Divorce and remarriage

[JoeS]

First post to forum. I’ve got a good friend who grew up Catholic in a Catholic home. He was married in the Church and had a child. Wife expressed her rejection of the indissolubility and monogamy of marriage soon after wedding and ended up leaving him for another guy. His child was baptised and recieved the Sacraments through Confirmation. He does not attend Mass anymore but I think he wants to. He expressed his frustration at JPII in light of Pope Benedict’s recent words. “We all know that this is a particularly painful problem for people who live in situations in which they are excluded from Eucharistic Communion, and naturally for the priests who desire to help these people love the Church and love Christ,” said the Pope during a meeting July 25 .
Question: Can anybody help me with some writings of John Paul that might help soften my friend’s heart toward the Church?

 

[JoeS]

I forgot to mention he is remarried.

 

[MaryAgnes]

JoeS:

First post to forum. I’ve got a good friend who grew up Catholic in a Catholic home. He was married in the Church and had a child. Wife expressed her rejection of the indissolubility and monogamy of marriage soon after wedding and ended up leaving him for another guy. His child was baptised and recieved the Sacraments through Confirmation. He does not attend Mass anymore but I think he wants to. He expressed his frustration at JPII in light of Pope Benedict’s recent words. “We all know that this is a particularly painful problem for people who live in situations in which they are excluded from Eucharistic Communion, and naturally for the priests who desire to help these people love the Church and love Christ,” said the Pope during a meeting July 25 .
Question: Can anybody help me with some writings of John Paul that might help soften my friend’s heart toward the Church?

Has your friend talked to a priest or his diocesan tribunal about petitioning for an annulment? Sounds like he may have grounds. While the annulment process can bring up old hurts, it can also be very healing. I would encourage him to move in that direction–regardless of what either Pope has said.

 

[JoeS]

Thanks MaryAgnes, I suggested those things to him, but I really wanted to find something the John Paul said. I love reading his works and addresses and found several to the Roman Rota re: annulment and the Catholic lawyer’s role, but I’d really like to find something. My friend is a true intellectual and I thought that maybe if I could find a speech or letter or something that could show my buddy that JPII understood the pain of people in his position. Don’t get me wrong I know the Holy Father did and does, but I’d like my friend back at Mass.

 

[Catholic2003]

From Familiaris Consortio:

1. Daily experience unfortunately shows that people who have obtained a divorce usually intend to enter into a new union, obviously not with a Catholic religious ceremony. Since this is an evil that, like the others, is affecting more and more Catholics as well, the problem must be faced with resolution and without delay. The Synod Fathers studied it expressly. The Church, which was set up to lead to salvation all people and especially the baptized, cannot abandon to their own devices those who have been previously bound by sacramental marriage and who have attempted a second marriage. The Church will therefore make untiring efforts to put at their disposal her means of salvation.

Pastors must know that, for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of situations. There is in fact a difference between those who have sincerely tried to save their first marriage and have been unjustly abandoned, and those who through their own grave fault have destroyed a canonically valid marriage. Finally, there are those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing, and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid.

Together with the Synod, I earnestly call upon pastors and the whole community of the faithful to help the divorced, and with solicitous care to make sure that they do not consider themselves as separated from the Church, for as baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. They should be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts in favor of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God’s grace. Let the Church pray for them, encourage them and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope.

However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.”

Similarly, the respect due to the sacrament of Matrimony, to the couples themselves and their families, and also to the community of the faithful, forbids any pastor, for whatever reason or pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry. Such ceremonies would give the impression of the celebration of a new sacramentally valid marriage, and would thus lead people into error concerning the indissolubility of a validly contracted marriage.

By acting in this way, the Church professes her own fidelity to Christ and to His truth. At the same time she shows motherly concern for these children of hers, especially those who, through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by their legitimate partner.

With firm confidence she believes that those who have rejected the Lord’s command and are still living in this state will be able to obtain from God the grace of conversion and salvation, provided that they have persevered in prayer, penance and charity.

 

[otm]

Unless your friend is capable of reading the long statement from JP2 quoted above without emotional involvement, that may not be one you want to present to him.

On the face of the statments you made about his first marriage, the fact that his first wife petitioned for divorce and expressed that she did not have the intent to a permanent marriage, there is the possiblity that he may have the grounds for an annulment without haveing to get into what some, in another thread, have called “soft psychology”.

If he wishes to heal this division with God and the Church, he should explore the question of whether or not his first marriage was in fact a sacramental marriage. And, I would presume, it might be wise if his current wife was on board with all the issues - specifically, his return to the Church.