Aussie prelate calls for pastoral creativity for remarried

Friday, October 23rd, 2015

An Australian archbishop has called for a new pastoral creativity, not an all-or-nothing approach, to families in situations the Church sees as problematic.

Speaking a news conference at the synod on the family, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane said he was concerned an “all-or-nothing” approach tended to dominate discussions before and, at times, during the synod.

But there exists a “vast territory that calls us to a new kind of pastoral creativity”, he said.

On the issue of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, the Church’s doctrine is clear that they cannot receive Communion, he noted.

But Archbishop Coleridge said this is a delicate subject that cannot always be generalised and must be viewed case-by-case.

“In the case of divorce and remarriage, we’re always dealing with sin, there’s no news in saying that; the Church has traditionally spoken of the second union as adulterous,” Archbishop Coleridge said.

He said the term “‘adulterous’ is perhaps too sweeping”, and that while defining the sin is “important, but in another sense it doesn’t say enough”.

“And I think what a pastoral approach requires is that we actually enter into what the synod is calling a genuine pastoral dialogue or discernment with these couples.”

While the framework and direction of this dialogue is Church teaching, the archbishop said that the Church is also called to reach out to those who feel alienated.

“What really worries me as a pastor is that a lot of these people don’t come to me or the Church,” he said.

“They are seriously alienated and feel seriously excluded.

“So the question is not what do we do when they come to us but how can I/we go to them and begin that process of dialogue that starts with a kind of listening.”

Sources