Gulf Pine Catholic

Gulf Pine Catholic • December 6, 2024 9 The Official 2025 Directory of the Diocese of Biloxi $12 Place Your Order Now! To receive your copies, you must pre-order. Deadline for pre-orders Dec. 20, 2024. Delivery January 2025! Directory includes information about diocesan ministries and services, parishes, Mass schedules, schools, priests, deacons, seminarians, sisters, and brothers. Mail coupon & check to: Gulf Pine Catholic, 1790 Popps Ferry Rd., Biloxi, MS 39532 NAME _________________________________________________ ADDRESS _______________________________________________ CITY___________________ STATE_________ ZIP___________ No. of directories ordered _______ Amount enclosed______ Make checks ($12 per directory) payable to: Gulf Pine Catholic clip & mail # 12-6-24 228-539-9800 www.RiemannFamily.com Gulfport Pass Christian West Jackson County Biloxi Long Beach Hancock County Church tribunals must uphold charity, justice, truth, pope says BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY ( CNS ) -- When Catholics approach a church tribunal or canon lawyer, they “must always meet the face of our mother, the holy church, who loves all her children with tenderness,” Pope Francis said. At the same time, “charity does not dissolve jus- tice; it does not relativize rights. In the name of love, one cannot neglect the duty of justice,” the pope told participants in a course offered by the Roman Rota , a Vatican-based tribunal dealing mainly with mar- riage cases. Meeting participants Nov. 23, the pope said that addressing the legal and pastoral challenges regard- ing marriage and the family “is a vast apostolic field, but also complex and delicate, to which it is neces- sary to devote energy and enthusiasm, with the inten- tion of promoting the Gospel of the family and life.” Members of tribunals and canon lawyers who assist and advise Catholics must exercise a “ministry of justice and charity in truth,” Pope Francis said. “You are called to love justice, charity and truth, and to strive daily to implement them in your work as canonists and in all the tasks you perform in the service of the faithful,” he said. “It is a matter of loving all three at the same time, because they go together,” and when one is disregarded, “the others lose their authenticity.” “Neither justice without charity, nor charity without justice,” he said. Because “chari- ty without justice is not charity.” Justice is the key vir- tue of giving each per- son what is his or her right, and it is a virtue as necessary in the church as in any human com- munity, he said. “However, in no human community, and even less so in the church, is it enough to respect rights; it is necessary to go beyond rights, with the zeal of charity, in search of the good of others through the generous gift of one’s own existence,” Pope Francis told the group. As tribunal judges and canon lawyers exercise their legal duties, he said, they must remember that “people are to be treated not only according to jus- tice, which is inescapable, but also and above all with charity.” In 2015, Pope Francis rewrote a section of canon law with the aim of making the Catholic Church’s marriage annulment process quicker, less expensive and more pastoral. He told participants in the course that simplifying the process did not mean weakening a commitment to justice or to the truth about wheth- er a valid marriage existed. Church workers cannot be afraid of justice, “as though it could undermine or diminish charity,” he said. “That fear stems from a mistaken conception of justice, thought of as a selfish and potentially con- flictual claim,” rather than as “an exquisitely altruis- tic virtue that propels toward the good of the other.” At the same time, he said, one cannot be “afraid of charity and of mercy as its characteristic expres- sion. “Charity does not dissolve justice,” and “it does not relativize rights,” the pope said. Striving to be close to Catholics experiencing marital difficulties and trying to speed up the annul- ment process do not weaken the demands of justice,” he said. Instead, “it urges us to live it more gently as the fruit of compassion toward our neighbor’s suffer- ing” since “mercy is the very foundation of the church’s life.”