 |
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
CURRENT
ISSUE: November 6, 2006
VOL.
44, NO. 19Oakland,
CA
Bishops to discuss Communion, gays, liturgical music
By Nancy Frazier
O’Brien
and Jerry Filteau
Catholic News Service
When the U.S.
Catholic bishops gather in Baltimore next week for their fall general
meeting, they will be asked to vote on a number of draft documents affecting
the life of American Catholics. Four key documents deal with family planning,
pastoral ministry to homosexuals, liturgical music, and reception of C
ommunion.
Below is a brief summary of the four drafts. The bishops will discuss
and vote on each during sessions, Nov. 13-16.
‘Married Love and the Gift of Life’
The brief document on marriage strongly supports natural family planning
and says contraception introduces “a false note” that disturbs
marital intimacy and contributes to the decline in society’s respect
for marriage and for life.
“When couples use contraception, either physical or chemical, they
suppress their fertility, exerting ultimate control over this power to
create a new human life with God,” the draft said.
But because natural family planning “does not change the human body
in any way, or upset its balance with potentially harmful drugs or devices,
people of other faiths or of no religious affiliation have also come to
accept and use it from a desire to work in harmony with their bodies,”
it added.The bishops disputed the view that the Church’s opposition
to contraception means that Catholic couples must “leave their family
size entirely to chance.”
“In married life, serious circumstances -- financial, physical,
psychological, or those involving responsibilities to other family members
-- may arise to make an increase in family size untimely,” the document
said. “The Church understands this, while encouraging couples to
take a generous view of children.”
Live coverage of bishops’ meeting on EWTN EWTN,
the 24-hour Catholic TV network, will provide live coverage of the
first two days of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops fall meeting
in Baltimore. The Nov. 13-14 telecasts will run from 6 – 9
a.m. and 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. |
That’s
where natural family planning comes in, the bishops said. The method helps
couples avoid pregnancy by refraining from intercourse for the few fertile
days around the time of the woman’s ovulation.
“A couple need not desire or seek to have a child in each and every
act of intercourse,” the draft document said. “And it is not
wrong for couples to have intercourse even when they know the woman is
naturally infertile.
“But they should never act to suppress or curtail the life-giving
power given by God that is an integral part of what they pledged to each
other in their marriage vows,” the bishops added.
‘Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination’
The proposed document clearly reaffirms and explains Church teaching against
any sexual activity -- homosexual or heterosexual -- that takes place
outside marriage, and it says authentic ministry must be based on that
teaching. But it also says a homosexual inclination is not itself sinful
and those who are homosexually inclined “must be accepted with respect,
compassion and sensitivity.”
It sharply condemns hatred or “violent malice in speech or action”
against homosexuals. “Those who would minister in the name of the
Church must in no way contribute to such injustice,” it says.
About one-fifth of the document is devoted specifically to guidelines
for ministry to those with homosexual inclinations; the larger part of
the text is devoted to the framework of Church teaching within which such
pastoral care is set. It acknowledges that the teaching is not readily
accepted in many quarters.
Addressing general principles about human sexuality, the document says,
“The purpose of sexual desire is to draw man and woman together
in the bond of marriage, a bond that is directed toward two inseparable
ends: the expression of marital love and the procreation and education
of children. ... This is the order of nature, an order whose source is
ultimately the wisdom of God.”
The document distinguishes sharply between homosexual acts and having
a homosexual inclination. “While the former is always sinful, the
latter is not. To the extent that a homosexual tendency or inclination
is not subject to one’s free will, one is not morally culpable for
that tendency,” it says.
“Simply having the tendency is not a sin,” though one may
sin by voluntarily entertaining homosexual temptations or acting on them,
it says.
Following the lead of a 1986 Vatican document that drew extensive criticism
from gay rights groups, the document reaffirms church teaching that “the
homosexual inclination is objectively disordered.”
“It is crucially important to understand that saying a person has
a particular inclination that is disordered is not to say that the person
as a whole is disordered. ... Sometimes the Church is misinterpreted or
misrepresented as teaching that homosexual persons are objectively disordered,”
it says.
The document stresses the importance of “bonds of friendship,”
especially within families, as a means of support for living a full human
life. “There can be little hope of living a healthy, chaste life
without nurturing human bonds,” it says.
It says those who minister in the name of the Church “should encourage
healthy relationships between persons with a homosexual inclination and
other members of their families.” It says the local church community
should also be a place where such people experience friendship and support.
Directory, norms for liturgical music
Concerned that hymns used at Mass are “doctrinally correct”
and based on Scripture and liturgical texts, the bishops will debate on
a new directory for music and the liturgy.
The directory is intended to serve “not so much as a list of approved
and unapproved songs as a process by which bishops might regulate the
quality of the text of songs composed for use in the liturgy,” said
Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, Pa., chairman of the bishops’
Committee on the Liturgy, in an introduction to the document.
If approved by two-thirds of the bishops, the directory and norms would
be sent to the Vatican for its assent.
The draft document says the U.S. Church “has been greatly blessed
both by a hymnody drawn from a number of great traditions and by the contributions
of composers and lyricists of liturgical songs over the past 40 years
of the liturgical reform.”
“Composers are urged to continue to seek ways in which liturgical
song can grow organically from the tradition that the voice of the Church
might sing the ancient hymn with new conviction in our own day and age,”
the directory adds.
But there have been “certain challenges” in the use of liturgical
songs, the document says. “While works of poetic art should not
be judged in the same way as catechetical texts, liturgical songs can
benefit from certain doctrinal judgments.”
A set of norms to be considered along with the directory says each diocesan
bishop is responsible for approving liturgical songs in his diocese, assisted
by the directory, the bishops’ Secretariat for the Liturgy and a
local review committee of theologians, liturgists and musicians.
‘Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily’
A Catholic who “knowingly and obstinately” rejects “the
defined doctrines of the Church” or its “definitive teaching
on moral issues” should refrain from receiving Communion, according
to the draft document “’Happy Are Those Who Are Called to
His Supper’: On
Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist.”
In an introduction, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., chairman
of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, said the draft document was the result
of a proposal to the bishops in November 2004 by Archbishop John J. Myers
of Newark, N.J., for a statement on how Catholics should prepare to receive
the Eucharist.
“He envisaged this document as applying to Catholic faithful, not
just to politicians or those in public life,” Bishop Serratelli
said.
Archbishop Myers’ request came after a presidential campaign in
which some bishops had criticized the Democratic candidate, Sen. John
Kerry of Massachusetts, and said he and other Catholic politicians who
supported abortion should be refused Communion under canon law.
But a footnote to the draft says that it is not intended “to provide
specific guidelines” to the provision in canon law that says that
Catholics “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin”
should not be allowed to receive Communion.
Among examples of such sin, the document cites “committing deliberate
hatred of others, sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult, or physical
or verbal abuse toward one’s family members or fellow workers, causing
grave physical or psychological harm; murder, abortion or euthanasia.”
Other “serious violations of the law of love of God and of neighbor”
listed in the draft include swearing a false oath, missing Mass on Sundays
or holy days without a serious reason, “acting in serious disobedience
against proper authority,” sexual activity “outside the bonds
of a valid marriage,” stealing, slander or involvement with pornography.
