New Swiss bishop calls for pragmatism - CathNews NZ and Pacific

New Swiss bishop calls for pragmatism

Friday, September 14th, 2012

The incoming head of the Swiss bishops’ conference has suggested that allowing remarried divorcees to receive communion and lay people to deliver homilies is a “pragmatic” course of action.

The Swiss bishops elected Bishop Markus Buechel of St Gallen to be the next president of the Swiss bishops’ conference, replacing Bishop Norbert Brunner in January.

At a press conference Bishop Buechel said that it was important to be in agreement with church doctrine as far as communion for remarried divorcees and lay sermons were concerned.

But he added: “Dioceses differ as to how the Church should react to developments in society and whether one should principally consider the increasing secularisation negatively and therefore take a Draconian course, or if one should take a neutral stance towards social developments and then quite pragmatically see if as a Church we can make the best of it.”

Source: The Tablet

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News category: News Shorts.

Tags: Divorce, Holy Communion, Marriage, Sacraments

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