On one side, several members of the Council of German Bishops endorse Communion for the divorced and remarried.

On the other, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Vatican's doctrinal chief, says Communion for divorced and remarried people is impossible.

"For us marriage is the expression of participation in the unity between Christ the bridegroom and the Church his bride," he said.

"This is the substance of the sacrament, and no power in heaven or on earth, neither an angel, nor the pope, nor a council, nor a law of the bishops, has the faculty to change it."

Of the 66 members of the German Council of Bishops, 27 say the remarried can receive Communion without resolving to live "as brother and sister".

They say this is possible through "Differentiated solutions which are appropriate to the individual case".

An accompanying statement says the solution will be found through "a decision-making process, accompanied by a priest".

The permanent council of German bishops proposed Communion for the remarried in 2014, saying that it was " a test of the Church's credibility".

Several German bishops distanced themselves from the 2014 statement.

At the subsequent Synod on the Family, not all bishops approved the proposal.

However, since the Pope released Amoris Laetitia, some have suggested Communion for the remarried is now possible.

Cardinal Müller says Amoris Laetitia must be read "in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church".

"I don't like it, it is not right that so many bishops are interpreting Amoris Laetitia according to their way of understanding the Pope's teaching," he said.

"This does not keep to the line of Catholic doctrine."

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Marriage Resource Centre

In an article to be published in the journal First Things next month, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia criticised pastoral approaches that ignore the call to conversion.

He wrote about divorced and civilly remarried people receiving Communion when they continue to live together, have sexual relations and haven't received an annulment.

Archbishop Chaput wrote that the Church doesn't want to punish such people and doesn't in fact exclude them.

The divorced and civilly remarried remain welcome members of the believing community, he stated.

But the Church cannot be merciful without being truthful, the archbishop wrote.

"And the truth is, we are called to conversion.

"A pastoral approach that ignores this truth out of a thinly veiled pastoral despair and accommodationism will result in less faith, not more."

Archbishop Chaput cited Henri de Lubac's saying "The one who wants to adapt himself too much risks letting himself be dragged along".

"Indeed, this is what we see happening in Europe," Archbishop Chaput continued, "in those churches where the pastoral practice regarding divorce, remarriage, and reception of the sacraments has departed from authentic Catholic teaching."

"What ensues from an untruthful teaching about and practice of the sacraments is not a more zealous evangelical life but its collapse."

The Philadelphia archbishop wrote "authentic mercy is evangelical".

"It proceeds from the belief that God's grace has the power to transform us.

"Ironically, a pastoral strategy that minimises sin in the name of mercy cannot be merciful, because it is dishonest."

Archbishop Chaput wrote that: "The moral law guides us toward choices that are life-giving, and true mercy is always intimately linked to truth.

"Indulging our own or another's flawed choices in the supposed service of mercy defeats mercy's true goal."

Archbishop Chaput is a member of the council preparing for the next synod of bishops.

Sources

• First Things
• LifeSiteNews
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: IB Times

Archbishop Georg Ganswein told a university publication he didn't know why some pastors want to propose what is not possible.

"Perhaps they give in to the spirit of the time; perhaps they allow themselves to be guided by the human applause caused by the media . . . ."

But the true measure to be guided by is the Gospel, the faith, healthy doctrine, Tradition, the archbishop said.

The Church must help divorced and remarried Catholics, but not in a reductive way, he said.

"The Church must also be very sincere with faithful living in this situation. It's not only about saying: ‘They can, they can't'."

"It's important to get close to them, to create contact and maintain it because they are members of the Church as everyone else, they are not expelled and even less so excommunicated."

Continue reading

The Cardinal said, and I transcribe:

"I expect a clear word on the responsibility of the conscience. For me that is the decisive message. The responsibility of the individual conscience - a mature conscience that is respected by the Church.

"The first question when a relationship broke down was not what the Church did but what the people concerned did. God's mercy first of all consists in looking at the concrete situation and I first pass the ball to the individual conscience.

"I will never question a person's decision of conscience even if he or she has remarried."

It would be very interesting to track down the television interview and find out what exactly the Cardinal said in the original German.

His interview might have been a long one. But this snippet is interesting.

Let us consider the fundamental question that is raised by admitting anyone who is divorced and remarried to Holy Communion - the question of the first marriage - as raised in an interview by the great theologian Cardinal Caffarra:

"Those who suggest this hypothetical situation have so far not answered one very simple question: what about the first ratified and consummated marriage? If the Church admits [such people] to the Eucharist, she must however render a judgment about the legitimacy of the second union. That is only logical. But then — as I asked — what about the first marriage? … The popes have always taught that … the Pope has no authority over [ie. cannot dispense from] a ratified and consummated marriage.

