Vatican City, Feb 14, 2017 / 05:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the Vatican office charged with interpreting Church law has said that divorced-and-remarried persons who want to change their situation but cannot, may be admitted to Communion without living in continence.
“The Church could admit to Penance and to the Eucharist faithful who find themselves in an illegitimate union when two essential conditions occur: they want to change the situation, but they are unable to fulfill their desire,” Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, 78, wrote in his booklet Chapter Eight of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhoration Amoris laetitia, published last week.
Cardinal Coccopalmerio is president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. His booklet, published by the Vatican Publishing House and presented Feb. 14 at a Vatican press confence, offers his own interpretation of Amoris laetitia. He said it is aimed at “grasping the rich doctrinal and pastoral message” of Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation.
Part of the reason for writing it, he said, is because the exhortation’s eighth chapter has “been judged with either negativity or with a certain reservation.”
In the text, Cardinal Coccopalmerio extensively quotes Amoris laetitia, saying Chapter 8 illustrates both the clear doctrine of the Church on marriage, as well as the conditions in which, due to “serious” repercussions, couples living in irregular unions might be able to receive Communion.
He reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, and stressed that the Church must in no way “renounce to proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its greatness.”
“Any form of relativism, or an excessive respect in the moment of proposing it, would be a lack of fidelity to the Gospel and also a lack of love of the Church,” he said.
However, he noted that, as said in Amoris laetitia, there are many complex factors contributing to why marriages fail and irregular unions are so common, such as abandonment by a spouse, cultural stigmas, or other “mitigating factors.”
The cardinal pointed to paragraph 301 of Amoris laetitia, which reads: “it is can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.”
By referring to “any irregular situation,” the exhortation, in his opinion, “intends to refer to all those who are married only civilly or only living in a de facto union or are bound by a previous canonical marriage,” the cardinal said.
Further quoting that paragraph, the cardinal said, “a subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding ‘its inherent values,’ or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin … factors may exist which limit the ability to make a decision.”
Offering an example of a situation in which a person might be fully aware of the irregularity of their situation yet faces great difficulty in changing it for fear of falling into greater sin, Cardinal Coccopalmerio pointed to couples in a new union who can’t separate due to “serious reasons” such as the education of their children.
He also used the example of a woman cohabiting with a man and his three children, after they had been abandoned by his first wife.
In the book, the cardinal said the woman had saved the man “from a state of deep despair, probably from the temptation of suicide.” The couple had been together for 10 years, adding another child to the mix, with the woman making considerable sacrifices to help raise the other three.
While the woman in the hypothetical situation “is fully aware of being in an irregular situation” and would “honestly like to change her life, but evidently, she can’t,” the cardinal said, explaining that if she left, “the man would turn back to the previous situation and the children would be left without a mother.”
To leave, then, would mean the woman would fail to carry out her duties toward innocent people, namely, the children. Because of this, Cardinal Coccopalmerio said, “it’s then evident that she couldn’t leave without new sin” occurring.
Speaking on the point of continence, the cardinal pointed to St. John Paul II’s 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio.
In the document, St. John Paul II taught that the divorced-and-remarried who for serious reasons cannot satisfy the obligation to separate may receive absolution which would open the way to Communion only if they take on the duty to live in complete continence – to live as brother and sister.
However, for Cardinal Coccopalmerio, while the couples who are able to do this should, for others the temptation of infidelity increases the longer a couple refrains from sexual intimacy, potentially causing greater harm to the children.
He referred to footnote 329 of Amoris laetitia. The footnote is a reference to the quoting of St. John Paul II’s words in Familiaris consortio acknowledging that some of the divorced-and-remarried cannot, for serious reasons, separate. The footnote applies the words of Gaudium et spes that “where the intimacy of married life is broken off, its faithfulness can sometimes be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness ruined” – in its context, speaking about married couples – to “the divorced who have entered a new union.”
Cardinal Coccopalmerio stressed that while for him the desire to change one’s situation despite the inability to do so is enough to receive Communion, the conditions must be “carefully and authoritatively discerned” on the part of ecclesial authority, which would typically be the couple’s parish priest, who knows the couple “more directly” and can therefore offer adequate guidance.
For the cardinal, the only instance in which a couple in an irregular situation could be barred from Communion is when, “knowing they are in grave sin and being able to change, they have no sincere desire” to do so.
He also suggested that a diocesan office charged with advising on difficult marital situations could be “necessary, or at least useful.”
Cardinal Coccopalmerio was absent from his book presentation, and it was presented instead by Orazio La Rocca; Fr. Maurizio Gronchi; Fr. Giuseppe Costa, SDB; and Alfonso Cuateruccio.
Cardinal Coccopalmerio is the latest prelate to speak out on the question of Amoris laetitia and admission to Communion for the divorced-and-remarried. The exhortation has been met with a varied reception and intepretation within the Church.
Several bishops, including the bishops’ conferences of Germany and of Malta, have said the divorced-and-remarried may receive Communion.
