Posted on 09/09/2014 8:52:34 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Vatican City, Sep 9, 2014 / 03:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Five members of the College of Cardinals have joint-authored a book defending Church doctrine regarding divorced and remarried Catholics, affirming that it is the most merciful approach.
Set to be published in English this October, the book is entitled “Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church.” It offers a response to Cardinal Walter Kasper's call for the Church to open its doors to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist.
According to publisher Ignatius Press, the book will outline both biblical arguments in support of current Church doctrine as well as the teachings and practices of the early Church.
In their online summary, Ignatius Press explains that the book “traces the centuries-long history of Catholic resistance” to the reception of communion by divorced and re-married Catholics, and reveals “serious theological and canonical difficulties inherent in past and current Orthodox Church practice.”
“In neither of these cases, biblical or patristic, do these scholars find support for the kind of ‘toleration’ of civil marriages following divorce advocated by Cardinal Kasper,” they observed.
During a two-hour address to a consistory on the family in February, Cardinal Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, discussed marriage and family life, devoting the last section of his speech to “the problem of the divorced and remarried.”
In that portion he asked, “is it not perhaps an exploitation of the person” when a person who has been divorced and remarried is excluded from receiving Communion, and suggests that for “the smaller segment of the divorced and remarried,” perhaps they could be admitted to “the sacrament of penance, and then of Communion.”
He echoed the same sentiments in a May interview with Commonweal, during which he discussed his proposal that divorced and remarried persons might receive Communion, suggesting that Christians aren't called to be heroic when he said that living together as brother and sister is “a heroic act, and heroism is not for the average Christian.”
Referring to the conclusion drawn by the cardinals, Ignatius Press explained that the various studies examined in the book “lead to the conclusion that the Church's longstanding fidelity to the truth of marriage constitutes the irrevocable foundation of its merciful and loving response to the individual who is civilly divorced and remarried.”
“The book therefore challenges the premise that traditional Catholic doctrine and contemporary pastoral practice are in contradiction.”
The five cardinals authoring the book are Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith; Raymond Leo Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura; Walter Brandmüller, president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences; Carlo Caffarra, archbishop of Bologna and one of the closest theologians to St. John Paul II in questions of morality and the family; and Velasio De Paolis, president emeritus of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See.
In addition to the cardinals, four expert theologians and professors have also made contributions to the book. They are Robert Dodaro, O.S.A., the editor, John Rist and Jesuits Paul Mankowski and Archbishop Cyril Vasil.
The celibacy requirement is something which needs to be reviewed.
It certainly does not apply to all Catholic priests. Priests in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, for example are permitted to be married as are married priests who came over from the Episcopalian Church.
There is absolutely NOTHING in the Bible mandating compulsory clerical celibacy.
Also, as Pope Francis has pointed out, celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine and the policy is also subject to change. The Pope also pointed out that the policy was initiated many centuries after the founding of the Church.
Won’t matter, Kasper has the Pope’s ear, it will change.
Wanna bet?
A lot of times proving your case involves asking your children to testify against one of their parents.
That is a bridge too far for a lot of people.
About thirty days to find out, been in the works for over 30 years easily sold as mercy and compassion. We shall see.
Even if your marriage has not been annulled, if you are divorced not remarried there is no bar to receiving Communion.
+1
Yes. Agreed.
Yes agreed
the money will not stop the annulment, he just doesn’t want to do it so he is living in adultery
Bullshout.
This is sad, and profoundly wrong-headed. It is abandoning Christ because of Judas.
That's baloney. An annulment proceeding is an examination of the conditions present at the time of the wedding. What happened afterward is irrelevant to the question of whether the marriage itself was valid. There is no reason that anyone would need to "testify against" someone else. They only thing "on trial" is the validity of the marriage itself. Assuming that the children were born after the wedding, nothing they would personally be able to testify about would be relevant.
Annulment is one of those slick, back alley deals that are OK, as long as Rome get appropriately compensated.
The Church brings no harm to innocents in the case of an investigation and is strictly business, free of accusation, innuendo and high drama. Mostly the Tribunal must verify dates and times and addresses and contacts witness who can confirm the basic information given them by the petitioner as relates to records.
The petioner recommends witnesses, and also the Tribunal accesses church records for support of the petitioner. Who, what, where, when, and why and how sorts of questions.
Someone from the Tribunal is also appointed to argue against granting the annulment, so that both sides of a petitioners case may be argued in the face of the evidence and the narrow criteria for granting annulments for a full and fair hearing.
Slander slop.
Nourished on anomalies and scandals, your gumshoe examples and the periods of some abuses over the course of centuries prove of yourself to have no respect for, and no interest in appreciating the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony, ( there are only seven Holy Sacraments) but prefer to feed only on the examples of failed protections of the Holy Sacrament.
How classless your motives and bovine your braying.
Please come back, Da Coyote!
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
sometimes
Cows don't bray.
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