faith” by not making them aware of their irregu lar situation, meaning that they could go on receiving Communion. Then, the Archdiocese of Chicago, keen not to dissuade remarried divorcees – particularly African Americans – from becoming Catholics, started to issue decrees of good faith, which allowed couples to be received into the Church provided there was doubt about the validity of the first marriage and their current union was stable. During the 1960s, this was extended to marriages that involved a Catholic partner. But by the 1970s, the Church was faced with responding to an increasing number of marital breakdowns, and as a result the still hotly debated “internal forum solution” emerged. The Church broadly distinguishes between the internal and external forums. The internal is where, for example, someone receives abso- lution or an individual seeks counsel from a priest. The external forum would be a mar- riage ceremony or church tribunal. The two are not mutually exclusive but are concerned with different areas of the life of faith: the individual and the community. Theologians have argued that divorced and remarried Catholics could be allowed to return to the sacraments via the internal forum by seeking the advice of a priest and after examining their conscience. Certain pastoral guidelines would also have to be met. In 1973, the Congregation for the Doctrine


of the Faith (CDF) confirmed that the Church’s internal forum was a way for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, and a year later clarified two conditions that would be required. The first was that the cou- ple in the second marriage were seeking to live according to Christian moral principles, and the second that they receive Communion where they were unknown, so as not to create scandal. For many this seemed a green light for a return to the sacraments for those in second marriages able to meet the criteria. Meanwhile, a year earlier, the then Professor


Joseph Ratzinger formulated a proposal to allow the divorced and remarried to return to Communion. This would be permitted, he argued, as long as the first marriage had bro- ken up in an irreparable way some time ago, that the second marriage had been “filled with the spirit of faith” and that penance had been performed. Giving such couples Communion, “appears to be no less than just and to be fully in line with the Church’s tradition”. But then things changed. In 1991, in an


article for The Tablet, Fr Theodore Davey, an academic at Heythrop College, citing the CDF pronouncements, put forward the internal forum as a legitimate way to allow the divorced and remarried admission to the sacraments. He cited Professor Ratzinger – by this time prefect of the CDF – in support of his argu- ment and even went so far as to suggest that, “in a curious reverse”, scandal arises when the remarried are barred from the Eucharist. In an extraordinary intervention, Cardinal Ratzinger rebutted Fr Davey in the letters pages of The Tablet. He said that his 1972 article was only a suggestion made as a theologian and would have required an official promulgation from the Magisterium. Given


■Beth, 55, has been married for the last five years to a divorcee whose marriage broke up some years before they met. Both come from large Catholic families and have been lifelong active churchgoers. They live in South-East England.


“I first met my husband when we were both 16. We went out with each other for several years as students. After it ended, we lost touch with each other for 30 years. When we met again, he had been married and his marriage had ended. “We married in a Church of England


church, and although four friends who were priests came to the wedding, the service was conducted by an Anglican priest. We were,


■Joseph, 61, was divorced before converting to Catholicism some years ago. He lives in London and has since remarried. “Initially I was told that I could not be received into the Church until I had obtained an annulment. I explained that my marriage had not been in church, and I was not a believer at the time, never mind a Catholic. I was told that if I had been Catholic at the time, an annulment would not be necessary, but


and remain, deeply grateful for the hospital- ity of the Church of England. Since then, although our situation is well known to friends in our Catholic parish, we still take Communion when we go to Mass. “It grieves me that we live in this rather


marginal place, but I am not unhappy in the margins. I’m utterly clear that in our situa- tion, to marry was the healing and right thing to do. It was a deeply faith-inspired mutual decision. However, I do find the Church’s official position distressing. All of us coming to the Eucharist bring many kinds of sinfulness and brokenness, ambivalence and ambiguity, and the exclusion of this one cate- gory simply does not make sense.”


as I hadn’t been, it was. I looked at what the annulment process required. It offered the prospect of horrendous disruption to what had become stabilised relationships. I was not living in an ‘irregular relationship’, and a neighbouring diocese said there was therefore no obstacle to my being received. “Then, at Mass, I met a


Catholic woman and, in due course, we decided to marry. So that we, in particular my


that Pope John Paul II, in his 1981 apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, had ruled out admitting divorced and remarried couples to Communion, Cardinal Ratzinger’s position had now changed. The cardinal went on to explain the conditions set out by the CDF in its 1974 statement on the internal forum. Quoting Pope John Paul II, he said that those in a second union were only able to return to Communion if they abstained from “acts proper to married couples” – that is, live as brother and sister. Theologians have raised serious concerns about this idea. How is it workable? Moral theologian Fr Kevin Kelly suggested that unless a married couple put a “brother and sister” logo outside their front door, people would never know if this were the case. The notion that it simply requires sex to sustain it is also a rather narrow theological way of looking at marriage. The Church is effectively allowing a couple to act as man and wife in every area – personal, financial, emotional – but not in the act “proper to married couples”. While Cardinal Ratzinger’s Tablet letter appeared to quash any hopes for the remarried to receive Communion, two years later a sig- nificant theological gauntlet was put down by a trio of German bishops. In 1993 the three – Karl Lehmann, Walter Kasper and Oskar Saier – wrote a joint pas- toral letter arguing that parish priests should assess each case individually when admitting remarried divorcees to Communion, and encouraged people to take a decision according to their own conscience. They drew a distinc- tion between those who had been abandoned


new wife, would be able to receive Communion, I started the annulment process again, but the distress was so great that I abandoned the process for good. “I love the Catholic Church


and my new wife and I have been lucky to meet many understanding priests who gave us good and compassionate counsel, so we attend Mass and receive Communion in good conscience. Our baby is baptised Catholic.”


in their marriage and those who had destroyed the marriage (also recognised by Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio). They also said consideration should be given as to whether a second marriage now had an “ethical obligation”, and that the Church should accept a person’s decision if someone in a second marriage was personally convinced their earlier marriage was invalid. They stressed the sanctity of marriage and that remarried divorcees would not normally be admitted to the sacraments. Given the theological standing of Bishops Lehmann and Kasper (later cardinals), their intervention could not be ignored and the bishops were summoned to Rome for discussions with the CDF. A year later, Cardinal Ratzinger issued his


own letter to the world’s bishops. Reiterating traditional teaching, it stated that priests have a “serious duty to admonish” any remarried divorcee who judges it possible to receive Communion because “such a judgement of conscience openly contradicts the Church’s teaching”. As Pope, Benedict XVI has expressed pastoral concern for those who are divorced and remarried, although he has kept the door closed when it comes to Communion. While Fr Buckley is in favour of the internal


forum solution, he would like the Church to think more radically about the problem. The Orthodox position, he says, shows up the “deficiency” in Catholic theology and practice on this matter: there is a need to go back to first principles.


Additional reporting by Christa Pongratz- Lippitt.


1 October 2011 | THE TABLET | 7


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