Yet many have maintained the Church’s traditional discipline, including recently Bishop Vitus Huonder of Chur and Bishop Stephen Lopes of the Ordinariate of St. Peter.
And Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has on multiple occasions maintained that Amoris laetitia is in continuity with Church teaching.
In an interview with Il Timone earlier this month, he said that Amoris laetitia “must clearly be interpreted in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church.” He said that St. John Paul II’s teaching in Familiaris consortio “is not dispensable, because it is not only a positive law of John Paul II, but he expressed an essential element of Christian moral theology and the theology of the sacraments.”
Confusion on this point, he said, stems from a failure to accept St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis splendor.
Cardinal Müller suggested that in order to quell the confusion generated by the differing interpretations of Amoris laetitia, everyone ought to study the Church’s doctrine, beginning with Scripture, “which is very clear on marriage.”
“All of us must understand and accept the doctrine of Christ and of his Church, and at the same time be ready to help others to understand it and put it into practice even in difficult situations,” he stated.
Observing the difference between the statements of Cardinal Müller and Cardinal Coccopalmerio, Dr. Edward Peters, a professor of canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, wrote that “the Church’s arguably two highest-ranking cardinals in the areas of canonical interpretation and the protection of doctrine and morals are in public, plain, and diametric opposition with each other concerning a crucial canonico-sacramental practice. This division cannot stand.”
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China will eat you.
This.
China already ate US, and is taking really huge bites in the past weeks. That US reality those that are suppose to be looking out the countries best interest, are too busy selling us out.. for their own gain.
Its the drum role of, is President Biden going to start looking our for the people, as Kennedy tried. Or continue to sell US out?
President biden sold out 47 years ago buddy. Put your head between you legs and kiss your a.. goodbye. You speak as if buden just entered politics. He has been selling the country out since the 70s. Wake up
I agree with his sentiment but someone forgot to mention the 500 giga tonne gorilla in the room – The hegemony of the United States of America whose sole goal is to rape the planet for anything and everything it can buy or sell. Good luck trying to convey your message of minimalism to that obese, excessive ignorant island.
“Rape the planet”, really? Do you drive a vehicle, do you own clothes, do you eat food, do you have a house, do you have a phone, do you’s can continue. Give up all of what you and your family consumes in the name of not raping the planet.
Right. Except that the United States isn’t an island, it’s part of a continent called North America. So who’s the ignorant one here?
Nothing better than the guy in the gold plated house lecturing about the poor. He should follow God’s word and sell his riches.
The pope, I trust you understand, does not own the riches of the Vatican, etc. In fact, in fairness to Pope Francis, he probably owns very little. Now, a more worthwhile line of criticism would be to ask, “What competence or expertise does Pope Francis have in economics?” And so forth.
Carl no one said that Pope Francis is an economist.
I do not think you would criticize Jesus for his Sermon on the Mount which called for social justice and looking out for the needy.
Isn’t that what a Pope is supposed to articulate.
Carl no one said that Pope Francis is an economist.(sic)
Yet he himself believes he is one as evidenced by that which he allowed to be published under his name in Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’ as only two examples among many.
A yet more worthwhile line of thinking would be this:
Popes must be Catholic.
Francis is not Catholic.
Thus Francis is not pope.
Well, Francis has Jeffry Sachs to tell him how to use abortion to make sure we have fewer poor people in the world.
I do not think Pope Peter had access to the wealth and splendor that Pope Francis has. Not did our first Pope have body guards.
He probably did not even have rosary beads or a crucifix.
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And that’s the issue. I personally may own much more than Pope Francis, but I don’t live in anywhere near the comfort. I have no security system, and if I come down with Covid or cancer, no hospital or doctor of note will leap at the chance to cure me.
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They are not called “Princes” for nothing.
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I do not begrudge him (them) their comforts, or would not, but they clearly have no clue how wealth is created, how poverty might be lessened.
Remember when Popes used to talk about Jesus and Mary?
You remember the simple tales Tod to you as a child. They are still told to children.
Now you are older you need to navigate the bigger more complex stories.
New world order pope . .give away the wealth of the catholic church first..
You first, Francis
What might be said—perhaps competently—about augmenting daily stock market data/quarterly progress reports with a wider-angle business perspective, sometimes referred to as the TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE: prophet, people, planet? A few (not all) tutors and their discussion points:
At least parts of mankind are demonstrably at risk of a self-inflicted “tragedy of the commons” (from ecologist GARRETT HARDIN, 1968). Today the personal ecological footprint involves a layered web of often distant resource uses—land, water, air, and food chains.
ST. AUGUSTINE connected expansive passions and a finite world: “the passions are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world” (in Henry Paolucci, ed., The Political Writings of St. Augustine, 1962).
In his Liechentstein Address (1993), SOLZHENITSYN remarked on technological society and the need for “self-limitation”—“in an economic race, we are poisoning ourselves.”
