And does “discernment” still mean what it used to mean, or is now just a buzzword substitute for rationalization? For instance, if a divorced, but not annulled, Catholic is complimenting his new “wife” as she models her just-purchased negligee, really in a position to dispassionately embark on a ‘process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it”’ and manage ‘with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he is at peace with God,’ in order that ‘he cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist”’?
In such a situation, “mercy and pastoral discernment” might be neither mercy nor discernment, but simply an easier shift in the Confessional.
Fathers, Your Lordships, Your Graces – Eternity!
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