Synod will seek to ‘integrate’ divorced and remarried

Divorced and remarried couples should be “integrated” into the Church while gay Catholics should be treated with respect and sensitivity, according to a new document for the forthcoming Synod on the Family.

On Tuesday the Vatican published the working document – the Instrumentum Laboris – for October’s gathering that takes into account submissions from bishops’ conferences and others from across the world. It also incorporates the final synod document from the meeting of bishops that took place last October.

The text calls for a “greater integration into the life of the Christian community” for divorced and remarried couples that could see an end to exclusions in liturgical roles and educational and charitable ones.

The working text proposes a “penitential road” for such couples to be admitted to communion – under the authority of the bishop or accompanied by a priest – which had been proposed by some, including Cardinal Vincent Nichols. It says there is “common agreement”

among bishops about finding some way to welcome back divorced and remarried persons, including the possibility of priests discerning the “irreversibility” of the second union. Some bishops suggest the path outlined in John Paul II’s document, Familiaris Consortio, in which a divorced and remarried couple after penitence receive spiritual communion and refrain from sex.

Other bishops say a priest could accompany the couple and eventually use his powers to determine the way forward. In an interview with Le Figaro on the day the Instrumentum Laboris was released, Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has proposed allowing communion for remarried divorcees, likened the Church to “Pontius Pilate” for washing its hands of the problem. “If God is merciful, the Church must be,” he said.

The working text uses some of the pastoral language of last year’s synod including talking about “seeds of the word” being present among those cohabiting or in civil marriages and the law of “graduality” – the notion that people come closer to the ideals of Church teaching over time.

Elsewhere, the text says that diocesan pastoral plans should offer “accompaniment” to gay Catholics and their families. While reaffirming the Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage, it says that gays must be met with “sensitivity and delicacy.” 

On Humanae Vitae – Pope Paul VI’s restatement of Catholic opposition to artificial birth control – the document writes of two poles: one, following objective morality with regard to procreation, the other taking a more subjective approach. The moral norm can be perceived as an “unbearable burden”, it says.

The working document covers a wide range of areas affecting family life such as economic challenges, the environment, birth rates, migration and the role of women. It also examines how the Church can support and nurture the vocation of the family.
The synod will take place from 4-25 October.