Pope Francis has called an “extraordinary” session of the Synod of Bishops for 5-19 October 2014 to discuss issues surrounding the family, which Vatican officials believe is threatened by secularist trends, including divorce, contraception and the legalisation of same-sex marriage.
The announcement came on Tuesday just hours after the Archdiocese of Freiburg – Germany’s second-largest local Church – said it would begin administering sacraments to divorced and remarried Catholics in individual cases after consultation with a parish priest or deacon. The policy violates a longstanding Vatican prohibition, but has been debated in many dioceses around the world in the past several years. It is guaranteed to be one of the hot topics at next year’s synod, which will meet in “extraordinary” session for only the third time since its inaugural gathering in 1967. Pope Francis has given it the theme, “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation”.
But it may have come too late for some. The Archdiocese of Freiburg’s pastoral office on Monday published a 14-page handout which will be sent to all priests and deacons in the archdiocese but also to other dioceses in and outside Germany in the coming week with detailed recommendations of how to conduct “a pastorally and theologically profound discussion process” with remarried divorcees with a view to allowing them to receive the sacraments.
Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, director of the Holy See press office, said on Tuesday morning the handout “changes nothing” and the Vatican ban was still in force. He told the Turin-based daily, La Stampa, the move was “not an expression of the diocesan authority”. Later in a statement on the upcoming Synod he said the worldwide Church would have to move as one in adopting “common pastoral guidelines on the most important matters – such as pastoral care of the family – under the guidance of the Pope and bishops”. In a clear reference to the pastoral solution to divorced and remarried Catholics adopted in Freiburg, he said, “Proposing particular pastoral solutions on the part of local persons or offices could risk spreading confusion.”
Robert Zollitsch retired as archbishop of Freiburg last month aged 75, and is currently administrator of the archdiocese. He will remain chairman of the German bishops’ conference until next March.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich has distanced himself from the Freiburg initiative. It was a “contribution for a not yet concluded discussion process”, Marx’s spokesman said, adding that Cardinal Marx, a member of the 8-cardinal commission appointed to advise Pope Francis on reform of the Curia, wanted a solution for the issue that was in conformity with the World Church. The German bishops’ conference said it did not want to comment.
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