German Catholic Church approves case-by-case communion for remarried

[rug]

The decision on whether divorced and remarried Catholics can receive the Eucharist will be decided on an individual basis, German bishops have said. However, not all clergy have given their blessing to the decision.



01.02.2017

The German Bishops' Conference announced Wednesday that "differentiated solutions" made at the parish level would allow previously divorced but now remarried Catholics to receive communion.

The bishops' proposed method - a case-by-case basis without hard criteria - does not guarantee such parishioners the ability to participate in communion. "Not all believers whose marriage broke down and who received a civil divorce and are now remarried will be able to receive the sacrament without a decision," they wrote.

However, the bishops said their decision "opens the possibility of receiving the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist" to divorced Catholics currently in a second marriage.

These married Catholics were previously barred from taking communion because the Church considered them to be living in a state of sin. Only if the couple received an annulment of their prior marriages could they receive what Catholics believe to be the body of Christ.

http://www.dw.com/en/german-catholic-church-approves-case-by-case-communion-for-remarried/a-37373963

[marybourg]

1. "case by case basis"

So what criteria will be used to decide? Corruption flourishes on case by case decisions. That's why governments, at least, need regulations. Churches learned that lesson, too, about 700 years ago, but I guess they've forgotten by now.

[rug]

2. It's a pastoral decision.

The tension is between acts, defined for ages as sins, and unbounded mercy.

If one is indisputably in an adulterous relationship, but reality screams the opposite, which wins?

John 8

1Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.
3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them,
4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.
5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Maybe the answer is in whatever he was scribbling in the ground.

Whatever happens, the outcome will have a massive impact as well on gay people in the Church.