Remarriage and the Eucharist CHRISTOPHER LAMB
Basil Hume said simply: “… the Greeks have the answer.” He was talking to Fr Timothy Buckley, a Redemptorist priest whom the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales had asked in the early 1990s to research the question and submit a report recommending pastoral guidelines to them. Whether divorced and remarried Catholics can receive Communion is now firmly back in the spotlight after the 400 clerics backing the Austrian Priests’ Initiative said in their “Appeal to Disobedience” that they would not refuse Communion to remarried divorcees. And just before Pope Benedict XVI landed in Germany last week, the country’s President Christian Wulff, a divorced and remarried Catholic, said he hoped the Church would soften its position on admitting people in his position to the sacraments. The issue has, of course, been debated and
Second chances F
aced with the thorny question of how the Church should address the ban on Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, the late Cardinal
discussed for many years, with a number of bishops and theologians suggesting ways that divorced and remarried Catholics could, under certain conditions, return to Communion. But both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have consistently refused to permit this
■Maria, 48, is from Salzburg. Her husband, from Vienna, is 54 and was married before. He has two children from his former marriage. She was not married before. They have been married for 16 years and have two daughters aged 14 and 12. They now live in Vienna. “I am an air hostess and met my husband, who is a pilot, 16 years ago soon after his divorce. I come from a village near Salzburg and my family are committed Catholics. “The local church still plays an important part in village life back home and we have a wonderful parish priest. My husband comes from a Catholic family in Vienna. After we got married (in a register office in Vienna), we consulted my parish priest, a good family friend, in our village near Salzburg
■Richard, 67, is a divorcee, based in London, who has been with his partner for 20 years though they do not cohabit. His wife divorced him in 1986 after 10 years of marriage and he has not received Communion since. “The Church says divorcees are
not excommunicated but to me that is how it feels. I am very active
6 | THE TABLET | 1 October 2011
about Communion and he said that it might be wiser to go into Salzburg to a church to be anonymous. In Vienna things were easier. “We just went to our nearest church when we
were off duty on Sundays. The difficulties began when our eldest daughter started school in Vienna at the age of six. Religious instruction was her favourite subject and she was of course very excited when preparation for First Communion began. At last the big day came and our daughter was radiant. “But a few weeks later she came home in floods
of tears. One of the girls in her class had told her that we – her parents – were doing ‘something for- bidden and sinful’ when we went to Communion as we were ‘not married properly’. She is now 14 and has never been to Communion since.
in my church but I feel like a bit of an outsider. I take matters of conscience seriously and I feel I cannot go up for Communion. “My wife initiated the divorce and withdrew my contact with our children for 12 years though I am glad to say I now see them regularly and we get on well. “Two years after the divorce, I
decided to seek an annulment but in the 22 years since then no real progress has been made – the case is still rattling about in Rome. I am disillusioned with the process. “I have met somebody else, a
widow, and I would like to remarry but feel I cannot do this without the Church’s blessing. I am thinking of joining the Orthodox Church.”
German-speaking Catholics are leading calls for an change to the Church’s position on Communion for remarried divorcees – a call voiced by many during the Pope’s state visit to Germany. So far, the Church is resisting these calls with sometimes unfortunate consequences, as the case studies on these pages reveal. Meanwhile can Rome’s Greek cousins light the way forward?
unless people in their second marriages choose to live chastely as brother and sister. Clearly, many Catholics remain uncon- vinced. Some, like Cardinal Hume and one of our case studies on this page, look to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which have developed a theology allowing for canonical divorces, thereby enabling those in new marriages to receive the sacraments. This is permitted under what is known as the oikonomiaor economy of salvation: that God’s mercy and grace continue to work despite human weakness. The idea is that as marriage is a sacrament of love, if love has broken down (and certain conditions have to be met to show this) then the sacrament is no longer valid. Second or third marriages (but not a fourth!) are required to take place in a spirit of penance rather than joyful celebration. The first proposals within the Latin Church for the divorced and remarried to receive Communion began in the 1940s with an inter- pretation of what is known as the “good faith” position. This meant that the Church would leave a couple who had remarried “in good
■Anna has been married to Robert for more than 30 years. They live outside Vienna. “My first marriage broke up and I was left with a two-year-old son. I met my present husband three years later. His wife had left him with five children to look after. He had tried to get an annulment but failed. When I heard how shattered he was at not having got one, I decided I wouldn’t even try. “Although we were both the
innocent parties in our divorces, we were now barred from the Eucharist and so “half-out” of the Church. We had no idea how we were going to bring up our children in the faith and yet explain our position. “We have spent hours discussing our divorces with them, but they simply can’t understand what the Church condemned us for in the first place. As it is, we’re all very close as one big family and have 10 lovely grandchildren.”
MARIE-HELENE JEEVES
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