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Allowing remarried Catholics to take communion is like seeing the Greenland icecap melt Remarried Catholics being allowed to take communion? It's like seeing the Greenland icecap melt
(35 minutes later)
The other night I was drinking with an American Catholic nun and her daughter. The mother had been married twice, once to a former priest. She had entered a convent straight out of high school and left to marry her high school sweetheart eight years later. Some time after the second marriage broke down and her daughter was grown she re-entered the order: this was possible because her first marriage had been annulled, and the second had never existed in official eyes because the husband had not been dispensed from his vows as a priest. When she talked about Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI she sketched a Hitler salute in the air and giggled.The other night I was drinking with an American Catholic nun and her daughter. The mother had been married twice, once to a former priest. She had entered a convent straight out of high school and left to marry her high school sweetheart eight years later. Some time after the second marriage broke down and her daughter was grown she re-entered the order: this was possible because her first marriage had been annulled, and the second had never existed in official eyes because the husband had not been dispensed from his vows as a priest. When she talked about Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI she sketched a Hitler salute in the air and giggled.
I don't know of any story which better illustrates the gap between the Vatican's official teaching about marriage and the lived experience of some of the most serious Catholics. There have always been annulments available for the rich and well-connected, but for most Catholics divorce is not recognised and – more to the point – their second marriages will officially be treated as adulterous relationships, and disbar them from communion.I don't know of any story which better illustrates the gap between the Vatican's official teaching about marriage and the lived experience of some of the most serious Catholics. There have always been annulments available for the rich and well-connected, but for most Catholics divorce is not recognised and – more to the point – their second marriages will officially be treated as adulterous relationships, and disbar them from communion.
Since this is the central symbolic act of their faith, it's a cruel punishment, and of course in practice in many places the rule is simply ignored. But now the second-largest diocese in Germany, Freiburg, has published a 14-page handout – which will be sent to other parts of the church – explaining how the clergy should use their discretion to ensure that sincerely remarried couples can take communion together, whatever the rules may say.Since this is the central symbolic act of their faith, it's a cruel punishment, and of course in practice in many places the rule is simply ignored. But now the second-largest diocese in Germany, Freiburg, has published a 14-page handout – which will be sent to other parts of the church – explaining how the clergy should use their discretion to ensure that sincerely remarried couples can take communion together, whatever the rules may say.
This is an astonishing attack on the orthodoxies that Pope Benedict XVI expended so much effort to preserve. And it has been condemned by the official Vatican spokesman. But it's not clear what can actually be done to stop it. Everyone knows the official position is a pernicious nonsense – the move in Freiburg seems to have sprung from the 75-year-old Robert Zollitsch, who was until recently archbishop there, and so responsible for enforcing something in which he clearly does not believe.This is an astonishing attack on the orthodoxies that Pope Benedict XVI expended so much effort to preserve. And it has been condemned by the official Vatican spokesman. But it's not clear what can actually be done to stop it. Everyone knows the official position is a pernicious nonsense – the move in Freiburg seems to have sprung from the 75-year-old Robert Zollitsch, who was until recently archbishop there, and so responsible for enforcing something in which he clearly does not believe.
This kind of recognition of reality is I think what most frightens conservatives about Pope Francis. He's not a liberal and may well disapprove of the present change. But if you talk, as he does, of the gospel as something fresh and life-giving, rather than a set of rules, and if you see the church, as he does, as "a field hospital" for those wounded in life, then the immediate demands of pastoral care will naturally take precedence over baroque and unenforceable rules.This kind of recognition of reality is I think what most frightens conservatives about Pope Francis. He's not a liberal and may well disapprove of the present change. But if you talk, as he does, of the gospel as something fresh and life-giving, rather than a set of rules, and if you see the church, as he does, as "a field hospital" for those wounded in life, then the immediate demands of pastoral care will naturally take precedence over baroque and unenforceable rules.
The increasingly hysterical conservative reactions to Pope Francis are based on the perfectly reasonable fear that something like this is bound to happen if he goes on talking as if he were a human being, interested in learning from other people.The increasingly hysterical conservative reactions to Pope Francis are based on the perfectly reasonable fear that something like this is bound to happen if he goes on talking as if he were a human being, interested in learning from other people.
Ever since the ban on artificial contraception was restated in 1967, the official Catholic teaching on sexual morality has overlaid and crushed the lived experience of the laity the way that the Greenland icecap forces the island beneath it into the sea. The situation is only possible because of the use of special magical language, where no words mean what they seem to. Such things as the description of homosexuality as an "objective moral evil" are tolerable only so long as "objective", "moral" and even "evil" are understood as theological terms of art, and theology is understood to have nothing to do with our human needs and understandings.Ever since the ban on artificial contraception was restated in 1967, the official Catholic teaching on sexual morality has overlaid and crushed the lived experience of the laity the way that the Greenland icecap forces the island beneath it into the sea. The situation is only possible because of the use of special magical language, where no words mean what they seem to. Such things as the description of homosexuality as an "objective moral evil" are tolerable only so long as "objective", "moral" and even "evil" are understood as theological terms of art, and theology is understood to have nothing to do with our human needs and understandings.
If Francis manages to talk as if theology bore some relation to humanity, the icecap will crack. It might melt altogether. And the noise from the archdiocese of Freiburg just might be the first thunderous noise of the breakup.If Francis manages to talk as if theology bore some relation to humanity, the icecap will crack. It might melt altogether. And the noise from the archdiocese of Freiburg just might be the first thunderous noise of the breakup.
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