Jeffrey Miller

CAIRO – Egypt’s Coptic pope has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in, a newspaper reported on Friday.
“Confessions over the telephone are forbidden, because there is a chance the telephones are monitored and the confessions will reach state security,” the independent Al-Masri Al-Yom quoted Pope Shenuda III as saying.
The leader of the Coptic minority also said confessions over the Internet were invalid because they might be read by websurfers.
“A confession over the Internet does not count as a confession, because everybody can look at it and it won’t be secret,” he said.

The Catholic Church’s reasons for not allowing confessions over distances is rooted in her sacramental theology. Every Sacrament is a personal encounter with the Lord in and through the person of the minister. In the Gospels every act of forgiveness was personal with the person present to him (with healing this was not always so.)

The type of reasoning above overlooks the fact that a confessional booth could be bugged and there was the case where a sacramental confession heard in prison was taped. In those cases of listening in would certainly not invalidate the confession, though it is certainly sinful and those people would be bound by the seal of confession. The same goes for an especially loud penitent when you can accidentally overhear a confession while waiting in line, in that case you would be bound to the seal of confession.

The sacrament of confession, also practiced by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, is normally a very private conversation between penitent and priest.

Unlike Roman Catholic confessions, Coptic confessions are done face to face.

Well actually Catholics can confess face to face also, though they always have the right to confess anonymously behind a protective screen.

Coptic Patriarch Anba Morcos said that people have begun to phone in their confessions.

“It’s a new thing; it’s been happening for the past four or five years,” he said.

That is rather odd that the question is just being addressed now. The Catholic Church answered the question shortly after the telephone was invented. Some people wondered again about this after the internet became popular, but the questions was really already answered. It is not about something being overheard or spied upon because you could use PGP encryption on both ends via email and have a higher chance of security than inside of a confessional. Confession like all of the sacraments is a personal encounter with Christ .

Morcos added that Pope Shenuda has also banned monks in Coptic monasteries from using cell phones.

Of course any personal telephone including a landline the monk used would be “cell” phone by definition.

Teresa Benedetta has translated what the Pope recently said on Monday

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man’s self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God’s work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term ‘gender’ effectively results in man’s self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony – which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman – as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

And then Reuters and other news agencies translated his speech into something quite different.

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 22 (Reuters) – Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

“(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the Pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration. [The Pope clearly says saving man ‘from the destruction of himself’, not from gays, nor saving ‘gays’ or homosexuals, or any other way of parsing his statement uncharitably and erroneously.]

“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.”

The Pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work.”

He also defended the Church’s right to “speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected.”

Got that. Defending marriage most beatifically is an attack on people who have same-sex attraction or gender confusion. The media has the charism of infallibility when it comes to reporting what the Pope did not say.

I can just imagine the typical reporter reading what the Pope said. First they would come across the comparison using ecology and think “darn, no headline there” and then come to the part on “between a man and a women” and the pink triangle alarm bells went off with them shouting “stop the presses!” or whatever term is used today.

A reader sent me a link to this article.

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton has suggested it is not a good idea to go to Confession regularly.

The bishop made the comment in a frank interview with The Catholic Herald in which he defended “green” youth liturgies and said Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that forbade married couples from using contraception, “could be” wrong because it was not infallible teaching.

Doesn’t it just warm your hearts to know that there are bishops who doesn’t know the difference between the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Magisterium? Hey the Church has never made an infallible definition on infanticide, racism, or genocide so your thinking that these are immoral “might be” wrong.

When asked if he thought regular Confession was a good idea, the bishop said: “No, because my own experience when we had Confession every day at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham was that regular penitents came back with exactly the same words week after week. So there you would say, actually, there is no conversion taking place.”

Concerning the grace you receive in sacramental confession – fuggetaboutit! If you are not instantly cured from habitual sin there is no reason to keep trying. We should be able to give a good confession, receive absolution, and then be canonized! Otherwise no conversion is taking place and we should just give up if we have the same laundry list of sins from week to week.

Now we certainly require the proper disposition to more fully receive the fruits of the sacrament of confession. That certainly even with frequent reception of this sacrament that we can block grace and being complacent by not really preparing ourselves for grace and acting on the grace given.

I do find it odd that those who seem to have a problem with frequent reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the same time don’t seem to have a problem with everyone going to Communion. The Eucharist is a power hose of the sacraments and since the world isn’t brimming with saints I guess “no conversion” is taking place and we should stop having frequent reception of the Eucharist by this logic.

I also noticed he mentioning of using to have daily confession. I guess there like so many places in the world now that I guess people are not sinning anymore and so don’t need more access to the sacrament.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church encourages regular Confession but says that Catholics are only required to confess once a year.

Bishop Conry also suggested that there should be a greater emphasis on charity rather than on contraception.

“The birth control issue becomes easy because it’s measurable. You do it or you don’t do it. But love: you do it or you don’t do it, how can you measure that? We fight the easy battles but we ignore the bigger ones,” he said.

How about both/and here and beside contraception is not opposed to charity. It is a lack of charity that leads to contraception in the first place. The view that a potential child is a nuisance is about as uncharitable as they come. Being open to the gift of children is both charitable and an act of responding to God’s will. And as for “a greater emphasis on charity rather than on contraception” – it would be hard to have a lesser emphasis on something than contraception from the pulpit. Contraception has become the Lord Voldemort of sins. “The-Sin-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

But Bishop Conry criticised environmentalists who attacked the Church’s teaching on contraception.
He said: “You get people like George Monbiot saying: ‘If the Pope changes his position tomorrow, the world would be rid of the scourge of Aids.’ He’s talking nonsense.”

Exactly right.

On the traditional Latin Mass the bishop said he thought it was “a bit over the top” but that he had never tried to restrict it in any way.

