Pope Francis: Divorced Catholics who remarry are not 'excommunicated.'

[Casilda]

Papa Francis, as a pastor, wants all of his flock to be safe and welcomed instead of being ostracized and shunned because of a major mistake they made when young. The Synod on the Family is supposed to be a real dialogue about how the Church can be welcoming to all, and those trying to derail real progress are deluded if they think that The Holy Father, a Jesuit, is holding this meeting just for show. Do I think that annulments will be thrown out altogether - of course not, but maybe, just maybe the entire process will be streamlined and cost nothing to the petitioner. Those who suffer physical and mental abuse at the hands of a spouse should not have to suffer again by the hands of the Church that they love. I pray that Pope Francis is strong enough to not let a small group of uber autocrats undermine his plans for helping those who are struggling. God Bless you, Papa Francis.

Also suffering are those who married outside of the church, even though they’ve married Christians who now want to convert to Catholicism. No one gives a straight answer on how to fix this situation, but there are those who are quick to say you are not really married in the eyes of the church. Lots of legal verbiage, lack of form, illicit, irregular, invalid, that I wish I was given a canon lawyer when baptized. Because no one prepares you for the circumlocution when you attempt the process of regularizing, validating, convalidating, radical sanitizing, whatever. Does a marriage convalidation really have to be put on hold for two years or more? Really?!? With no real impediments except a cradle Catholic did not know to contact a bishop for a dispensation.

Pope Francis is right, the system needs an overhaul.

 

[Peter_J]

Also suffering are those who married outside of the church, even though they’ve married Christians who now want to convert to Catholicism. No one gives a straight answer on how to fix this situation,
…

Well, keep in mind that sometimes a “straight answer” can be dangerous. I don’t mean that to be glib … that kind of answer can, and frequently is, unfairly used as ammunition (and note that I left that sentence incomplete rather than e.g. specifying “used as ammunition by liberals” or “used as ammunition by conservatives” or what have you).

I don’t know you terribly well, but I’m guessing you’ve had enough experience on the internet, and possibly in real life as well, to know how sometimes someone takes something that is said and “runs with it.”

 

[Ender]

I disagree that it does not matter. I think it does matter because the Orthodox claim that Rome never objected to their practice of granting a divorce under certain restricted conditions and after a period of penance to readmit the person to the church. This is one historical fact which tends to support their POV. Further, at the Council of Florence, was there any objection raised to the Orthodox practice?

The Roman church and the Orthodox church have different views on this subject. I outlined four doctrines that effectively bar the divorced and remarried from receiving communion. One of them has to be rescinded or the ban will remain in place. Which one do you believe is wrong?

Ender

 

[Louie1983]

At that time, when she married a divorced man, a Vatican spokesman said she was a public sinner. Today, according to what Pope Francis has said, we would not be hearing that.

No?

Have you been following Pope Francis weekly homilies on the family?

By your statement, you clearly haven’t.

Pope Francis August 5th:

"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."

Nice try Tom.

 

[Casilda]

Well, keep in mind that sometimes a “straight answer” can be dangerous. I don’t mean that to be glib … that kind of answer can, and frequently is, unfairly used as ammunition (and note that I left that sentence incomplete rather than e.g. specifying “used as ammunition by liberals” or “used as ammunition by conservatives” or what have you).

I don’t know you terribly well, but I’m guessing you’ve had enough experience on the internet, and possibly in real life as well, to know how sometimes someone takes something that is said and “runs with it.”

At 6 parishes, three different deacons, a priest and office staff, no straight answer. You don’t get past office staff sometimes. Well, mostly. So there really is NO set standard? The luck of the draw with office staff? I will start recommending people to head to the diocesan offices to start their conversion/ revert process and get everything in writing from the Bishop, or should they petition Pope Francis?

 

[Peter_J]

At 6 parishes, three different deacons, a priest and office staff, no straight answer.

Yes, I see what you’re saying. That’s even more difficult to comment about, because it’s about not getting a straight answer from those parish staffs, not about the Church not giving a straight answer.

So I guess I would have to default back to what you said before about a need for overhaul.

 

[Thomas_White]

I am not familiar with that situation and have no idea what was done, let alone why, but frankly Scarlet, it doesn’t matter. There have been married popes, and popes who have kept mistresses, the point being the church has never claimed that every action by a pope is valid, and citing something done by Pope Sergius III really doesn’t change what the church has always taught.

Church doctrine in this matter is pretty inflexible given that it has been passed down unchanged from her earliest existence.

• Sexual relations between a couple involved in a remarriage after divorce constitutes adultery.
• Adultery is a grave sin.
• No one who has committed a grave sin may receive communion before that sin is absolved.
• Sins cannot be absolved without contrition, and contrition includes the intent not to repeat the sin.

Unless one of these doctrines is reversed I don’t see any way the divorced and remarried can be readmitted to communion. Do you?

Ender

No, but it does not mean that all is necessarily well and good. Annulments are obviously not so difficult to obtain. Prior to the synod, it was widely reported that one of Pope Francis’s main concerns was that nearly half of all Catholic marriages would, if submitted to a Marriage Tribunal, be declared null and void as a result of the way the tribunals are presently interpreting canon law.

