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Communion
Brendan Butler • 1 April 2017
An Aim of We Are Church Ireland
The Catholic Church needs to find a way to offer healing, strength and salvation to Catholics whose marriages have failed, who are committed to making a new union work and who long to do so within the church and with the grace of Communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper told the world’s cardinals. Pope Francis had asked Cardinal Walter Kasper, a well-known theologian and author of a book on mercy as a fundamental trait of God, to introduce a discussion on Feb. 20-21 2015 by the College of Cardinals on family life. While insisting—for the good of individuals and of the church—on the need to affirm Jesus’ teaching that sacramental marriage is indissoluble, Cardinal Kasper allowed for the possibility that in very specific cases the church could tolerate a second union.
When two baptised people freely decide to marry each other they want that partnership to remain and flourish until death do them part.
However, for a variety of reasons this married relationship often breaks down even after counselling and consequently they may decide either to avail of civil divorce or separate on a permanent basis.
The breakdown of the relationship is a cause of great anguish to the families involved. The ideal at this stage is for an amicable parting with a just settlement of all outstanding issues.
However, if either partner enters into a full loving relationship with a new partner Catholic Canon law 1155 states ‘Since the bond of marriage remains intact despite the cessation of common life remarriage after a civil divorce puts spouses in an irregular situation that bars them from the reception of the sacraments’.
This ruling was contained in an Apostolic Letter ‘Familiaris Consortio’ from Pope John Paul 2 in November 1981.
It was further confirmed in a letter from C.D. F. ‘Concerning the reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried members of the Faithful’ Sept 14 1994 in a response for a more open approach by 3 German Bishops Lehmann, Saier and Kasper.
However these rulings have not stopped people like Cardinal Kasper from questioning their exclusive nature.
The October 2015 Synod gives the church the opportunity to adopt a more compassionate approach to allow divorced and remarried Catholics admission to the sacraments. Such an approach does not contradict the indissolubility of marriage but recognises that a more compassionate approach be taken based on the words of Jesus In Matthew 7.1-4 ‘Do not judge others so that God will not judge you’.
Already Pope Francis has used these words of Jesus in his non judgemental approach to gay and lesbian people.
Now is the opportune time to adopt the same non judgemental approach to the admission to the sacraments for divorced and remarried Catholics
Eucharist as Viaticum, as a source of strength for the Christian journey through life has strong roots in the New Testament. The Christian life, seen as an Exodus journey fed with the new manna has resonances in Luke’s journey section (9.5 1-18) Bread for this journey of life towards God has also resonances in the old testament when Joseph offers his father bread for the journey in Exodus 45.23 and also when Elizah is nourished with bread on his journey.
The people of God journey through history in a new Exodus to the new Jerusalem and receive the Eucharist as a medicinal food to sustain them on their journey.
The Eucharist should not be seen as a reward for the virtuous but as a sustaining food for the fragile Christian family as they journey through the vicissitudes of life.
In this sense the Eucharist should not be denied to any baptised person whatever circumstances they find themselves in. Otherwise the Church is not following the way of Jesus who called all, especially the canonically excluded, to his life-giving Eucharistic meal.
Brendan Butler.
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We Are Church Ireland
C/O 49 Rockfield Avenue,
Perrystown,
Dublin 12.
D12H6F6