VATICAN CITY — A Roman Catholic bishop has urged an assembly of his peers to reconsider church teaching that bars divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving Communion, referring to the current regulations as a source of “scandal.” During the same meeting, bishops also raised the issue of ordaining married men.
Speaking before an advisory synod to Pope Benedict XVI that met Oct. 3–4 — the first synod of his young papacy — Archbishop John Atcherley Dew of Wellington, New Zealand, said that bishops have “a pastoral duty and an obligation before God to discuss and debate” the question of whether remarried Catholics should be given Communion. “Our church would be enriched if we were able to invite dedicated Catholics, currently excluded from the Eucharist, to return to the Lord’s table,” he said.
Catholic doctrine holds that faithful Catholics who divorce and remarry under civil law are unfit to receive Communion unless they abstain from sex. The church considers sexual relations between remarried couples a sin.
In related issues, Roman Catholicism’s global priest shortage looms large, prompting renewed calls for the ordination of married men. Although the proposal is not expected to gain Benedict’s support, the fact that the subject resurfaced publicly underlined the desperate straits facing many bishops in some of the world’s most priest-poor regions.
In a 52-page report read aloud before Benedict, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, Italy, noted a range of issues facing the synod, including the concerns of some bishops who “put forward the request to ordain married faithful of proven faith and virtue, the so-called ‘viri probati.’”
Viri probati is Latin for “proven men,” a term used by Catholic theologians to describe older, married men who have proven their fidelity to Catholic doctrine through example.
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