Posted on 02/17/2014 3:48:40 PM PST by NYer
Pope Francis and the 8 members of the Council of Cardinals began 3 days of meetings on Monday, February 17.
Meeting this week for the 3rd time, the Council of Cardinals will devote its discussions mainly to financial and administrative affairs. The meetings of the Council of Cardinals will be followed by an extraordinary consistory of all the world’s cardinals on Thursday and Friday, February 20 and 21, following by the elevation of 16 new cardinals at a consistory on Saturday, February 22.
Briefing reporters on Monday’s meetings, Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, said that the morning’s meeting of the Council of Cardinals had heard a report from the special papal commission created in July to study the economic and administrative structures of the Holy See. The chairman of that commission, Josef Zahra, presented a report to the cardinals.
No decisions were made during the morning session, Father Lombardi said. However the cardinals were due to continue discussing the commission’s report in the afternoon session. Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, attended the Monday-morning meeting and will continue to sit with the Council of Cardinals, Father Lombardi said, but the Vatican spokesman indicated that Archbishop Parolin (who will become a cardinal on Saturday) had not been added as a member of the Council of Cardinals, the group that Pope Francis created to help him with revisions of the Roman Curia.
On Tuesday, the Council of Cardinals will turn their attention to the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works (IOR). On Wednesday the group will meet with the cardinals who oversee the preparation of budget statements for the Vatican. Pope Francis is expected to attend most of these sessions, leaving for his regular weekly public audience at midday on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the world’s cardinals will gather in the Vatican’s Synod Hall for two days of free discussions. The only talks officially scheduled for the meeting, Father Lombardi said, are a greeting by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals; and a talk by Cardinal Walter Kasper. The remainder of the two-day meeting has been left free for open discussion.
The choice of Cardinal Kasper to speak at the consistory could indicate that the meeting will take up the question of Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics: a question that has prompted intense discussion in recent weeks especially among German-speaking prelates.
Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
POPE OPENS BIG WEEK WITH SEX, DIVORCE ON AGENDA
Ping!
Every time I see an article about Il Papa, I hold my breath.
It's a pretty good bet that keeping the decision at the parish level would speed things up. Whether speeding things up is a good thing, is another question entirely.
By the way, I run into this problem all the time with RCIA. A couple in their 30's or 40's ardently wants to come into the Church, both were baptized Protestants, both had a busted-up marriage in their youth, now the Diocesan Tribunal has to dig up respondents that have, themselves, remarried years ago.
The couple that had been looking forward blissfully to receiving the Sacraments at Easter, are now told it could be years. (And of course, after the investigation is done, the Tribunal could rule to uphold the bond.)
Lotta pain behind these situations.
Kasper on divorce and remarriage:
Cardinal Kasper says Church will soon give Communion to divorced
“By the way, I run into this problem all the time with RCIA. A couple in their 30’s or 40’s ardently wants to come into the Church, both were baptized Protestants, both had a busted-up marriage in their youth, now the Diocesan Tribunal has to dig up respondents that have, themselves, remarried years ago”.
Something don’t add up here. What they did as Protestants should mean nothing. They didn’t receive a sacramental wedding in the Catholic Church as Protestants. The Catholic Church annulment process is for Catholics. There is a form they have to fill out that says they were protestants when they were married before. The priest signs off on it. They do not have to get an annulment like Catholics. Sounds to me like they are being given the runaround.
The above statement is incorrect.
This is incorrect.
Protestant Baptism is valid --- just like Catholic Baptism. And as we know, the "minister" of the Sacrament of Matrimony is not the priest, but by the baptized couple themselves. They confer marriage upon each other. Therefore a true Sacramental bond is established in the marriage of any validly baptized man and woman, whether they are Catholic or not.
The Catechism (para 2382) says that a ratified and consummated Christian marriage is indissoluble. This is a marriage where the vows are exchanged by two baptized (Christian) persons, with the proper intention, and consummated by sexual intercourse. "No power on earth can declare such a marriage null and the parties free to remarry." Sometimes people are astounded to hear that, but it's true. The Catholic Church is canonically bound to respect the marriage bond established by validly baptized spouses, whether they are Catholic or not.
Absolutely wrong. A protestant that wants to get married in the Catholic Church and was married before in a protestant church DOES NOT have to go through the same annulment procedures as a divorced Catholic that has to get an annulment before they can remarry in the Catholic Church. I am living proof. There was a form (forget what it was called), that I signed when me and my soon to be wife were going through marriage counselling in the Church. She had to get an annulment because she was Catholic and got married in the Catholic Church, and subsequently got divorced. Her annulment process took two years. She had to get character witnesses, statements from friends, statements from others saying what kind of marriage they knew her to have. Statements from those that knew her husband. In the end she was granted an annulment and we married in the Catholic Church. The only thing that was required of me was a form the priest got me to sign saying I was not a member of the Catholic faith at the time I was married in protestant church. Somebody at the diocese are giving this couple bad advise. Former protestants don’t get annulments through the Catholic Church.
Mrs. Don-o is correct; your priest was wrong.
Look it up. You maybe living in a state of adultery.
Regarding that post of mine above, I was given a pass because I was never baptised before. I was one of those baptist that waits till they are about grown to get baptised and I never was. I always thought I was, but my dear old mother told me I hadn’t been. The annulment of my wife was hard enough anyway. I can imagine me sending a bunch of forms with Catholic written all all other them to some of my family members. If that had been the case I would have ended up getting married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas, not in a Catholic Church.
See Post 12.
To me, that doesn't sound like something a sincere Catholic would say or do.
So do you admit your posts 7 and 10 were wrong?
I mean if my baptists friends and family had to send back forms for me to get married in a Catholic Church, a faith that they despised, I would have waited forever. There is no way I would have ever gotten an annulment. And if I could not have gotten married in a Catholic Church, well I would have wanted Elvis to do the honors. But I suspect that after a few years had passed and it was obvious no character witnesses were coming back the Church might have granted me the annulment. But like I say I didn’t have to go down that road, and never being baptised is the reason I did not have to go through an annulment. I was not a not a baptised Christian.
I hope the Catholic Church does away with some of the red tape involved in an annulment. It takes entirely too long.
And I think if anything comes out of this marriage conference it will probably be easier annulments.
I sure do admit I was wrong. After I typed the rebuttal and thought I was right, I talked to my wife about it and she set me straight. She had to jog my memory that I didn’t get an annulment because I had never been baptised until I was baptised Catholic in 2008. She also had to remind me that my mother (a year before she passed away), is the one who told me I had not been baptised as a child, and after I left home at 18 I was never baptised as an adult, not until I came into the Catholic Church. I went though the majority of my life thinking I was baptised because I always went to church when I was kid and I was raised in a Chritian home.
Some headline writers just want to watch the world burn.
I can only address your question from the Maronite Catholic Church perspective. Here in the US, annulments are handled before a tribunal at the eparchial (diocesan) level. It follows Catholic Church law. Marriage Tribunal
Change is in the air.........
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pope-opens-critical-week-reform-family-issues-22545682
“American canon lawyer Edward Peters, who has written extensively on the American annulment process, said Monday that compromise is not possible on annulments themselves since that is the only way baptized Catholics can remarry. But in a blog post, he said the Vatican might consider some “process-smoothing provisions” that were approved for the U.S. church back in the 1970s, including the elimination of the mandatory appeal to Rome”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.