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| Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo (pictured, right, with Pope Francis at the
opening session of a three-week meeting of bishops on family issues at
the Vatican) says Catholics who remarry should be banned from Communion
unless they agree to abstain from sex |
Hungarian
Cardinal Peter Erdo, in a keynote speech addressing the main themes for
the synod on family issues, made clear that Communion for civilly
remarried Catholics is effectively impossible unless they abstain from
sex – as the church's teaching currently states.
Erdo
said his remarks were informed by responses from bishops around the
world who had gotten in touch even after the Vatican drafted the working
paper for the meeting, suggesting a hardening of positions against any
change in pastoral practice.
Catholics
who divorce and want to remarry in the church must first obtain an
annulment, a ruling from a church tribunal that their first marriage was
invalid.
Otherwise,
those who remarry in civil ceremonies are considered to be committing
adultery and cannot receive Communion, a condition that has led
generations of Catholics to feel shunned by their church.
Pope
Francis has upheld church teaching on marriage but has sought a more
merciful approach, insisting that these remarried Catholics be fully
part of the life of the church.
Progressive
prelates led by German Cardinal Walter Kasper have called for a process
by which a bishop could accompany these remarried Catholics on a path of
penance that, over time and on a case-by-case basis, could lead to them
receiving the sacraments.
In
a bid to take some of the divisiveness out of the debate, Francis
passed a law over the summer making it easier for Catholics to get an
annulment – a change conservatives have criticised as tantamount to
'Catholic divorce.'
Cardinal
Andre Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, praised the new annulment
process as a 'precious' initiative that should help bishops 'better put
in place paths of mercy.'
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