If the reply is that a marriage is not null and void until a Marriage Tribunal declares it is, it does not address the true concern. Surely, the marriages of many divorced and remarried Catholics would be annulled if they were submitted to a tribunal, and if so it would mean a sacramental marriage never occured. If this were a true finding it would hold right from the beginning and therefore not as the result of the later finding of a marriage tribunal. Those marriages never occurred, or not as sacramental marriages, and they already are null and void, however inconvenient that might be. And what of the nearly half of all married Catholics who would learn that their marriages are null and void? This is a serious concern.

There is a lot of gray area here, and if that isn’t a concern it ought to be. The issue is not as clear as many would like it to be, and it does need to be addressed.

 

[Tomdstone]

The Roman church and the Orthodox church have different views on this subject. I outlined four doctrines that effectively bar the divorced and remarried from receiving communion. One of them has to be rescinded or the ban will remain in place. Which one do you believe is wrong?

Ender

IMHO, historically, it looks to me like number 1 was held to be true sometimes but not always. We have the fact that the Catholic Church in the east, before the schism of 1054, allowed divorce and remarriage after a period of penance and Rome did not object. We have the historical case of Pope Sergius who sent papal legates to Constantinople supporting the fourth marriage of the emperor Leo.
And we have the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439 which effected a reunion between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church and I don’t see where either ecumenical Council objected to the custom in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Do you?

 

[phil19034]

I think it is a huge change in Catholic teaching. For example, when Jackie Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis, there were officials in the Vatican who said that she was a public sinner. That was when Cardinal Cushing of Boston came to her defense and said that no one has the right to judge her.

Excommunication is a way to help bring Catholics who are sinning back into the Church.

Before Jackie Kennedy, many (not all – i.e. King Henry) public Catholics who were threatened with excommunication or who were excommunicated often repented and came back to the Church. Jackie Kennedy was the first celebrity Catholic in the era of television to be threatened with Excommunication and when finally excommunicated; did not repent.

I believe this is when the Church realized that excommunication will not work when people buy into secular and non-Catholic views of morality & social teaching. And with TV, the non-repented, excommunicated Catholic celebrity could do more harm than good.

Since Jackie Kennedy, the number of public excommunication of lay Catholic public figures can be counted on a hand and are from Catholic countries.

The goal of excommunication is to bring you back to the Church. If a person due to poor faith formation (or societal influences), will be pushed further away from being excommunicated; then excommunication is not a good idea.

So, it’s not a change in teaching. It’s a change in how to go about things. But it’s NO different than what St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI spoke about.

God Bless

 

[Elizium23]

she didn’t repent.

How in the world do you know?

 

[phil19034]

Then why did Pope Sergius III send papal legates to Constantinople supporting the fourth marriage of Emperor Leo VI ?
<<<Leo VI caused a major scandal with his numerous marriages which failed to produce a legitimate heir to the throne. His first wife Theophano, whom Basil had forced him to marry on account of her family connections to the Martinakioi, and whom Leo hated, died in 897, and Leo married Zoe Zaoutzaina, the daughter of his adviser Stylianos Zaoutzes, though she died as well in 899. Upon this marriage Leo created the title of basileopatōr (“father of the emperor”) for his father-in-law.

After Zoe’s death a third marriage was technically illegal, but he married again, only to have his third wife Eudokia Baïana die in 901, Instead of marrying a fourth time, which would have been an even greater sin than a third marriage (according to the Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos) Leo took as mistress Zoe Karbonopsina. He married her only after she had given birth to a son in 905,[36] but incurred the opposition of the patriarch. Replacing Nicholas Mystikos with Euthymios, Leo got his marriage recognized by the church (albeit with a long penance attached, and with an assurance that Leo would outlaw all future fourth marriages)…On March 1, 901, Nicholas was appointed patriarch. However, he fell out with Leo VI over the latter’s fourth marriage to his mistress Zoe Karbonopsina. Although he reluctantly baptized the fruit of this relationship, the future Constantine VII, Nicholas forbade the emperor from entering the church and may have become involved in the revolt of Andronikos Doukas. He was deposed as patriarch on February 1, 907 and replaced by Euthymios…Sergius; the pope sent papal legates to Constantinople, who confirmed the pope’s ruling in favour of the emperor, on the grounds that fourth marriages had not been condemned by the Church as a whole.>>>
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_VI_the_Wise#Leo.27s_marriages
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Mystikos
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Sergius_III

according to the text you copy/pasted, all of these wives died. The Catholic Church doesn’t have an issue with remarriage if your spouse is dead.

 

[phil19034]

How in the world do you know?

I don’t mean that she never repented to God or in confession later. I have no idea what she did or didn’t do privately.

I mean that the excommunication was never publicly lifted (assuming it wasn’t automatically lifted by Paul VI’s changes). She never publicly repented for marrying someone who was still married in the eyes of the Church.

Perhaps I should have said “she didn’t publicly reconcile with the Church” rather than use the word “repent.”

