c. 2007 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday (March 13) reaffirmed church teachings on divorce and priestly celibacy, and told Catholic politicians they must follow church doctrine on abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage.
The pope based his letter to Catholic bishops, Sacramentum Caritatis (“The Sacrament of Charity”) on a 2005 Synod of Bishops that drew together prelates from 118 nations to study the Eucharist in Catholic belief and practice.
In a section of the letter that dealt with “eucharistic consistency,” Benedict said “Catholic politicians and legislators” are bound to “introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature,” including “respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, (and) the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman.”
“These values,” Benedict wrote, “are not negotiable.”
The Vatican has repeatedly rebuked Catholic politicians who dissent from the church’s teaching on controversial social issues, most recently in Italy, where lawmakers are debating a proposal to grant legal recognition to same-sex couples.
The pope’s letter stopped short of directing bishops to withhold Communion from lawmakers who dissent from those teachings, as some U.S. bishops threatened during Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid because of his support of abortion rights. At the time, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger _ now Pope Benedict _ said that bishops could deny Communion, but were not required to do so.
On the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics, the pope’s letter unambiguously reaffirmed the church’s practice of excluding them from the sacraments, including Communion, unless they abstain from sexual relations with their new spouses, “living their relationship in fidelity to the demands of God’s law, as friends, as brother and sister.”
Benedict was equally emphatic in upholding the church’s celibacy rule for priests. While acknowledging the clergy shortage that critics have invoked as a reason for relaxing that rule, the pope reaffirmed celibacy as a “sign expressing total and exclusive devotion to Christ” and insisted it was “obligatory” in the Western church.
The 151-page letter touched on a wide range of topics, among them the “need for greater restraint” in making the sign of peace during Mass, and the importance of placing the tabernacle containing the Eucharist in a prominent location inside churches.
Benedict also encouraged the celebration of Mass in Latin _ the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s made local-language Mass the norm _ at international gatherings, “in order to express more clearly the unity and universality of the Church.”
KRE/LF END ROCCA
