If you God can forgive murder, and a murderer can be received back into communion, why can He not forgive a divorce, the murder of a marriage? But I don’t even think that is the hard part. Few Catholc marriages are valid, having done marriage prep, most people I saw marriied didn’t understand a word of what they heard. They just went because it was required of them to have the marriage in the church with their family and friends. I am reminded of Fiddler on the Roof. Most Catholic marragea that last, become valid somewhere along the way.
We think and say the word, “marriage”, as if it were in terms of everyday civil marriage, with all its no-fault privileges of divorce and remarriage, and subsequent divorces and remarriages, until your face turns blue, here in the West. That is what marriage has become entirely, here in the West. No one thinks much about it.
Then there is the Catholic “marriage”.
There is only one view in the Catholic Church. It is the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, really quite different than civil marriage, as it is a sacramental bond of two becoming one with God Himself, and unbreakable. As God is of the bond, it is sealed forever. As God can not divorce the couple, they can not divorce Him, nor one another.
Grant it, the new Church, post V2, does an atrocious job of teaching catechesis, and who knows— that has probably cost the salvation of souls, but the unbreakable bond of Holy Matrimony is scriptural, as you rightly know, and the Church upholds the matrimonial sacrament, or none of the other sacraments would hold, like Communion, Baptism, the priesthood Holy Orders, etc.
When one Sacrament falls, ......... you know the rest of the story. There would be no Church at all.
Divorced people are fully capable of receiving Holy Communion. This is not an issue at all.
Divorced and "remarried" people (where the prior union had not been declared null) are living in a continual state of adultery. See Matthew 19:9.
Jesus' instructions for sinners who He forgave can be seen in His encounter with the woman caught in adultery. contained in John 8:3-11, is, "go and sin no more."
How does a person living in an adulterous relationship "sin no more?" By ceasing to live in the adulterous relationship. If a person doesn't do that, then there is no contrition for sin. If there is no contrition, there can be no valid absolution.
As it stands, people who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin (and adultery is definitely grave matter) are not to approach Holy Communion (Can. 916)
Steelfish, The event that took place between Jesus and the woman at the well is one of the most beautiful of one-on-one Divine encounters. Christ makes no mention here of reproach for her fornication and yet allows her to commune with Him and indeed invites her lover to share the Living Water.
In the story of the woman at the well, if you actually read John 4:4-26, first, you will see that this passage is an allusion to Baptism, not to Holy Communion.
Further, Jesus definitely rebukes her: Thou hast said well, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband. If that is not a rebuke, I don't know what is.
After this encounter, she began telling others in the city and they believed in him. Now of that city many of the Samaritans believed in him, for the word of the woman giving testimony: He told me all things whatsoever I have done. She believed in Him because He confronted her with her sin.
What we don't see is Jesus absolving her from her sin (not saying whether He did or not). What we also don't see is if she went back to the man she was shacked up with or if she left him (it is implicit that she didn't, but that is not a given). The Orthodox, who celebrate her as St Photini, state that she was baptized after repenting of her sins.
Writeon, you said, Few Catholc marriages are valid, having done marriage prep, most people I saw marriied didn’t understand a word of what they heard. They just went because it was required of them to have the marriage in the church with their family and friends.
I don't know about that, but I do agree that marriage prep needs some changes. Personally, I think it needs to be a lot simpler (more Baltimore Catechism style vice 1993 Catechism style) and easier to understand. But that's just me. Regardless, I don't see "till death" as being very ambiguous, but I'll take your word for it.
For both of you two, in order to make some change in doctrine or praxis, one of three things is necessary:
This Holy Communion for remarried folks is a very, very dangerous thing.
In the case of “remarried” people, they are living in a constant state of sin (because it’s assumed they aren’t “living as brother and sister”). So to put it in terms of the murderer, it’s as if an un-repentant murderer presented himself for Communion. Such a person isn’t allowed so neither are “remarried”. Both circumstances are, again, examples of people who haven’t really repented of their sin.