"The proposed solution leads one to think that the first marriage remains, but there is also a second form of life together that the Church legitimises. Therefore there is such a thing as extramarital human sexuality that the Church considers legitimate. But that negates the central pillar of the Church's teaching on sexuality.

"At that point someone might wonder: then why not approve cohabitation? Or relations between homosexuals? The fundamental question is therefore simple: what about the first marriage? But no one answers it.

"John Paul II said in 2000 in an address to the Roman Rota that ‘It is quite clear then that the non-extension of the Roman Pontiff's power to ratified and consummated sacramental marriages is taught by the Church's Magisterium as a doctrine to be held definitively, even if it has not been solemnly declared by a defining act.'

"This is a technical formula… meaning that on this subject discussion among theologians and doubt among the faithful are no longer permissible…." Continue reading

• Father Alexander Lucie-Smith in Catholic Herald

Alexander Lucie-Smith is a Catholic priest, doctor of moral theology and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald.

The bishops postponed the decision until April 2015 after a minority of conservative bishops resisted the change.

They were also impeded by a federal court ruling that supported current Church laws.

The Catholic Church is Germany's second largest employer and employees are required to adhere to lifestyles consistent with Church teaching.

Source

• Breitbart

In 1972, Fr Joseph Ratzinger originally wrote that marriage was indissoluble in the eyes of the Church, but if a "second marriage has proven to have taken on a moral and ethical dimension" and is "lived in the spirit of the faith", with "moral obligations" towards children and wife, then an opening of communion after a period of probation "seems to be nothing more than just and completely following the line of church tradition".

The original essay is circulating again in Church circles and when considering the recent Church Synod on the Family has been quoted regularly by Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Ratzinger has now redacted the fourth volume of his writings to exclude the controversal paragraphs.

Fr Vincent Twomey, one of Ratzinger's former doctorate students, suggested the omission was a "significant" attempt by the former pope to prevent his earlier words - written in a different context, time and role - being used against him now.

"Theologians must be free to push the boundaries, as Ratzinger was doing 42 years ago," said Fr Twomey. "His position [now] is quite different, but his statement from then is now being given added authority through his later position as pope."

In announcing his retirement due to advanced age, the former Pope said his strengths were no longer suited to the adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry and that he wished to devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

Sources

• Irish Times
• CathNews NZ
• Image: Catholic Herald

Cardinal Vincent Nichols said he had developed his understanding of how the divorced and remarried could undergo a penitential path.

This in turn could lead them being re-admitted to the sacraments.

Something was "opened up in me", he explained, when he looked at proposals for penitential pathways for the remarried.

These included individuals exploring with a spiritual director the breakdown of their marriage and the impact it might have had on their children.

Cardinal Nichols said the next synod - to take place in October 2015 - needed to continue to see the "goodness in every person, whatever their sexuality, whether they're cohabiting or in a second marriage, [that] their lives continue to carry the hallmark of the work of the Holy Spirit".

In many ways he said this is the "practice of priests", but it was "important that it is reflected at this kind of level at the Church".

A document issued half way through the synod said there were "seeds of the Word" in cohabiting couples and those divorced and remarried.

It also praised elements of same-sex relationships.

The synod's final document backed away from this language, but Cardinal Nichols said it is a work in progress.

Meanwhile, the theologian closely involved in writing the mid-point document, Archbishop Bruno Forte, said Pope Francis is calling for further reflection on such issues.

He said there are pastoral situations when civilly remarried divorcees can receive the sacraments, such as serious illness or being in danger of death.

"Can these sacraments be granted in any other special situations?" he asked.

"We will have to wait and see what the local Churches have to say in order to work out which of these cases are most urgent."

Sources

• The Tablet
• Vatican Insider
• Image: The Telegraph

More than 4300 people from around the world completed a questionnaire on www.thetablet.co.uk between 3 and 14 October about what they'd like to see from the synod on the family.

Nearly 85 per cent of respondents were from the United States or the United Kingdom.

Men respondents outnumbered women by a two to one ratio.

In the US, the survey was highlighted on conservative blogs.

Of the divorced and civilly remarried (without an annulment) survey respondents who receive Communion, ten per cent do so with the permission of a priest.

