Posted on 10/08/2014 5:24:28 PM PDT by ebb tide
Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich said a strong majority of German bishops supported Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal to find a way to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, and that he intended to raise the issue at the Synod of Bishops.
Speaking at the close of the synod’s first day, Cardinal Marx also said it was crucial for the synod’s debate on family issues to be an “open discussion” that extends beyond the synod hall and involves the wider society.
Marx, who is president of the German bishops’ conference, made his remarks in a meeting with journalists. Synod participants have been told that their official speeches during the assembly should not be published, but that they were free to give interviews.
The synod’s opening summary document, read at the start of the first session, downplayed Cardinal Kasper’s proposal to find a “penitential path” that would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Rather than dwelling on the reception of the sacraments, the synod document emphasized proposals to streamline procedures to make annulments easier to obtain.
Cardinal Kasper’s suggestions have been highly criticized by some Vatican cardinals, who say they could undermine the church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Cardinal Marx said, however, that Cardinal Kasper’s ideas had the support of the great majority of bishops in Germany.
Marx also expressed some reservations about seeking the pastoral solution for divorced Catholics in a simplified annulment process. Determining whether a marriage was valid will never be easy, he said. He asked how the church could possibly grant annulments to couples married 20 or 30 years. And if annulments are conceded because the level of faith was not adequate at the time of marriage, he said, how many annulments would the church have to give?
More generally, Cardinal Marx said, if the church starts granting numerous annulments it could weaken its overall message about the sacrament of marriage.
How ironic. Marx argues the above point but is gung-ho on giving Holy Communion to adulterers.
Ping
(Marx is one of Francis’ hand-picked Gang o’ Eight)
I think the Germans are going to go their own way again.
Fine, they can fight with Lutherans for the taxpayer money on their own without making the rest of us look bad.
Basically, the Catholic Church in Germany is wealthy beyond comprehension because it is the beneficiary of a tax system where the state funds the diocesan operations through a mandatory tax imposed on Catholic taxpayers. The irony, though, is that hardly any of those wealthy Catholics who end up paying to support the Church and its hierarchy in Germany ever darken the door of a church. From a religious standpoint, the Catholic Church in most of Germany only exists for the benefit of immigrants from Poland and visitors -- and functions as little more than a museum curator.
The German bishops are now in a position where they can't possibly explain how a religious organization that suffers from no persecution and has no financial constraints has effectively run itself out of existence. So they've latched onto this silly notion that there are millions of German Catholics who feel disenfranchised by the "antiquated" Church teachings on marriage ... and that the churches would all be filled again if only the Church hierarchy would get over its hang-ups about divorce and remarriage.
You probably have a very similar dynamic at work in many wealthy areas of the U.S. with large Catholic populations. This probably explains a lot of the idiocy we've been seeing from that dope Timothy Dolan in New York.
Judas Marx and his band of apostates. Would a pope whose first loyalty was to Christ permit such blasphemous proposals?
Germany does not have a strong marriage tradition. Not for a long time.
A “marriage tradition” doesn’t last long once it is put in the hands of the state. Otto von Bismarck knew this in the 1870s when he was constructing the world’s first modern socialist state.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new schism occur in the Roman Catholic Church.
They are all on the road to perdition, then.
The Pope seems to be doing everything possible to sow division in the Church. He obviously sees it as the forces of light (liberal VII people who just go along with the world) against the forces of darkness (”very conservative,” as he keeps saying, or “legalistic,” “hypocritical,” etc.).
Under Pope Francis, it will probably become an open division before too long.
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