Two years earlier, ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II also called for “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources.” (Centesimus Annus, 1991 n. 54).
What is the possible alliance for shared action among the three monotheistic world RELIGIONS? E.g., Christian and Jewish revelation—“[The LORD made the earth] not creating it to be a waste, but designing it to be lived in” (Isa 45:18). (See Michael A. Barkey, ed., Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Wisdom on the Environment [Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2000]. Islam (a natural religion) proclaims—at least for the umma or House of Islam—the reality of the common good and of property as a shared good.)
In Mater et Magistra (1961) ST. POPE JOHN XXIII noticed that nature has only “almost inexhaustible productive capacity” (“almost”, not “inexhaustible” as under Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum). And, likewise, it was with an eye on rising per capita resource consumption, that ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II counseled “above all a change in lifestyle (and) models of production and consumption . . . (and) structures of power . . .” (Centesimus Annus, n. 58).
ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II and Ecumenical PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW issued a “Joint Declaration on Articulating a Code of Environmental Ethics” stressing five goals: (1) mindfulness of future generations, (2) the priority of Natural Law and the non-utilitarian use of science and technology [Veritatis Splendor! 1993], (3) stewardship and solidarity beyond exaggerated [!] ownership, (4) a variety of roles and [!] responsibilities, and (5) the need for trust beyond legitimate controversy (Origins, CNS Documentary Service, June 20, 2002).
What would a more reflective and robust market (solidarity and subsidiarity, both, with neither eclipsed by the other) actually look like—beyond (a) the narrow and short-term quantitative fixations prevailing today AND EQUALLY BEYOND (b) POPE FRANCIS’ countervailing and self-acknowledged “rhetorical poetry”?
It would make more sense for the Pope to encourage the poor to learn from economists instead, so they can pull themselves out of poverty.
A lot more. But that’s not Francis’ M.O. MT verbiage is. Reams of it. Worst Pope we’ve ever had.
Johann du Toit,
That sounds about right but it would have to be economists with good track records. Some economists fail as badly as the rest of us to see what’s coming next.
It’s ashame when religious leaders embrace fundamentally flawed and evil dogma and ideology, becoming useful idiots for the tyrants.
Alternative view on papal events: canon212 dot com.
To my concluding QUESTION: “What would a more reflective and robust market (solidarity and subsidiarity, both, with neither eclipsed by the other) actually look like…?”
With some adjustments, maybe the Mid-West DUST BOWL of the 1930s will not be repeated in the desertification of coral reefs (related to our food chains) in the 2030s, and in the less preventable Sub-Sahara?
Maybe Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics will not pull the rug out from under of family-wage jobs and FAMILIES (papal prayer intention for this November)?
And, happily, with a perspective of centuries and nod to the better side of INNOVATION (“Technocracy”?), open-pit copper mines already have been at least partly replaced by fiber optics and miniaturized/wireless communication. The short-lived buffalo hunter, beaver pelt and finite-coal mentalities offer additional clues.
And, likewise to be purified, maybe the extermination of miniature (!) UNBORN CHILDREN—the moral crisis of “preeminent” priority (USCCB)—as exploited by the Abortion Industry (another “AI”!), will itself be terminated? This, rather than subsidized by the government (!) and exported overseas by Planned un-Parenthood profiteers.
As for the “rhetorical poetry” of Laudato Si—maybe there can be better rhyme and coherence as to WHETHER we can “reverse” (n. 170) OR only “adapt to” (n. 175) our/or nature’s (?) climate change?
(In either case, between Ice Ages the sea level was 4-6 meters deeper than it is now, while both underdeveloped Bangladesh and overdeveloped New York City have an average elevation of only 10 meters above sea level.) Bishop Barron quotes the mythical Mother Nature of eons and eras past: “I have fed species greater than you; and I have starved species greater than you.” And “my oceans, my soil, my flowing streams, my forests—they all can take you or leave you.”
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2015/08/11/mother-nature-is-one-unreliable-lady/
Lapsing into planetary superlatives, what is the MORAL DIFFERENCE, if any, between short-term and direct genocide, and the long-term and indirect triage (stock market “economics”?) in marginal geographies of possibly vulnerable and “starved” populations?
Consumerism keeps everyone working.
Oh yes, isn’t needless toil and pursuit of “things” grand?
vs. what? Bored poverty and starvation?
Why hasn’t the Pope clarified his remarks about homosexuality? Please clarify the church’s stance on these sins that cry out to God.
Because he’s a coward and a liar.
The Poor are the real tabernacles where Christ resides. Economists have a lot to learn from the Christ residing in the poor.
I can’t believe this guy even sees the irony of telling his ‘flock’ to eschew the better things in life from…. The Vatican, that broken down old property of renown. Any shanty dwellings in there, Frank?
The pope seems to want a return to the middle ages where most people hated being alive.
I don’t know about that. Some of the Middle Ages sound pretty good to me. Some parts don’t ,but as I understand it they had many more days off work than we do today. Lots & lots of holy days observed back then.