The teaching may be clear but its application, not so much. For example, one can believe stealing $99 is a venial sin but stealing $100 is grounds for a mortal sin. I don’t believe God works on this kind of binary system. The Church has always taught confession to absolve sin.
Lol. Yes, I’ve worded that in a strange way.I am pretty sure they have to remain celibate in public.
Yes, this is the case now. Those in a second marriage who are abstaining from sexual relations can receive communion. So one wonders why the issue is even being discussed, since the remedy is already available.
That’s precisely the reality.
Perhaps the first step could be a language one in the sense of not automatically referring to such a couple as ‘adulterers’ as a matter of course? The justice system has line that divides murder from manslaughter in order to determine the fate of a killer. Just thinking.
Was Christ not pastoral when He used such language?
You mean like adultery in the first degree? Or second degree?
It depends on how you are defining, digital or binary.
It has. I noted in the comment that if a person were in an objective state of mortal sin, it should be addressed at the pastoral level. For instance, if such a person were to reveal to the pastor, whether in confession or otherwise, that they were in an obstinate state of mortal sin as the result of adultery, then the pastor would know it and could properly address it. But really, I think that the teaching that a person in the state of mortal sin should not receive Communion is clear and ought to be known by any Catholic.
We don’t take the bible literally. We look to the Church to help us. Otherwise like the Protestants we could use Christs words to approve of divorce.
Murder and manslaughter aren’t degrees of the one crime, they are distinct, the latter done without deliberation, premeditation, and malice. That makes a difference to the consequences.
I do not know where Jesus called anyone an adulterer. I know one place where He told a woman that the man she was with was not here husband, but He was in a rather unique position to know such things. I see appealing to the authority of Jesus on this issue to be a stretch, as He never addressed it.
From what I had heard, the situation whether those abstaining or those not… has presented as a theological conundrum at the parish level. The ‘remedy’ of celibacy does not seem to fit since the second marriage is a living entity even if not sacramental.
Our final destination can be binary, but sin is not. the Church has never taught that all sin is the same.
Indeed, that is precisely the problem. And one can not solve it without solving the problem of “what do we do about the first marriage?” One must either presume it to be valid or not valid.
I’m sure the synod fathers will be aware of this. The questions they are addressing will be to do with a very distinct group and not across the board… those who have had a conversion of faith, are participating fully in Parish life and raising their children in the faith. If a relationship has brought to people to that point of faithfulness, it is worth examining what that means. If the Petrine privilege recognises that the safety of the soul is reason enough to declare a broken marriage null, you’d think that a marriage drawing the couple closer to the Church must have something good to examine for meaning.
They are if you look at the commandment as a whole, no?