The Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith, Gerhard Müller, has
written a letter asking for the withdrawal and revision of the proposal
to allow remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments.
When the document made headlines across the world
at the start of October for its reconsideration of the position of
remarried divorcees, Fr. Federico Lombardi clarified that: "Nothing
changes, there is no news for the divorced who remarry. The document
comes in fact from a local pastoral office and does not touch the
responsibility of the bishop.
Therefore, it has jumped the gun, and is
not the official expression of diocesan authorities." Now the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith headed by Archbishop Gerhard
Ludwig Müller has disassociated itself from the proposal presented by
an office of the Diocese of Freiburg to allow remarried Catholics to
receive the sacraments.
In a letter dated 21 October and published in yesterday’s issue of Tagespost Archbishop Müller dismissed certain positions expressed in the Diocese of Freiburg’s proposal. Last 15 June, Tagespost published
a lengthy article written by Müller, which did not look favourably on
any potential softening of the Church’s stance on remarried divorcees.
The article was published again by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
The Prefect’s letter was addressed to outgoing Robert Zollitsch - who
is still in charge of the German Episcopal Conference for another month
or so – and Germany’s bishops.
Müller recognises that the proposal Freiburg
published at the start of October contains very correct and important
pastoral teachings, but is unclear in its terminology and does not
correspond with Church teaching in two points.”
The first regards the
possibility for couples who have remarried after divorce to “responsibly
reach” a “decision of conscience” to receive communion. According to
the document’s authors the parish priests and the community must respect
this decision. Müller stressed that remarried divorcees must be
encouraged to participate in Church life but they cannot be admitted to
the Eucharist. To give them this right “would cause confusion among the
faithful about the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of
marriage (pastoral reason).”
The second criticism is regarding the prayer and
blessing of remarried divorcees. Such celebrations were expressly
forbidden by John Paul II and Benedict XVI: “Due to the aforementioned
discrepancies, the draft text is to be withdrawn and revised, so that no
pastoral directions are sanctioned which are in opposition to Church
teaching,” Müller writes.
It was clear right from the start that instead of
helping things, Freiburg’s proposal would have complicated the difficult
preparation phase ahead of the Extraordinary Synod on the pastoral care
of families.
The Pope wants the participation in these discussions to
be as wide-reaching as possible and for local Churches to be
involved as well. Here too, Müller was keen to remind people of the
Church’s teaching on the subject. He republished his article in L’Osservatore Romano,
rejecting outright any possibility of the Church softening its
position. He rejected the Orthodox Church’s practice of blessing a
second marriage for the spouse that has been abandoned, a practice Pope
Francis had mentioned in his interview with journalists on his flight
back from Rio after the World Youth Day celebrations. According to Tagespost, Müller’s article was apparently republished “after the Holy Father was consulted.”
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Munich, Reinhard
Marx, who is a member of Francis’ eight-member advisory Council of
Cardinals openly criticised Müller’s article, stating: “The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cannot stop the discussions." He also said Müller’s article
was like a “fence” around Francis’ “field hospital” of mercy, an image
Francis used to describe the duty the Church has towards the many
wounded in today’s modern society.