Catholics in Britain and Ireland in such circumstances were almost twice as likely as US Catholics to receive Communion without having sought priestly permission (29 per cent to 17 per cent).

Of the priests who responded, more than a third said the ban on artificial contraception could be ignored in good conscience and that cohabitation could be an acceptable stage en route to marriage.

Respondents said the best way for the Church to support marriage and family life was to run courses for married couples, while also clearly setting out its teaching on sexual matters.

Practising Catholics said the chief threats to marriage and family life were: artificial contraception; gay marriage and adoption; pressure caused by long working hours, money worries and unemployment; and the proliferation of pornography.

Almost three-quarters of practising Catholics welcomed the presence of lay people at the synod, with one-quarter saying they wished more had been invited to attend and to be involved in decision-making.

Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey in the United States has found that 85 per cent of Catholics aged between 18 and 29 feel that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Among church-going Catholics of all ages who attend Mass at least once a week, twice as many say homosexuality should be accepted (60 per cent) as say it should be discouraged (31 per cent).

Sources

• The Tablet
• The Tablet
• Pew Research Center
• Image: Catholic Herald

The hot button issue for the gathering is already well known - whether divorced and remarried Catholics can or should be able to receive the Eucharist.

Battles lines at the Vatican have already been drawn in the differing views expressed by the German cardinals Walter Kasper and Gerhard Mueller.

Battle lines set out in Manila

How this plays itself out in Rome in October was spelled out in Manila earlier this month when the secretary of the Vatican's Council on the Family, Archbishop Jean Lafitte, restated the failure of some Catholic authorities to engage with the reality of the family today.

The views were given at a conference in the Philippines, a country that is 86 percent Catholic.

It is atypical of the Church in Asia and most of the world, as it remains perhaps the only country in the world where the Church's influence is such that there is no civil divorce.

But on display in Manila were how one section of the Church's leadership sees the issue and will propose defense of the family in October:

This section of the Church wants all the Church to confront a relativistic culture out to destroy the family.

Understanding 'the family'

It believes that the term "family" doesn't need to be defined and can be assumed, despite plain evidence that there is no such thing as an abstract, universally applicable and accepted understanding of what the family is.

It also maintains that, while less than 20 percent of the world's population are obliged by the Church's sacramental understanding of lifelong monogamous marriage, no one should question a group of Catholics proposing a legal universal application based on Church rules.

What is frequently heard when a debate is cast in these terms, as it was in Manila, is that any slackening in opposition to same-gender partnerships or to divorce undermines the time-honored and Church-sanctioned understanding of marriage, and that same-gender partnerships are a threat to lifelong monogamous heterosexual relationships.

Marriage undermined?

The weakness in this line of argument is that there is no evidence to support it.

How does someone else's divorce undermine my commitment?

How does the same-sex attraction and commitment of a same-sex couple undermine the commitment of a committed heterosexual couple?

I don't know and can't see the evidence.

Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, it's an argument that does little to further what the Church actually wishes to foster in sacramentally confirmed, lifelong monogamous marriages. And that, after all, is the only thing the Church really has at stake anywhere in the world in the marriage debate.

Rather than simply lament that the abstract understanding of Catholic marriage isn't universally endorsed by the mostly non-Catholic world, Church leaders will do a lot to help people if they can suggest some constructive ways of engaging with the real dilemmas and choices people actually face.

'Failed marriages' and the Church

However, what will galvanize the debate in October is not gay partnerships or threats to the abstract Catholic understanding of marriage as constructed by senior male clerics.

It will be what pastors throughout the world know: how to meet the pastoral challenge of people who have failed relationships, regret the failure, still see the Catholic faith as their core and centre but are told they cannot receive the Eucharist if they have remarried without going through the Church's courts.

The issue is often portrayed as a conflict between what the Church teaches and what ordinary Catholics want. Conceived that way, it is really a phony war. There are two main ways that failed marriages can be resolved in the Catholic Church.

Marriage annulment

The first is the well known and invariably long-winded and difficult process of annulling a Catholic marriage through the Church's court procedures, called "the external forum".

It is called "external" because it is public and can work only if certain conditions are fulfilled. But it may fail for any number of reasons, some of which include: one party not participating in the process, lack of evidence and qualified canon lawyers and excessive Vatican regulations that cause parties to abandon the process.

The other, and commonly unmentioned, approach is what is called the "internal forum", which the bishops of Germany have highlighted in their procedures for their dioceses, much to the chagrin of the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Mueller, as reported frequently in ucanews.com and elsewhere in the Church's media.

