Pope Francis has insisted, as does the Church, that Holy Communion isn't a prize for the pure but Medicine for the sin, sick sinner. Thus what the late Cardinal Caffarra writes below seems to endorse Pope Francis' more liberal views about how a sinner can receive Holy Communion as a gratuitous rescue from Jesus. This is what Cardinal Caffarra says is the third way of the Church in disavowing the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians: The Word, not considering His Divine condition a treasure to guard jealously, threw Himself into the river of evil in order to get hold of man and bring him to the shore. This is the Christian Event.”
I copy this from Rorate Caeili:
Woe to us if the Church should have in Her memory something other than the
Resurrection of Christ
I’ll begin the second part of
my reflection with a metaphor. Two people are walking along the banks of an
overflowing river. One knows how to swim the other doesn’t. The latter slips
and falls into the river, which sweeps him away. There are three
possibilities his friend has: teach him to swim; throw a rope telling him to
hold on tight to it; jump into the river himself, get hold of the drowning man
and bring him back to the shore.
Which of these ways did the Incarnate (Word) take, seeing man being swept
away by his own self-destruction? The Pelagians
responded with the first and this corresponds to all those who reduce the
Christian Event to moral exhortations. The Semi- Pelagians responded with the
second, and corresponds to those who see grace and liberty as two forces inversely
proportional. The Church teaches the
third. The Word, not considering His
Divine condition a treasure to guard jealously, threw Himself into the river of
evil in order to get hold of man and bring him to the shore. This is the
Christian Event.”
Let’s ask ourselves: at what depth must the reconstruction of the human
begin? At the point where truth and
liberty meet. The human person’s evil as
such, is moral evil, since it strikes the personal subject. The reconstruction
of the human starts at this level or it will always be mere ‘aesthetic surgery’.
Christ’s redemptive act,
occurring once and for always and operating in the Church, heals specifically the
laceration of the subject through which the devastation of the human has its
origin. And the Church exists for this:
to render present here and now the redemptive act of Christ. “Be mindful that the Lord Jesus Christ is
risen again from the dead” [Tim. 2,8] St. Paul writes to his disciple Timothy.
Woe to us if the memory of the Church has other contents!
H/T: Chiesa e Post Concilio Blogspot
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