In Malta, it is easy to be a cultural Catholic: everyone there is Catholic, and everyone goes to church – or rather, they were and did. The temptation in Malta is to go with the flow, to live an increasingly secular life, while remaining nominally Catholic, like almost everyone else.
In Kazakhstan, to be a Catholic is countercultural (only 1.6% of the population is Catholic), and to go to church, to live as a practising Catholic, is profoundly countercultural.
It thus is unsurprising that, while the Archbishop of Malta and the Bishop of Gozo have fallen away grievously from the Faith, by wickedly teaching lies to their people – since anyone who says an unrepentant practising adulterer can worthily receive Communion is a heretic who promotes schism – the Archbishop of Maria Sanctissima in Astana, his well-known auxiliary Bishop, and the Archbishop-Emeritus of nearby Karaganda have instead most worthily and definitely reaffirmed the teachings of the Catholic Apostolic Faith regarding this very issue, denouncing attempts of others to do as the feckless Maltese episcopate has done, and appealing to the Supreme Pontiff for his decisive intervention against such false teachings: ‘that Pope Francis may revoke in an unequivocal manner those pastoral guidelines, which permit the divorced and so-called “remarried” to receive the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist without asking them to fulfil the obligation of a life in continence.’
They ask all the faithful – throughout the Universal Church – to join in prayer for this intention, especially as previous appeals to the Holy Father have so far gone nowhere. The daily prayers suggested are either part of the Rosary or the following traditional petition for the Pope, and acclamation of his God-given role, as drawn from Sacred Scripture:
Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Francisco:
Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum ejus. (Ps. xl, 3)
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam. (Matt. xvi, 18)
(Let us pray for Francis our Pope:
(The Lord preserve him and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.
(Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.)
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