The informed conscience

The "internal forum" is another word for how an informed conscience becomes part of pastoral practice and where Catholics work out their relationships with God and the Church. Conscience is, in the teaching of Vatican II, that inner core of a person's life where moral and religious norms are discovered for their application to actual life situations.

It was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who underlined the significance of conscience in the operational life of the Church when he wrote before he became Pope Benedict XVI:

"Above the pope as an expression of the binding claim of Church authority, stands one's own conscience, which has to be obeyed first of all, if need be against the demands of Church authority."

At the conference in the Philippines earlier this month, we got an insight into just where the Catholic Church has been on this subject for the last 30 years and where the opposition to more pastorally flexible approaches to dealing with marriage and divorce is coming from.

It will doubtless surface in Rome at the bishops' synod in October.

Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com

Source: UCA News

Image: UCA News

That book is Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life by Cardinal Walter Kasper, which has just been published by Paulist Press.

Before serving as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (2001-2010), Kasper was bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart (1989-1999).

He has taught theology at the University of Tubingen, the Westphalian University of Munster, and the Catholic University of America.

Commonweal: In your book Mercy, you argue that mercy is basic to God's nature. How is mercy key to understanding God?

Cardinal Walter Kasper: The doctrine on God was arrived at by ontological understanding—God is absolute being and so on, which is not wrong.

But the biblical understanding is much deeper and more personal.

God's relation to Moses in the Burning Bush is not "I am," but "I am with you. I am for you. I am going with you."

In this context, mercy is already very fundamental in the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament is not an angry God but a merciful God, if you read the Psalms. Continue reading.

Source: Commonweal

Image: AP/Daily Telegraph

Cardinal Reinhard Marx told a newspaper that such people "who acknowledge their failure should be able to apply for a readmission to the sacraments after a period of penitence".

A similar proposal was made by Cardinal Walter Kasper at the recent consistory of cardinals at the Vatican.

Cardinal Marx said the other cardinals had "very diverse reactions to this proposal".

"I personally find it to be a practicable plan that would however have to be applied on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Cardinal Marx is a close associate of Pope Francis, who has repeatedly called for mercy in the application of the Church's teachings.

Francis last month said Catholic couples whose marriages fail should be "accompanied" and not "condemned".

In November last year, Cardinal Marx publicly chided his fellow German then-Archbishop Gerhard Muller, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the issue.

An article by Archbishop Muller ran in L'Osservatore Romano rejecting the possibility of an abandoned spouse remarrying after a period of penance, which is allowed in the Orthodox Church.

Cardinal Marx issued a statement that the CDF prefect could not stop discussions about the issue of remarried divorcees.

These and other issues will be addressed at the Extraordinary Synod in 2014 and then the Ordinary Synod in 2015.

Cardinal Marx is a member of the Pope's advisory council of cardinals.

He was recently appointed to head the new Council for the Economy at the Vatican.

He recently became head of the German bishops conference.

Sources

• New Straits Times
• Washington Post
• La Stampa
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

In April, Pope Francis will beatify on the same day both Popes John Paul II and John XXII.

Each represents contrasting styles and records as Bishop of Rome: John XIII who convoked the Vatican Council and opened up the Church; John Paul II who stiffened and straightened the Church when some thought it was out of control.

From his opening words as Pope, Papa Francisco has cut a very different path to that of John Paul II and his immediate predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis engaging, direct, simple and accessible approach has been quick to demonstrate a leadership style which is more inclusive.

And, along the way he has quietly but emphatically faced the Church in a fresh if not new direction.

But what a backlog of issues the Church has to face.

With two simple observations - one to journalists in the plane on the way from Brazil and the other in his long interview with the Jesuit magazines last year - he has personally managed to defuse sex and homosexuality as obsessive topics of Catholic focus.

50 years of issues

However, the Church has virtually 50 years of unaddressed issues and reforms that need to be addressed:

Clericalism, the restructuring of ministry and the ticket into the clerical culture at heart of so trouble for the Church - celibacy - which Pope Paul VI prevented the Vatican Council from considering;

The weak grasp of human biology reflected in the Church's sexual ethics;

Centralism and careerism in Church administration;

The horrifying blight of sex abuse on the credibility of the Church on any moral issue;

The outdated nature of the church's legal processes; And perhaps the biggest issue,

the exclusion of women from positions of decision making significance.

That's where the inclusion of Pope John XXIII in the beatification ceremonies next month becomes the clear indication of the style and direction of his term as Bishop of Rome.

