Communion for Divorced and Remarried Persons?

Open Questions: Communion for Divorced and Remarried Persons
The Theological Faculty of Milan proposes that they be admitted to the Eucharist, without giving up sexual relations. One of its authoritative theologians explains why, and under what conditions. How will Rome react?

by Sandro Magister



"Go and sin no more," Jesus told the adulteress. "Go, and sin some more," some theologians propose...

As difficult as it may seem to be for those in sinful relationships, we are reminded that God never gives one more than he can handle. Perhaps, with a greater adherence to a life of prayer, one's disposition toward difficulties might be changed in manner of offering those trials to our Lord, uniting one's own sufferings with those of Christ.

Perhaps it would be wise to re-read FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO (On the Christian Family in the Modern World), the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope John Paul II:

84. Daily experience unfortunately shows that people who have obtained a divorce usually intend to enter into a new union, obviously not with a Catholic religious ceremony. Since this is an evil that like the others is affecting more and more Catholics as well, the problem must be faced with resolution and without delay. The synod fathers studied it expressly. The church, which was set up to lead to salvation all people and especially the baptized, cannot abandon to their own devices those who have been previously bound by sacramental marriage and who have attempted a second marriage. The church will therefore make untiring efforts to put at their disposal her means of salvation.

Pastors must know that for the sake of truth they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of situations. There is, in fact, a difference between those who have sincerely tried to save their first marriage and have been unjustly abandoned and those who, through their own grave fault, have destroyed a canonically valid marriage.

Finally, there are those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children's upbringing and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid.
. . .
However, the church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon sacred scripture, of not admitting to eucharistic communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the church which is signified and effected by the eucharist. Besides this there is another special pastoral reason: If these people were admitted to the eucharist the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of penance, which would open the way to the eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the convenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage.

This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons such as, for example, the children's upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they "take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples."[180]

Novelties and theological opinions continue to arise, even though they are contrary to what the Church teaches...Nevertheless, some still seek loopholes.