 

[zz912]

Excommunication is a way to help bring Catholics who are sinning back into the Church.

Before Jackie Kennedy, many (not all – i.e. King Henry) public Catholics who were threatened with excommunication or who were excommunicated often repented and came back to the Church. Jackie Kennedy was the first celebrity Catholic in the era of television to be threatened with Excommunication and when finally excommunicated; did not repent.

I believe this is when the Church realized that excommunication will not work when people buy into secular and non-Catholic views of morality & social teaching. And with TV, the non-repented, excommunicated Catholic celebrity could do more harm than good.

Since Jackie Kennedy, the number of public excommunication of lay Catholic public figures can be counted on a hand and are from Catholic countries.

The goal of excommunication is to bring you back to the Church. If a person due to poor faith formation (or societal influences), will be pushed further away from being excommunicated; then excommunication is not a good idea.

So, it’s not a change in teaching. It’s a change in how to go about things. But it’s NO different than what St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI spoke about.

God Bless

The bishops need to rethink this theory, because it’s not working out. AT ALL.

And excommunication is not just about bringing sinners back to the Church, it’s also to prevent them from harming themselves and others further, such as continuing to receive the Eucharist while not in a state of grace, which is a mortal sin of blasphemy.

Perhaps the bishops should look to Church history and see what worked then. Especially in those times when the Church was converting pagan cultures (which we are in now).

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

I don’t mean that she never repented to God or in confession later. I have no idea what she did or didn’t do privately.

I mean that the excommunication was never publicly lifted (assuming it wasn’t automatically lifted by Paul VI’s changes). She never publicly repented for marrying someone who was still married in the eyes of the Church.

Perhaps I should have said “she didn’t publicly reconcile with the Church” rather than use the word “repent.”

Since Onassis died leaving her a widow again, wold the excommunication - assuming it even took place or was still in force - have been automatically lifted when she was again no longer married?

 

[dans0622]

…I mean that the excommunication was never publicly lifted (assuming it wasn’t automatically lifted by Paul VI’s changes). She never publicly repented for marrying someone who was still married in the eyes of the Church. …"

Hello,

She was never publically excommunicated so a public remittance was not necessary.

As is the case with any “automatic excommunication”, we outsiders have to be quite careful in assigning the penalty to the person. Maybe it was incurred, maybe it wasn’t. For whatever reason, Cardinal Cushing was certain it wasn’t and, if he was her Bishop, he was in a situation to know. I don’t know what to make of his statements, though, since he fell back on a “it was a private conversation that will stay private” line…

When Paul VI (in 1970) eliminated the penalty for marriage before a non-Catholic minister in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, he also remitted the penalty for those who actually incurred it. So, if she incurred that one, it was remitted.

I am still wondering about whether or not she would have incurred the USA penalty for divorce/remarriage. My ruminations are probably not worth relaying here.

Dan

 

[dans0622]

Since Onassis died leaving her a widow again, wold the excommunication - assuming it even took place or was still in force - have been automatically lifted when she was again no longer married?

Hello,

It wouldn’t work that way.

Dan

 

[Phil502]

I saw that story covered on a liberal news station and even they said the Pope was making a “disturbing” remark on making changes for divorced and remarrieds. Weird.

Liberals would find it disturbing if the church let more people become fully accepted in the Sacraments.

Only because we understand more of the psychology behind failed marriages and so forth. But we have to be careful that this doesn’t lead to more of the unwanted behavior. There was an avalanche of divorces amongst Catholics after the penalties of excommunication were lifted.

How can we know that was the cause and not just fallout from the 60’s and 70’s culture?

 

[ProVobis]

How can we know that was the cause and not just fallout from the 60’s and 70’s culture?

Good question. The correlation is positive but we don’t know which was the cause and which is the effect or to what extent. But it does seem (as some others have perhaps suggested) that the Church was meeting the world half way. How long can this continue without (further) fallout?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

I like that picture. If you’re good at photoshopping etc., might I suggest that while you keep that picture of Pope Francis, God love him, in the forefront, that you make a ‘border’ around him of slightly smaller ‘busts’ of Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II, Popes John Paul I, Paul VI, John XXIII, Pius XII, Pius XI, Benedict XV, Pius X, etc. etc. since all of them have been saying the same thing that Pope Francis has been saying?

 

[Thomas_White]

Since Onassis died leaving her a widow again, wold the excommunication - assuming it even took place or was still in force - have been automatically lifted when she was again no longer married?

I don’t believe this would be automatic. My understanding is that there must first occur a reconcilliation with the Church authority that deemed the excommunication. This could be through the parish priest, the bishop of the diocese or, in some cases, even the Holy Father, depending on who initiated the excommunication. This is sometimes a simple process but not always.

A simple case would be the excommunication of a Catholic who joined a group that supported the ordination of women. This has happened. And reconcilliation has been obtained by the person simply cutting ties with the offending organization and renouncing the heresy. This even happened in recent years in the case of a Catholic priest (I believe in Australia) who was excommunicated for supporting the ordination of women. He was later reconcilled with the Church. In other instances, it could be far more complicated.