In the Catholic Church today among one of the many social ills that the pastors must tend to is the emerging recognition of the status of divorced and remarried Catholics in the Church today. In October, a meeting of Catholic bishops called III Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family occurred. During this meeting these leaders of the Church to discuss the "The pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization". This is a first of multiple meetings on this issue over the next year or so. Many prominent leaders in the Church have publicly addressed this issue in what has emerged as a hotly debated topic. In many ways the challenge of how to respond to civilly divorced and civilly remarried Catholics (as opposed to those who have gone through appropriate channels within the Catholic Church) represents a fundamental challenge to multiple teachings of the Church. These teachings get to the center of the Catholic understanding of marriage, the Catholic understanding of the person (anthropology) and the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist.
Now, the Catholic view of divorce and communion is not as archaic as no doubt some would believe it to be. In fact, the Church makes clear in the Catechism that those who are innocent victims of a civil divorce are able, under normal restrictions that apply to all Catholics, to receive the Eucharist. The dilemma turns on when a Catholic married in the Church and divorced civilly then becomes married in a civil ceremony. That is a non-no for Catholics, for the simple reason that Catholics believe that a marriage cannot be dissolved. A Catholic response to a broken marriage is to observe that the marriage never occurred in the first place, i.e., the marriage annulment. An effect of this would seem to be that at as a matter of theological understanding, it is the case that anthropologically not only did that first marriage not occur, but the Catholic who marries again in the Church (as a matter of observable or experiential fact) is, actually, marrying for the first time. To divorce and remarry civilly is essentially denying this truth of marriage's indissolubility by stating through these acts that a marriage is in fact soluble and more than that it damages the institution of marriage (and potentially introduces more serious sins into the mix). The receipt of communion by divorced and remarried Catholics also is not a matter of conscience, but rather
in fact, both because it is the image of the spousal relationship between Christ and his church as well as the fundamental core and an important factor in the life of civil society, is essentially a public reality.
As a result, those who are divorced and remarried cannot receive communion except in a state of sin (h/t to EWTN which has all sorts of good stuff).
The Catholic then, in the face of this secular phenomenon of civil divorce and remarriage, is staring at a way of life or an experience of reality which seems to have crept up on it. The challenge of the secularization of marriage confronts the Catholic Church with a question of who it is and what it is to be Catholic in ways that other issues probably do not. Whereas, at least in the United States, many of the issues that the Church and its individual members confront have their origins in political matters, e.g., abortion legality or Obamacare contraception coverage, the civil marriage issue does not seem to be as neatly able to be captured within a political frame of reference. When a Catholic thinks about some of these recent controversies over political issues, at the end of the day the Catholic can have some reassurance that, while these are challenging contemporary dilemmas that "naturally" appear in a secular nation-state, the Catholic Church and its adherents can always distance itself from the problem. In fact, there is a method of interacting in order to navigate more difficult and thorny moral conundrums these kinds of political proposals present to a Catholic. There is always the possibility to create distance. But that same option does not exist when you are having to deal with your own. They will follow you, they will come to you, they will be with you.
So, this is not a political issue that is restricted to particular states or cultures or time periods, but rather it is an issue that stands outside of politics and sits in the area of Church doctrine and makes a demand upon the Catholic to answer what it is to be a Catholic? It is a religious matter. It is a complicated issue with divisions within the Church revealed publicly. Though I wonder, is this a uniquely modern or secular issue? This problem would likely be less acute if either the pursuit of secular, civil marriages were low(er) or the option more restricted, which would seem to demand that the Catholic Church and religion exercise a more pronounced role in the contemporary world and place a stronger imprint on the identities of modern Catholics. In effect, the existence of this problem becomes evidence of the de-Christianization of the modern era. If that is the case, then both the Catholic Church and non-Catholic Christian sects are fighting a battle which they are losing.
As a lay Catholic, the most interesting phenomenon to come from this extended public battle over the licitness of (non)reception of the Eucharist by civilly-divorced-but-not-annulled-Catholics is the centrality of the priest-as-pastor. On both side of the divide that marks the public debate, the participants have focused on the efforts to respond to the needs of Catholics who have experienced a broken marriage. The gravitas of the experience and the persons who are involved in it is recognized and respected by those who want to amend the rules as well as those who want to maintain the rules. This appears to be, at its heart, rooted in a concern of how to minister to those who have experienced or are experiencing this darkness. No doubt the secular and Catholic media will continue to publish reports that accentuate these divisions among members of the Church; during those times, it is worth it to recognize the seriousness of the issue that these shepherds engage and the sincerity, mercy and pastorality with which they respond.
The next year will be an exciting time for the Church. I look forward to keeping abreast of the internal debate and I will be grateful when the Church, in Her wisdom and with His guidance, can show the way through this dilemma and continue to show compassion, charity and mercy to those Catholics, whether civilly divorced and remarried or annulled and married again in the Church, experience the pain of a broken marriage.
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