A
AtDawn
Guest
I wrote that as a response to the question “Does anybody know why the Synod defined the issue as communion for the divorced and remarried?. Isn’t that too narrow a definition, because as I understand it the communion ban applies to all people living as a couple that are not in what the church considers a valid marriage e.g. divorcees living common-law, or young people living together prior to any marriage.” Nobody is advocating that the Church should accept two marriages in a row without blinking.
As to your question, well. That depends on what you mean by “spouse”.
Is the picture painted that of two sacramental marriages at the same time? No. In the eyes of the Church, this person has only one spouse and is commiting adultery in the new relationshiop.
In the eyes of society, the divorce is valid and so the individual in this situation only has one spouse.
When the journalists reporting from the synod write that the African bishops talk about polygamy, most of us just shrug and find it weird. But try to imagine someone who becomes a Christian, and already has two or three wives. What should he do? Abandon all but one? Throw them out of his house, take no responsability for their welfare? The situation is not easy - nor is it easily judged, from a morally point of view. It is a dilemma. The same can be said about the situation of whose husband or wife left them, without offering the participation in an annulment process. Not all divorced and remarried are the abandoned part, of course. Some just don’t want to have their first marriage declared invalid, fearing the childring will feel bad about the Church saying their parents were never actually married (that situation is very, very real). And then we have the effects on the children whose parents stop going to mass, feeling excluded. The children have to make their way to Church themselves, as adults. Most don’t.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols from the UK went to the synod thinking that you can not allow divorced and remarried to recieve communion without changing the Church’s doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage. He came from it thinking that maybe there is a way, if you create a penitential pathway.
Short article: thetablet.co.uk/news/1290/0/nichols-sees-way-for-divorced-and-remarried-to-receive-communion
Podcast: soundcloud.com/the-tablet-publishing-co
The podcast is, in a way, of terrible quality. There’s helicopters and churchbells disturbing the interview, plus the reporter apparently records the interview on her phone and recieves a text message, without having shut of the notification sound sigh and the cardinal gets irritated at her, since he feels she is trying to make him picture two “camps” of opposite opinions. He, OTOH, wants to describe the discussions in the small groups, which he felt was the most valuable part of the synod. Nobody, he says, in the synod wanted to allow divorced and remarried to communion tomorrow just like that. The ortodox process of allowing a second marriage, he says, is not an easy one. Being allowed to communio, there, is a process that could take years. Despite the quality, I recommend that podcast.
So Cardinal Nichols comes home from the synod pondering on these things. Let him and all the other synod fathers talk to their fellow bishops and to their priests, and let opinions form and decision grow. The synod fathers will come back to the topic a year from now.
I’ll be praying for this process.
:yup: