Today’s Powerful and Piercing Words of Fired Vatican Theologian, and the Highly Respected U.S. Theologian, Capuchin Father Thomas G. Weinandy

From a speech on Amoris Letitia delivered today at the University of Notre Dame in Sidney Australia:

Lastly, scandal is the public pastoral consequence of allowing persons in unrepentant manifest grave sin to receive Holy Communion. It is not simply that the faithful members of the Eucharistic community will be dismayed and likely disgruntled, but, more importantly, they will be tempted to think that they too can sin gravely and continue in good standing with the Church. Why attempt to live a holy life, even a heroic virtuous life, when the Church herself appears to demand neither such a life, nor even to encourage such a life? Here the Church becomes a mockery of herself and such a charade breeds nothing but scorn and disdain in the world, and derision and cynicism among the faithful, or, at best, a hope against hope among the little ones.