Edit: usually, we're so inundated with Bishops who omit to teach the hard sayings, that when someone actually does follow through, it's almost shocking.
Why it would be controversial that a Catholic Bishop would say something like this, especially in Ireland, we don't know, but we're glad he did. Aren't you?
I suppose it shouldn't be shocking that an anti-clerical Irish newspaper finds a Bishop doing his job quaint, but here it is.
Next thing you know, the Bishop will say that the wages of sin is death.
[West Meath] The Bishop of Elphin Christopher Jones has come out strongly against cohabiting couples this week, saying that it brings children into an "unstable environment" where the couple are unwilling to commit themselves to marriage.
The bishop made the controversial comments at a marriage jubilee celebration in Ss Peter and Paul's Church, Athlone, on Sunday afternoon attended by hundreds of people, including a large number of married couples from all over the diocese and their families.
In his homily, Bishop Jones highlighted the importance of marriage and family for the health of the couple themselves, for their children and ultimately, for the citizens of society.Link to original...
1 comment:
Good for the bishop, but he left out that it is a mortal sin. It is condemned several times in Holy Scripture so it isn't hard to point out.
Matt. 15:19-20, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. 20 These are the things which defile the man."
Acts 15:29, "...that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well."
1 Cor. 6:9-10, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."
Heb. 13:4, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge."
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He also made it sound (at least in the part described above) that it was a suggestion rather than a command.
Still...any bishop who wants to climb out of the dark abyss of Vatican II is going to first squint at the sun and walk on wobbly legs. Hopefully, he will soon be emboldened to do better and do better more often and more loudly.
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