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TradCatKnight: Archdiocese website suggests ‘do not commit adultery’ doesn’t ban sexual sin
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 14:56
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Archdiocese website suggests ‘do not commit adultery’ doesn’t ban sexual sin
Archdiocese website suggests ‘do not commit adultery’ doesn’t ban sexual sin
Apostate Schonborn back in the news…
Note: not an endorsement for JPII or “theology of the body”
Is the Catholic Church’s traditional sexual morality too rigid? Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s flock is certainly being led to think so.
In December, the website of the Archdiocese of Vienna led by Schönborn published a new presentation of the Ten Commandments. It included a commentary on the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” that could be interpreted to justify everything from masturbation to pornography and prostitution.
The article concludes — openly invoking Pope Francis’ solicitude for sinners — that refusing communion to the divorced and remarried “seems very questionable from a theological point of view.”
Says the article on the diocesan website: “Under its present formulation, the Sixth Commandment does not intend to make a general negative judgment on sexuality, nor does it justify the global prohibition of acts such as masturbation, pornography, prostitution, etc.”
Whether Cardinal Schönborn is personally aware of the text is a moot point. But he is responsible for it insofar as it purports to present the teachings of the Church under the official heading of the Catholic diocese of Vienna – and has been online for more than three months.
It says the Sixth Commandment “appears at first sight to be clear and unequivocal.” But things are not so clear-cut. “From the start, it is at the basis of the Catholic understanding of marriage and at the same time provides an irrefutable argument against divorce. But this leads to losing sight of one fact: the Ten Commandments, like all rules and laws, respond to specific social challenges and are products of their time. In order to clarify the original intention of the Sixth Commandment, it is necessary to consider the context in which it was born.”
The context is given by Deuteronomy 22:22, which the text calls “very instructive:” “If a man is discovered lying with a woman who is married to another, they both shall die, the man who was lying with the woman as well as the woman.” The text goes on to comment the Bible quote: “The woman is guilty of adultery because she has betrayed her marriage; the man, because he has intruded into another’s marriage. If a woman had sexual relations outside of her marriage, she was always an adulterer. A married man, on the other hand, only committed adultery if he had relations with another married woman.”
On the other hand, a man who had relations with a woman who was neither betrothed nor married was legally obliged to pay a fine and marry her and would not be allowed to divorce her, Deuteronomy also says, which isn’t getting off lightly …
The diocese’s text continues: “This way of treating man and woman in a way that seems to us unjust should be considered from the viewpoint of patriarchal social and family order that was the order of Israel. Since the married woman was, in the broad meaning of the word, a possession of her husband, adultery constituted an offense with regard to his right and his property. Moreover, the wife’s sexual fidelity provided the husband with a guarantee as to the legitimacy of his offspring. Thus, the Sixth Commandment was at first a norm destined to protect the perpetuation of the bloodline, social order and the idea of justice.”
John Paul II, in his Theology of the Body, writes about this:
“On the basis of the analysis which we have previously carried out regarding Christ’s reference to the ‘beginning’ in his discourse on the indissolubility of marriage and on the act of repudiation, the following is evident. He clearly saw the basic contradiction that the matrimonial law of the Old Testament had hidden within itself by accepting actual polygamy, namely the institution of the concubine, together with legal wives, or else the right of cohabitation with the slave. Such a right, while it combated sin, at the same time contained within itself, or rather protected, the social dimension of sin, which it actually legalized. In these circumstances it became necessary for the fundamental ethical sense of the commandment, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ to also undergo a basic reassessment. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ revealed that sense again, namely by going beyond its traditional and legal restrictions.” (August 20, 1980.)
This true, Catholic perspective does not appear at all in the text officially published by the archdiocese of Vienna. The text instead proposes to “translate the Sixth Commandment for today:”
“Since the social organization of the people of Israel is radically different from ours, the outlawing of adultery must ever be re-translated for our time, so as not to lose its relevance. For a long time, the tradition of the Church has attached to this Sixth Commandment all things pertaining to sexuality, and it collectively considered all sex acts outside of marriage as mortal sins.
“Such an interpretation does not stand up to the results of exegesis nor to the quest of theological ethics for a differentiated evaluation.”
This is a long way indeed from the presentation of the Sixth Commandment by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says:
“Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins. In the Sermon on the Mount, he interprets God’s plan strictly: ‘You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.“The tradition of the Church has understood the Sixth Commandment as encompassing the whole of human sexuality.” (N° 2336)
The archdiocese has a different vision. Under the heading: “No depreciation of sexuality,” it continues:
“Under its present formulation, the Sixth Commandment does not intend to make a general negative judgment on sexuality, nor does it justify the global prohibition of acts such as masturbation, pornography, prostitution, etc. It cannot even serve to justify easily the indissolubility of marriage, but on the contrary assumes a right to divorce that also existed in Israel.”
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