Müller faces increasing resistance

More German bishops have insisted that the debate on how to allow remarried divorcees to receive the sacraments must continue, despite contrary instructions from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Berlin has defended the Archdiocese of Freiburg’s handout on how to conduct a “pastorally  and theologically profound discussion process” with a view to allowing remarried divorcees to receive the sacraments. The CDF Prefect Archbishop Gerhard Müller said in a letter published on 12 November that the handout had to be revoked.

“The Catholics in our parishes who have divorced and remarried are welcome and belong to us,” Cardinal Woelki insisted. “I know only too well how distressed they are about their pastoral situation and this burning issue preys heavily on my mind. We must do everything within our power to lighten their distress.” Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, meanwhile, agreed with Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich that Archbishop Müller cannot stop the remarried divorcees debate. “Neither Cardinal Marx, nor I want to question the Catholic standpoint on marriage, but we must take the actual situation of many couples and families into consideration far more intensively and honestly than we have done up to now,” Bishop Ackermann said.

The president of the German bishops’ conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, whom Archbishop Müller has ordered to take back the Freiburg handout, told his archdiocesan council that there was nothing to take back. The handout was a “constructive impulse” for the special work group dealing with the issue in the bishops’ conference and for the coming Vatican Family Synod in autumn 2014, Archbishop Zollitsch said.