As reported by NYDailyNews.com:
Apparently stung by a Vatican adviser’s slap at his lifestyle, Gov. Cuomo has declared a holy war [sensationalize much?] with the Catholic Church – saying he’s too busy to meet the state’s bishops here next week.
The Catholic governor, recently roasted over his live-in girlfriend, declared his schedule too crowded to squeeze in Archbishop Timothy Dolan and the other prelates.
The group arrives here next week for the state’s annual Catholic Conference – and historically meets with the governor to discuss a variety of issues.
Conference officials said they reached out to Cuomo about a month ago and got word only Wednesday that he couldn’t make it.
I find this ongoing story fascinating. I’ll bet most progressives will use it to say, “See, I told you so. You shouldn’t have been so mean to Cuomo – now you’ve scared him away.” I believe Peter’s comments (if that’s really what caused the cancellation – the article has no proof of that) actually played out as it should have. Cuomo’s true colors have been exposed. It might force people to actually reflect on what it means to call yourself Catholic. He is always welcome back when he goes to confession and stops living with his concubine. Our bishops must pick up their crosses and follow Our Lord. If that cross is a snub by the gov., then so be it.
Tags: Cuomo, Diocese of Albany, Politics
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Maybe Archbishop Dolan should hold a press conference when he’s in
Albany next week – with an empty chair placed conspicuously nearby.
There’s no investigation going on. It’s public knowledge.
As to your marriage prep – that is very sad. Certainly these people should be instructed to repent and live chastely prior to getting married. If they refuse, they should be instructed to abstain from communion. Whether they should be refused communion is slightly more nuanced because they are not in the same public spotlight as the governor is. As to the marriage, I don’t know what the guidelines are, but it’s a different matter than receiving communion.
Responding to Anonymous who spoke about his/her experience with Pre-Cana and couples living together before marriage. My husband and I were on a Pre-Cana team years ago and we were chastised by the other lead couples when we told the group that statistics showed that couples who lived together before marriage had a greater incidence of divorce. They wanted the couples to go home happy instead of learning the harsh truth.
Re: Anonymous: God bless you for your good ministry to the Faithful. A good priest agonizes over when and how to tell each couple desiring to attempt matrimony the hard truths about their particular situation once he learns what it is, but he doesn’t agonize over WHETHER to tell them. It is a foregone conclusion that he must tell them, to save his own soul, at least.
The principle is of course, that the act of repentance is an eternal act. Yes, we can take back our act of repentance and replace it with an eternal act of sin, which cancels out the prior repentance. This is why immediate repentance from our specific sins is so essential, and why the office of guiding souls is the most responsible office in creation.
If the man or woman, or both, are not free to marry because of a prior valid marriage which hasn’t been annulled, he must tell them that, if they’re not aware of the fact that they can’t be married without an annullment, and also the fact that they cannot receive the Holy Eucharist if they are living together and have not repented, moved apart (or are truly and publicly living together as brother and sister), and have not received sacramental absolution. The good priest also must tell the cohabiting couples preparing for marriage that they must cease from marital relations prior to marriage, immediately, since to involve a priest in a plan to put off repentance until a future date puts the priest in danger of committing a mortal sin of complicity.
The other reason the couple must repent of and stop cohabiting prior to sacramental marriage is that the sacrament does not “take” on two individuals who are in the state of persistent mortal sin. Not to tell these things to couples whom one is preparing for marriage appears to me to be a serious dereliction of duty.
It appears our poor Gov has stomped all over these truths, and as a brilliant man, how can he say he doesn’t understand? It is a frightening thing to see a bishop as it were looking the other way, and even applauding such behavior. Let us pray for Divine Mercy on all of us, because we’re all in this together.
And, snowshoes, what is so incredibly frustrating about this situation is that couples wouldn’t need to be told individually if priests and family members were doing their duty all along and actually teaching the Faith. My marriage prep was absolutely useless and not one, single, person ever mentioned the teaching about cohabitation. Not once. And no one ever talks it about it at Mass when most people would be available to hear it. We are so worried about hurting feelings that we’re willing to risk souls. Oh, the things I did out of ignorance that I could have been spared had someone been willing to speak out.
The situation of couples in pre-cana living together is totally different. The governor and his girlfriend are not in pre-cana and have not expressed an intention to marry in the Church at all at this point. But, he made a public display of his faith, not couples who though they have made a common error in living together before marriage decide nonetheless that they would like to have their marriage be a sacramental one recognized by the Church. It is not uncommon in these situations for pastoral teams to advise couples to abstain from communion or else live chastely. Clearly there is a concern about public scandal in these situations but these couples do not call the press to observe them attending Mass, if in these cases they still attend weekly Mass at all. Still would note that while this may be common in some dioceses such as Rochester it isn’t necessarily the norm in every single parish and diocese in the country, even with the secular attitude pushed as supreme. If we are talking about whether couples need and should have pre cana given the horrendous situation in this country that has impaired the health of young people with respect to healthy expression of sexuality, whether they are living together or not they are going to need pre-cana at a minimum to cope with the trials that will come their way, and especially if they have chosen to live together which is correlated to higher divorce. While so many young people must endure the biased sex education proffered as health classes in schools, they do not also get the benefit by and large of Catholic theology of the body, unless they have a very evolved and attuned pastor who takes some initiative rather than just push the secular same old same old.
Sfomo – it is a statistical fact that the divorce rate is considerably higher for cohabitating couples than couples who live chastely, but I wonder if there’s a cause-and-effect relationship there as you imply. It seems to me that the same moral foundation which leads courting couples to live chastely also leads them to eschew divorce once married, while the same lack of moral foundation that leads couples to “shack up” makes them less likely to value marriage and more prone to see divorce as an option.
I have a question for someone wiser than I – CAN a priest deny the Sacrament of Matrimony to a co-habiting couple, or is there not a canonical right to marriage?
@ annon, yes the priest can deny witnessing the sacrament, as there is no canonical right to it. That, in principle, is what Pre-Cana is for, to make sure the couple is canonically ready, also in conjunction with the priest’s interviews, etc.
But yes, it is rare. I know of several couples who called off getting married after going through my parish’s Pre-Cana (this is actually a good thing!), but know of none who were denied the sacrament.