He said that traditionalists in England and Wales were “a small group of very vocal people” and that Summorum Pontificum, which allowed priests to celebrate the traditional Mass without the permission of a bishop, did not introduce “significant change”.

Bishop Conry, who is supervising youth ministry after the closure of Catholic Youth Services, also said the Church had to speak to young people in their own language.

He argued that talking about faith in the context of climate change was likely to be more effective than addressing salvation or repentance.

“You can’t talk to young people about salvation,” he said. “What does salvation mean? My eternal soul? You can only talk to young people in young people’s language. If you’re going to talk to them about salvation, the first thing they will understand is saving the planet.”

Yeah young people can’t handle the Gospel. This is exactly the type of thinking that has worked so well in the last 40 years! 40 years of catechetical desert. Sure as St. Paul said we have to be fed milk first, but milk is substantive and you are nourished by it. Preaching the Gospel in the context of climate change is one of the sillier statements I have run across. What exactly is the context? That saving your soul is related to saving the planet? Call me a soulamentalist, but I believe saving your soul is the most important thing, While being a good steward of the environment is being thankful to God for his creation I don’t think climate change hysteria (the new Millenialists) is the proper context for teaching Christ crucified. Pope Benedict has talked about using the context of ecology to explain how respecting the inherent laws of creation as a way of what is seeing what is good or bad. On the occasion he made these remarks on teaching young people he first started with a philosophical explanation of conscience and natural law. We can certainly pull examples from the world around us to explain the moral law and our need for redemption, but we must explain the moral law. Young people deserve the respect to be talked to seriously and not talked down to.

American Papist reminds us of this story:

Last July, 15 nuns from a schismatic convent in Washington state rejoined the Catholic Church. They left the motherhouse of the Religious Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI), located on the outskirts of Spokane, to form a new congregation: the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church. They formally renounced their state of schism, made a profession of the Catholic faith, became a private association of the faithful under the care of Spokane Bishop William Skylstad, and recognized the legitimacy of the popes from Paul VI through Benedict XVI.

Their former order, which still has approximately 35 sisters, holds to the sedevacantist position that popes elected since John XXIII are invalid and that Vatican II was a heretical council.

Which brings us to another story

he nuns’ Dec. 12 letter says the Vatican’s action “has diminished our Church.” They believe that “excommunications depend not on edicts or laws, but on compliance” by the faithful. If the faithful do not exclude or shun someone from the community, they are not excommunicated. The letter asserts that Bourgeois is not outside the community because they “embrace him wholeheartedly.” The letter was organized by the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN).

“In the first century, Christians resolved their disagreements about following traditions such as circumcision and kosher dietary laws by dialogue and discussion,” said Sister Beth Rindler, speaking for NCAN. “We need to follow their example by promoting public discussion about the ordination of women,” the Franciscan Sister said.

“We hope the excommunication is not issued,” said Dominican Sister Donna Quinn, one of the coordinators of NCAN. “The medieval punishment of excommunication serves only to embarrass our Church in the eyes of the world and fuels further anger and resentment among the U.S. faithful.”

“Many of the signers have served the Church for more than 40 or 50 years. Many are prominent leaders in their fields,” said Loretto Sister Jeannine Gramick, another NCAN coordinator. She pointed to Mercy Sister Theresa Kane, who made worldwide headlines when she asked Pope John Paul II to open all ministries to women on the occasion of his first visit to the U.S in 1979, and Dominican Sister Carol Coston, who founded Network, a Catholic social justice lobby. She also noted the signatures of Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, a prolific writer in the field of spirituality, Notre Dame Sister Ivone Gebara, a noted Brazilian feminist theologian, and Loretto Sister Maureen Fiedler, host of the public radio show Interfaith Voices.’

Of course Jeannine Gramick was previously restricted by the Vatican pastoral work with lesbian and gay persons and then changed to a different religious order that was more open to disobedience to continue her outreach to confirm people into sin. The only surprising thing from NCAN is that they only had a hundred signatures.

“”The medieval punishment of excommunication serves only to embarrass our Church” shows they understand the issue of excommunication as thoroughly as the issue of women’s ordination – that is not at all. Excommunication is certainly no medieval punishment, but a ecclesial remedy to help focus someone on repentance that has been used since the beginning of the Church. The idea of excommunication is certainly rooted in the steps Jesus tells us to take when we need to rebuke a sinner that ends with “if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. ”

“If the faithful do not exclude or shun someone from the community, they are not excommunicated.” Yeah that would really have worked during the Arian or other heresies in the Church. There is always some community willing to embrace a heretic. Besises excommunication is not shunning in any way. Excommunicatin as a censure that affects the person’s right to receive the sacraments and has nothing to do with removing someone from the Church.

As you would expect we once again get the constant call to dialogue as if this issue can never be settled unless they get their way. Get with Vatican II sisters which restated in Lunem Gentium.

This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

Or as Pius XII said in Humani Generis:

But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.

Disobedience to the magisterium of the Church will never be a path to holiness, but a path that can lead straight South. Disobedience to the Church is disobedience to Christ no matter how prophetic you say you are.

I do think these stories make a nice contrast. One group gave up the belief that there was no pope, NCAN needs to give up the belief that they are the pope.

In other news Sister Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association issued a statement praising Obama’s pick of Sen. Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes the same Tom Dashle who was once pro-life who voted for cloning, ESCR, and abortion in almost every case (except for partial birth abortion). Looking at what she has written in the past no doubt she fully approves of Dashle’s vision of socialize health care and so what if he supports killing the innocent? You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and you have to support child killing politicians to get socialized health care. Though to be fair she has written in the past “Our ethical standards in health care flow from the Catholic Church’s teachings about the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.” Too bad Catholic Tom Daschle does not believe the same.