Pope Francis has once again given the Catholic Church a welcoming face, rather than stern judgmental disapproval, saying divorced and remarried Catholics are “not by any means excommunicated” and that the Church should display “the heart of a mother”.
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Pope Francis resumed his General Audiences on Wednesday, following the summer holiday.
“How can we recommend that these parents do all they can to educate their children in the Christian life, by giving them the example of a convinced, practiced faith”, he said, “if we keep them away from the life of the community, as if they were excommunicated?”
Liberals and activists are split on his initiatives to remedy the historic and systemic sex abuse that has plagued churches: Catholic clergy sexually abused thousands of minors between 1950 and 2002, according to a study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and many high-ranking officials were aware but did not take effective action. The way he explained it is the fact that divorced and remarried Catholics not being allowed at the communion altar is a source of pain not only to them, but also to the entire church.
Distinctions must also be made, Francis said, for instance, “between those who have suffered the separation as opposed to those who caused it”.
The Vatican this fall is holding a month-long follow-up assembly on household points, after an analogous gathering final yr left divorced Catholics who remarry hoping in useless that a fast finish to the ban would have resulted from these discussions.
Nonetheless, he went on to say, the church must always consider well-being of others.
Many Vatican observers believe Francis wants some concrete change, which his foes believe would be tantamount to heresy because it would undermine Jesus’ teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
“They absolutely must not be treated that way”.
“I wouldn’t expect anything Earth-shattering”, Berard says, like offering these members the chance to participate in communion.
“The Holy Father is trying to counter, trying to debunk a common myth in the life of the church and that is that divorced Catholics are excommunicated, which is not true”, Clark said.
“No closed doors!” the Pope said to a crowd gathered for his weekly audience in Rome.
At last year’s synod, bishops failed to reach a consensus on remarried divorcees and gays, despite an appeal by the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
Rather than seeing Francis as a liberal or conservative on social issues, it may be more useful to think of him as a conscientious objector to the culture wars, and the idea of the church as some sort of arbiter within them.
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“I do see them discussing it and I do foresee more pastoral attention around people whose situations include the experience of divorce”. This is why it’s important that the style of the community, its language, its attitudes, are always attentive to people, beginning with the smallest.
