At Vatican Synod, Bishop Challenges Rule Banning Divorced From Communion

c. 2005 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ A Roman Catholic bishop has urged an assembly of his peers to reconsider church teaching that bars divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving Communion, referring to the current regulations as a source of “scandal.” Speaking before an advisory synod to Pope Benedict late Tuesday (Oct. 4), Archbishop […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ A Roman Catholic bishop has urged an assembly of his peers to reconsider church teaching that bars divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving Communion, referring to the current regulations as a source of “scandal.”

Speaking before an advisory synod to Pope Benedict late Tuesday (Oct. 4), Archbishop John Atcherley Dew of Wellington, New Zealand, said that bishops have “a pastoral duty and an obligation before God to discuss and debate” the question of whether remarried Catholics should be given Communion.


“Our church would be enriched if we were able to invite dedicated Catholics, currently excluded from the Eucharist, to return to the Lord’s table,” Dew said.

Catholic doctrine holds that faithful who divorce and remarry under civil law are unfit to receive Communion unless they abstain from sex. The church considers sexual relations between remarried couples a sin.

“We must look for ways to include those who are hungering for the Bread of Life,” Dew said, referring to the Eucharist, which is the official theme of the synod. Catholics believe the Eucharist is the blood and body of Christ.

“The scandal of those hungering for Eucharistic food needs to be addressed, just as the scandal of physical hunger needs to be addressed,” Dew said.

At a press conference Monday, Bishop Pierre-Antoine Paulo of Haiti suggested the church could minister Communion to remarried Catholics as it does to some non-Catholic Christians under special circumstances.

Benedict was not present at the synod session late Tuesday, but his views on divorce are widely disseminated.

The Rev. Joseph Ratzinger, as Benedict was once known, argued in a 1972 essay that under special moral circumstances “it seems that the granting of full Communion, after a time of probation, is nothing less than just, and is fully in harmony with our ecclesiastical traditions.”


But decades later, as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger struck down a proposal from several German bishops to admit remarried Catholics to the sacraments.

Dew did not offer suggestions on how the Church should minister to remarried couples, but some churchmen have argued for loosening the requirements on marriage annulment.

Catholics can remarry once the church formally declares their first marriage never existed. But many Catholics struggle with the process, unable to find the technical evidence of an “impediment” to their first marriage.

Many priests have begun to overlook the rules and grant Communion to remarried Catholics as their numbers continue to balloon in Europe and North America.

In a speech that opened the synod, Cardinal Angelo Scola acknowledged this reality and called on participants to “further delve into and pay great attention to the complex and diversified cases” of marriage annulment, suggesting that tribunals overseeing annulments should be streamlined.

But Scola also said that Communion was “neither a right nor a possession” but a “gift” to Catholics and reaffirmed church teaching on divorce.


According to the Rev. John Bartunek, who briefed the English-speaking media Wednesday on Tuesday’s proceedings, several bishops have questioned whether Catholics have a “right” to Communion.

Bartunek could not say whether bishops supported or opposed this view due to restrictions that have been placed on his communications with the media. Priests briefing reporters in several languages are to only highlight the themes of the synod sessions, without discussing their substance.

Bartunek said the decision to limit media contact was made in consultation with Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls and Synod General Secretary Bishop Nikola Eterovic following media reports on synod debate over norms regulating the celibacy of priests.

MO/PH END RNS

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