The canonisation of two popes

John XXIII cause for canonization had been languishing. Pope Francis dispensed with the usual process and simply declared, as he can, John XXIII to be worthy of beatification.

Fans and devotees of John Paul II had started the chant for his canonization at his funeral - "Santo Subito".

Prominent among those leading the chorus were the now discredited Legionaries of Christ.

John Paul's affectionate but irresponsible protection and negligent sponsorship of the Legionaries founder, Marcial Maciel, remains the black spot in his pontificate. But the beatification wheels were turning for John Paul II and it seemed difficult to derail the plans of John Paul's cult members.

As all leaders know, managing change requires that the leader take the majority of the community, organization or nation along with him or her as the changes unfold.

Pope Francis has already indicated how he wants to address these and other tense issues in the life of the Church - with open discussion, inclusive participation in the conversation and a process that will reach conclusions.

That is why he called the Extraordinary Synod on what all pastors in many countries know is a matter of acute pastoral tension - serving and including the divorced and remarried in the Church community.

Pope Francis, learning from his mistakes

As Jesuit Provincial in the 1970s, he was widely seen as a self willed and domineering figure.

Divided as the Jesuits in Argentina were, he did little more than antagonize many with his style.

But he has learnt from that failure.

At the heart of Jesuit governance is the good working relationship and openness needed between the leader and his subjects.

After failing as Provincial, Jorge Mario Bergoglio had another opportunity to learn how to govern when he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

There, his approach was to be decisive only after extensive and inclusive engagement and consultation with those involved in or affected by the decision.

Such processes mean change will only come slowly.

But to govern effectively, Pope Francis needs to govern inclusively, as reflected symbolically in this joint beatification next month.

Why is Pope Francis twinning the two popes?

He is defusing tensions while at the same firmly leading in a positive direction - defuse the cultists by beatifying John Paul II yet underlining what Pope Francis really wants: a return to the spirit of Vatican II as the animating spirit of the Church.

That's why John XXIII got fast-tracked.

Faction ridden as the Vatican in particular and Church in general really are, Francis has to take with him as many as he can from all factions as he helps the Church face the reality of its challenges and respond constructively.

The documented turning point of his life after failure as Jesuit Provincial occurred before a picture in a German church of Our Lady, The One Who Unties Knots.

To do what he plainly wants to do, Our Lady will have to be working overtime.

- Fr Michael Kelly is executive director of UCANews. Used with permission.

Pope Francis has said that the situation of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics will be one of the key topics of discussion at the extraordinary synod he has scheduled for Oct. 5-19.

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said Tuesday that the cardinals' meeting would not pre-empt the synod in any way. A consistory, he said, is a meeting "where every cardinal can freely express his thoughts," but it is not a decision-making body and will not feature a vote on propositions.

The cardinals' conversation "does not bind the synod in any way," he said, although synod members will be informed about what the cardinals said. Continue reading

The congregation's prefect is repeating the well-trodden path of common Catholic practice - the only place for a married Catholic is in a sacramental marriage and the only way out of it is through Church courts and a decree of annulment.

In my experience as a priest, there is no more decisive and divisive moment in a Catholic's relationship with the Church than the occasion of a divorce. It can be the end or the deepening of the life of faith lived in the Church.

No healthy person goes into a marriage planning to have it fail. Such failure is painful and disappointing for all concerned. Pope Francis knows this from his own experience. His sister is a divorcee.

My parents were divorced when I was 15 years old.

Talk about breaking taboos.

In the Irish-Australian-Catholic world of the 1960s where I grew up, divorce was just not an option for practicing Catholics such as my parents were.

It provoked my grandfather to warn my mother on his deathbed she would "end up in hell!"

My mother's response was perfect for the times: "Don't worry Dad. I'm only doing it because the parish priest told me."

I know from the inside just how complex, unwished and painful a marriage break-up is.

No one chooses it but they have to deal with its consequences. And so should the Church, say the German bishops and any pastor with a heart.

In their disagreement with the congregation, the German bishops are taking an ancient and well-attested approach to handling moments of crisis and testing for Catholics that is much neglected and little spoken of in the Church today: the internal forum.

Defined in Canon 130 of the Code of Canon Law, the internal forum is for the resolution of issues that do not fit the formal judicial requirements that the Church's marriage courts require.

Sometimes for any number of reasons - insufficient evidence, the refusal by some to cooperate or participate in the process, the death of parties, the serious constraints placed on the granting of annulments placed by the Vatican - the Church court is unable to operate.

