With the synod on the family just a matter of months away, a well-timed book-length interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller is to be released. In The Hope of the Family the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has reiterated the ban on remarried divorcees receiving Communion. The cardinal also makes a subtle criticism of Cardinal Walter Kasper, who in his address to a consistory of cardinals earlier this year, outlined possibilities, based on the theology of mercy, for remarried Catholics to be able to receive Communion. But in the latest interview, Müller says: “Making such an appeal to a presumed absolute mercy of God is equivalent to a play on words that does not help us.” He adds: “I witness with a certain sense of amazement how some the