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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- 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. Jesus' teaching on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage is clear, the retired German cardinal said, and it would harm individuals and the church to pretend otherwise. However, "after the shipwreck of sin, the shipwrecked person should not have a second boat at his or her...

After a week of wrangling over a Vatican decision to keep it secret, the German Catholic book publisher Herder announced today (Feb. 27) that on March 10 it would publish in book format Cardinal Walter Kasper’s two-hour keynote address at last week’s meeting of the College of Cardinals in Rome. Although Pope Francis had publicly praised Kasper’s speech on the theology of the family for its “profound theology” and “clear thinking,” the Vatican has so far only released a brief summary of the two-hour talk. Earlier this week, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, a member of the “G-8” Council of...

The Pope’s homily for Friday, February 28, surely is a trial balloon that has been launched with the Synod on the Family in mind. The past weeks have seen a number of statements and conversations about the debated issue of whether a divorced and remarried person can receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

I canÂ’t tell you where I was or who was there or when it happened. I donÂ’t want to add to this guyÂ’s humiliation, so I am keeping this vague and generic. I can simply tell you that, some time ago, I found myself in the same vicinity as another married couple. I certainly canÂ’t read their minds, and I donÂ’t know what goes on behind the scenes, all I know is that the husband couldnÂ’t seem to utter a single phrase that wouldnÂ’t provoke exaggerated eye-rolling from his wife. She disagreed with everything he said. She contradicted nearly every...

Jesus once rebuked the people of his time for their stubborn and unrepentant hearts: This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At...

As the October meeting of the Synod of Bishops draws near, we’ll hear more and more about one question: Whether Catholics who are divorced and remarried should be allowed to receive the Eucharist. Clearly this is the question on the minds of reporters, the question being posed by liberal bishops, the question that agitates Catholics especially in the German-speaking countries. But this is not the question being asked by Pope Francis, or the question that was asked by Pope Benedict before him. Both Pontiffs spoke about the need to provide pastoral care for Catholics in these irregular unions. They both...

Full Ttitle: Pastor Ron Carpenter's Wife, Hope, Returns to SC Megachurch as He Rebukes Christian Leaders Who Supported His Desire for Divorce _______________________________________________________________ Hope Carpenter, co-founder of Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, S.C., was enthusiastically welcomed back by congregants on Sunday months after her marital infidelities were exposed at the pulpit by her husband, Pastor Ron Carpenter. Carpenter, this time around, took other Christian leaders to task for supporting him when he declared he would be seeking a divorce. With his wife and family sitting in the very first row of the sanctuary, Pastor Carpenter manned the pulpit not...

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis on Thursday (Feb. 20) opened a major two-day meeting on the church’s approach to the complexities of modern family life, telling the world’s Catholic cardinals that the church needs a “pastoral” approach that is “intelligent, courageous and full of love” and not focused on abstract arguments. In brief introductory remarks released by the Vatican, Francis pushed the closed-door summit of about 150 cardinals to “deepen the theology of the family and discern the pastoral practices which our present situation requires.” He asked that they do so “thoughtfully” and by keeping the focus on “the beauty...

(VIS/Vatican Radio) The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., gave a briefing for journalists at midday Thursday on the progress of the extraordinary consistory for the family which opened this morning in the New Synod Hall and in which around 150 cardinals participated. “After the Pope's address, the cardinals sent an affectionate greeting to Archbishop Loris Capovilla, one of the new cardinals to be created by the Holy Father in next Saturday's consistory, who for reasons of age and health was not able to travel to Rome, but who is present in the spirit of...

Kasper frequently cited the Bible as a source of inspiration in a signal, almost Protestant in nature, that the answer to the problem lay in scripture. He told reporters that Francis had asked him to pose questions to the 150 cardinals to begin a debate on the issue.

In the Gospel for this Weekend’s Mass we are well into the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and today we cover a good deal of Chapter 5. In a way the Lord is drawing a picture for us of the transformed human person. He is presenting a kind of slide show of what sanctity really is. In understanding this rather lengthy text we do well to reflect on it in three parts.I. The Power of New Life in Christ – We have discussed before that an important principle of the Christian moral vision is to understand that it is...

Family Research CouncilThis map shows the states where family belonging (whether or not a biological mother and father are still married when the child is 15-17) is highest and lowest in the United States. The darker the color, the more belonging.A study on family breakup as it effects children on the cusp of adulthood revealed that more children experience family breakup before adulthood in the South, well-known for its religious "Bible belt," according to the Family Research Council."The Bible belt is in deep, deep trouble on family," Pat Fagan, director of The Family Research Council's Marriage and Religion Research...

MICHELLE OBAMA is already hammering away at a $15 million memoir that will rip the lid off President Barack Obama’s secret extramarital hijinks and public flirta­tions with other women, sources tell The ENQUIRER. “Michelle has suffered in silence, while Barack ignored her to live it up surrounded by adoring beauties,” an insider told The ENQUIRER. “She’s fed up, and she’s going to use a poison-pen memoir of her White House years to get revenge on him

"It is fascinating to see how Pope Francis is encouraging, reviving and renewing the church. Our meeting with him was an excellent lesson on how to live the Gospel today," Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said after a 90-minute audience with the pope during the Austrian bishops' "ad limina" visit to the Vatican in the last week of January. The Austrian bishops took the results of the recent Vatican questionnaire to Rome with them. Responses showed that 95 percent of those who had filled out the questionnaire in Austria were in favor of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive...

Canon lawyers are fascinated by the Samaritan woman at the well. The moment we hear about her five husbands, and her consort, we start thinking about how her case might be handled at the marriage tribunal. But the most instructive part of the story is how Jesus relates to her: he is kind to her, and respectful, but he is unabashed about telling her the truth. Over the past few months, an ecclesial dialogue about pastoral care has been played out in the media as if it were the precursor to a monumental doctrinal split among the Church’s leadership. The...

Divorce rate is higher among religiously conservative Protestants, and even among those living around them, finds a new study that examined all counties in the United States where divorces occurred and looked at what the characteristics of those counties were. Demographers Jennifer Glass at the University of Texas and Philip Levchak at the University of Iowa looked at the entire map of the United States, and found that a key factor predicting divorce rates is the concentration of conservative Protestants in a county. To be published in the American Journal of Sociology next month, the study notes that religiously conservative...

Addressing the Vatican court primarily responsible for hearing requests for marriage annulments, Pope Francis said judges on church tribunals should show “imperturbable and impartial balance” as well as the “delicacy and humanity proper to a pastor of souls.” The Pope made his remarks today to officials of the Roman Rota at a meeting to inaugurate the tribunal’s judicial year. “You are essentially pastors,” he told the officials. “As you carry out your judicial work, do not forget that you are pastors. Behind every file, every position, every case, there are persons who wait for justice.” Pope Francis has said that...

Divorce hits red states harder than blue states, according to new research out of the University of Texas and University of Iowa. The research, published in the American Journal of Sociology, looks at religion and divorce and found the more conservative an area, the higher the divorce rate.

“Love Will Keep Us Together” duo Captain & Tennille are divorcing after nearly four decades of marriage, People reports.