Posted on 12/31/2014 4:32:45 PM PST by marshmallow
Bishops appeal for change in report prepared for the first family synod
Most German bishops now believe that divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed to receive Holy Communion, according to a new report published by the German bishops’ conference.
In late December, the bishops published “Theologically Responsible and Pastorally Appropriate Ways for Accompanying the Divorced and Remarried” on the bishops’ conference website.
Matthias Kopp, spokesman for the Bonn-based bishops’ conference, said: “This document contains reflections only and has no juridical power.”
He said the German bishops’ conference hopes “to offer its own theological contribution in this area. While we can give no information about any follow-up, the majority of bishops agreed with the timing of its publication.”
Mr Kopp said the bishops had decided to delay issuing the report, prepared for the extraordinary synod of bishops on the family last October, until the end of 2014. He said the bishops now would concentrate on preparing a formal submission to the worldwide synod assembly in October 2015.
The report, drafted by a working group and approved by the German bishops’ permanent council in June, appeared on December 22 alongside official translations of recent synod documents and German responses to an October 2013 Vatican questionnaire to dioceses worldwide.
It said most of Germany’s 66 bishops now favoured allowing divorced Catholics living in new civil unions to go to Confession and receive Communion in “particular justified instances”.
While a minority of bishops still believed such Catholics “on principle, could not be admitted to the sacraments”, the document added, all now agreed on the need to “intensify pastoral care” for them.
The report said the exclusion of divorced Catholics was “no longer comprehensible” to many priests, some of whom deliberately disregarded Church rules in their pastoral work.
“For many Catholics engaged in Church life....
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...
So what? The majority of people believe in premarital sex and divorce and remarriage, that doesn’t make them right.
Communion for Adulterers and Communion for Pro-Aborts are almost always discussed as though they were discrete issues. They are not. They are the same issue.
That is why the bishops who have been insisting on Communion for Pro-Aborts (for forty years) have been the principle agitators for Communion for Adulterers.
The moral and sacramental principle is that people who are publicly engaging in grave sin cannot be given Communion, for two reasons: 1) It is a sacrilegious act, and is KNOWN by the congregation to be a sacrilegious act; 2) It constitutes public condonation, by the bishop, the pastor, and the minister of Communion, of the grave sin in question.
The important point to remember: The SPECIES of the grave sin is immaterial. The person in an illicit marriage and Nancy Pelosi are committing different notorious sins, but the moral and canonical prohibition on giving them Communion is precisely the same.
Because all but about a dozen American bishops insist on giving Communion to pro-aborts, all but about a dozen American bishops are walking around in the state of mortal sin.
No reporters are going to be pressuring the bishops to give up this mortal sin. No lawyers are going to be threatening the bishops with a couple of billion dollars in lawsuits over this issue. The bishops have an established track record: They develop an aversion to mortal sin only when threatened with bankruptcy or prison.
Become an instant expert on Canon 915:
I married a woman who developed mental illness and then alcoholism. For 20 years I tried to support her and give my kids the best life I could. I only divorced her when her problems got so extreme she was beyond help (including jail) and would damage the kids. If I ever find healthy love and want to marry my choices are to leave the church or to try to get the alcoholic marriage annulled and make my children bastards, which I would never do. Whatever the theological basis is, the effect is to drive someone like me - who tried desperately at great personal sacrifice to preserve the marriage - out of the church. I remain a Catholic but candidly there are no resources and no support for someone like me. Shunned is more descriptive.
Is Christ’s Church majority rule?
I am in a similar position, always intended a Catholic marriage but married a nominal Christian who left the property. But you don’t make your children bastards by getting an annulment, the Church would consider them totally legitimate. I am sorry your marriage sounds like it was very difficult. But your answer is right there, you can ask the Church to determine if it was a sacramental marriage or not. If not, you and the kids get a second chance. If it was, you hae to gut it out.
Exactly!
Cardinal Marx is Chairman of the German Episcopal conference.
Cardinal Marx has said, “Take the case of two homosexuals who have been living together for 35 years and taking care of each other, even in the last phases of their lives. How can I say that this has no value?”
Cardinal Marx is a member of Pope Francis’ Gang o’ Eight.
Not a believer myself, but when the Catholic Church become a democracy and put such things up to a vote/ majority rule?
Shunning used to occur in all churches and a lot of folks like you and my husband tried to keep marriage going when the spouse had mental problems in those days. Luckily times have changed.
When my husband saw the priest, he found the marriage was invalid, so we could marry. She is still as crazy as ever, but we are happy.
and don’t let your wife or let her manipulate the kids to try to stop you using the “it will make us bastards” complaint. Been there, been through that...It isn’t true for annulments, and never was.
My wife also.
She divorced her adulterous husband.
I met and married her some years later. She can’t take communion and it’s killing her. Not even at her mother’s funeral.
She is a good Catholic, says her Rosaries twice a day but church? No
I don’t understand the Church’s stance on someone in her position.
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