And in any event, as lawyers know well, there is no rule book they can access that covers every eventuality in human experience. Law is a blunt instrument that frequently is not equal to the challenges that the complexities of motivation, intention and circumstances present.

All the more so when subject for adjudication is the most mysterious thing we know - human relationships.

What to do

People have to get on with their lives and in the absence of a judicial process, Catholics will still want to find relationships, be happy and be fruitful.

What is being proposed in Germany is an approach that utilizes the internal forum and that focuses on the God-given gift of conscience. The Church teaches that conscience is "the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths."

This is not to say that everyone can make up their own rules, because what conscience reads is God's law written in our hearts.

To get the reading right, we need guidance and advice. And setting up processes to deliver that guidance, advice, judgment and healing is not always easy.

That is why the German bishops have set up a process involving a pastor and parishioners where the reality of failure and the contributions to failure made by sinful people are recognized and forgiven.

It makes sense to do this at the parish level not only because that is where we all live and celebrate our faith. It also happens to be where decisions are made and authorizations are given for a Catholic marriage in the first place.

The internal forum has become one of the Catholic Church's best kept secrets. Now the German bishops are giving it full exposure.

That will mean a lot of change because it will enable priests to be in fact the pastors they have been ordained to be.

As any priest knows, it's the people who make you the priest you become.

If this initiative in Germany spreads and next October's Extraordinary Synod on the Family looks in a pastorally constructive way at an issue facing the whole Church, lots of priests are going to be made pastors in quite new ways.

- Fr Michael Kelly is the executive director of ucanews.com. Used with permission.

Stuttgart Bishop Gebhard Fuerst told a meeting of lay Catholics at the weekend that the bishops had already drafted reform guidelines and aimed to approve them at their next plenary meeting in March.

Fuerstt was the most explicit of several German bishops to rebuff Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, head of the Vatican doctrinal office, who last month ruled out any change after Freiburg archdiocese in Germany unveiled its own reform proposals.

"We want to approve new guidelines at our plenary meeting in March," Fuerst told the Central Committee of German Catholics, an influential group of lay faithful, on Saturday in Bonn. Continue reading

One sentence in the official document accompanying the Vatican's questionnaire is an example of this. As a result of the current situation, it states, "many children and young people will never see their parents receive the sacraments …", in the light of which "we understand just how urgent are the challenges to evangelisation arising from the current situation".

This is doubtless a reference to the Church's current policy regarding Catholics who divorce and remarry and are then told they may not receive Holy Communion, for it then says: "Corresponding in a particular manner to this reality today is the wide acceptance of the teaching on divine mercy."

In short, how does the Church start evangelising such people - and their children - and stop condemning them?

This unique consultation is taking place as part of the preparations for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops that Pope Francis has called for next October.

There is a growing head of steam behind this plea.

The Bishop of Portsmouth, Philip Egan, wrote in a recent pastoral letter that he hopes the synod finds "some way" of offering mercy, help and reconciliation to Catholics in irregular unions or who are divorced and remarried - and he is one of the more conservative bishops in England.

This has already become a key battleground of this papacy, with the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Müller, denying that mercy has anything to do with it, thereby bringing him into confrontation with key members of the German hierarchy. Continue reading.

Catherine Pepinster is the Editor of the London Tablet.

Source: The Tablet

Image: CNS/Paul Haring

"We are going to see that the issue is completely discussed", Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx told Germany Spiegal News.

"The Prefect of the Congregation cannot end the discussion", the Cardinal Archbishop of Munch said.

Cardinal Marx said the German bishops are looking for a broad debate on the way that divorced and remarried people are treated by the Catholic Church,

Making the statement, the powerful German cardinal is taking on the head of the Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Muller.

Archbishop Muller recently restated the traditional Catholic teaching on marriage including the exclusion from Holy Communion for those Catholics divorced and remarried.

Marx told Germany's Spiegel News the Bavarian bishops want a broad debate on the way that divorced and remarried people are treated by the Catholic Church.

The Bavarian bishops do not want to accept the status quo, and discussions on this topic should not be narrowed solely to the teaching of the Church, the Cardinal said.

The Cardinal's comments come against the background of a global opinion survey being conducted by the Vatican.

In the survey, the Vatican wants to find out the views of Catholic communities on sensitive issues, such as dealing with divorce and homosexuality.

Asking Catholics to speak out, "Make the voices of the grassroots audible," urged the Cardinal

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Blogspot