to a hotel room for a wicked weekend.  So the rubric, adultery, in one sense, it’s important but in another sense it doesn’t say enough and I think what a pastoral approach  requires is that we actually enter into what the synod is calling a genuine pastoral dialogue or discernment with these couples and the start of that is for people like me to actually listen to their story not just swamp them with doctrine or Church teaching. (Coleridge's commentary begins just before the 24:00 mark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=timmt6EvF-0)
 
I had a conversation, not too long ago, with a priest - someone who should have been a bishop except he would not dissent on Humanae vitae back in the late 1970. He opined how angry it made him when he would hear Pope Francis say that priests were not "pastoral" or "merciful." He could not understand who it was that the Pope was speaking about. I have certainly not seen a priest any less than pastoral and merciful provided I was repentant for the wretched things that I had done and brought them to either the confessional or spiritual direction.
 
Coleridge waxes on that a "second marriage or second marriage" if it is nice and all is well, is "different from skulking off to a hotel room" and therefore, not really adultery. Well, what if the second marriage began because one or both skulked off to a hotel room? Would it be adultery then?
 
What if the first wife is at home with the other children and struggling? Is there no sin in that for the person who caused the break-up and now lives in something other than adultery?
 
Truly, who educated these men? Have they all been emasculated?
 
There is something, however, even more troubling.
 
We see and hear lots of heterodox commentary at these daily briefings. Why is there no bishops speaking orthodoxy.

Perhaps Fathers Lombardi or Rosica might wish to comment and let us know.
 
We're waiting.

6 comments:

Barona said...

God is drawing good out of evil all these narcissists are going on the record as heretics. Incredibly, not one of the other churchmen at that Press hearing denounced him.

Matt K said...

This time last year, I probably would have said it was disheartening to hear about all of these episcopal turncoats coming out of the woodwork. But now? Bring it on. Our Holy Mother the Church has been abused for far too long by these heterodox men. Time for a foretaste of the separation of the wheat from the chaff.

Unknown said...

Helllooooooo....is anybody surprised????

Unknown said...

There are many more bishops speaking Orthodoxy than heresy. Please remember at least that much was clear by the short excerpts of the 72 interventions given during a certain day (the first week, right?) and which Bishop Gądecki published briefly.
But you know who(s) will make it look/sound otherwise.

The real Bishops should all publish their interventions. Why are they not doing it?! I think that would be an even better petition. They could all be gathered on a website. It would change the perception of things and possibly the result. The Bishop was made to take down the excerpts. Told he could only publish his own. If they all do then it will be a great loss for the synopulators!

I just had this idea. Who can start the petition?!

Eirene Angi said...

Mark Coleridge is the Archbishop of the Diocese in which we live and breathe.
Until this "declaration of independence" he made at the Synod, we had no idea of
how far he had deviated from true Catholic doctrine. Now we know. At least it
makes sense of the fact that he never ever bothered to address any of the serious issues brought to him time and time again by concerned faithful Catholics in the
parishes. He was spot on with photo-ops and pronouncements to the media on
hot button topics - one his best was that celibacy was a cause for priestly sexual abuse of children. My main concern is if Pope Francis devolves authority to the
local Bishops' Conferences, what will become of the Church as we know it and of us?
Living under a modernist relativism is not the Faith - never was and never can be.
May Almighty God have mercy on us and consign the wicked to their fate according
to His Holy Will.

DJR said...

My email today to the archbishop:

The pope has issued a call for the bishops to listen to the “sheep,” yet what do we see from the Ordinary of Brisbane? He’s going to insult them and ignore them. The fact that they are concerned about their Church, their Faith, and their families doesn’t appear to concern him.

There’s a word for such sentiments, and it can be found at Matthew 7:5.

People like me do not cling to the past, nor do we cling to the present, as the archbishop does; we look to the future. We work toward, and await a time, when people like the archbishop, and his generation and ilk, are dead and gone so that we can rebuild what they destroyed.

The idea that the archbishop and his fellow travelers own the future is laughable. The future is with serious Catholics who actually believe in, and practice, the Catholic Faith in its entirety, not the dying culture of unbelieving dissidents and homosexuals, who reject major portions of Catholic teaching, that the archbishop presides over.

Rather than history having its way, Our Lord will have HIS way, and people like the good archbishop, who cling to their own imaginings, will just have to accept the consequences.