Professional paper
Accesion or Admission of Divorced and Remarried Persons to Holy Communion
Velimir Blažević
; Franciscan monastery Petricevac, Banja Luka
Abstract
Admission of civilly divorced and remarried persons to the sa- craments of Penance or Confession and Holy Communion, have been discussed among theologians, pastors and canonists for a long time. In recent times two Synods of Bishops (in 1980 and 2005), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on two occasi- ons (in 1973 and 1994), and also popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in their two post-synodal exhortations (in 1981 and 2007) have considered this issue. Although in doctrinal terms there has been no departure from the traditional teachings of the Church that the divorced and remarried persons cannot be admitted to Eucharistic Communion, it has come to a different, more benevolent looking at the divorced and remarried persons and at their position at the Church. The possibility of admission of the divorced and remarried persons to the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion will be discussed at the next extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops in October 2014. In order to prepare for this debate at the Secret Consistory of Cardinals in February 2014, Cardinal Walter Kasper held a report in which he pointed at different situations of the divorced/remarried and advocated reconsideration of the current standpoint of the Church and more flexible approach to the problem. The first part of this article briefly presents the so far church discipline with regard to the impossibility of admission of the divorced/remarried to the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion. The second part of the article presents Cardinal Kasper’s view on that problem and on the possibility of a more favourable solution to this problem.
Keywords
Church; indissolubility of marriage; divorced and remarried; Holy Communion; Synod of Bishops; W. Kasper
Hrčak ID:
127463
URI
Publication date:
26.9.2014.
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