Cardinal Pell adds voice to growing opposition to Kasper’s efforts
17 September 2014 14:03 by Abigail Frymann Rouch, Liz Dodd
Senior cardinals and bishops are taking firmly opposed positions on the question of barring remarried divorcees from receiving Communion, which is set to be a contentious topic at next month’s Synod on the Family at the Vatican.
Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney and a member of Pope Francis’ advisory body of nine cardinals, said that to admit divorced and remarried people to Communion would be “impossible” and make pastoral practice incompatible with doctrine.
A further five cardinals, who include Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have jointly authored a book that defends the Church’s current position, arguing that it is the most merciful approach to the issue.
Pell was writing the foreword to a book by Professor Stephan Kampowski and Fr Juan Perez-Soba, titled The Gospel of the Family, which is due out next month from Ignatius Press just before the start of the synod.
Both the cardinals’ book Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church and Pell’s foreword attack a proposal made in February by Cardinal Walter Kasper, a theologian respected by Pope Francis, that the Church could find a “toleration” of civil marriages following divorce, in some circumstances.
"The sooner the wounded, the lukewarm, and the outsiders realise that substantial doctrinal and pastoral changes are impossible, the more the hostile disappointment (which must follow the reassertion of doctrine) will be anticipated and dissipated," Pell writes.
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