{"id":662,"date":"2013-12-02T13:33:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T19:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=662"},"modified":"2013-12-02T16:43:23","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T22:43:23","slug":"the-german-bishops-and-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/the-german-bishops-and-divorce-662.htm","title":{"rendered":"The German Bishops and Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Pope Benedict’s contra Germanos<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The German Bishops have decided to put into effect a policy <\/a>that Cardinal Gerhard M\u00fcller of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not like. <\/span><\/p>\n

From what I understand, the Germans bishops will allow Catholics who have divorced and remarried to receive communion without an declaration of nullity of the previous marriage. They will allow this if the Catholic is convinced that the previous marriage was in fact invalid, but its invalidity cannot be proved in a canonical court.<\/p>\n

This could happen because the previous spouse has disappeared, or refuses to cooperate, or the process of a trial would be too emotionally painful.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

M\u00fcller says allowing remarried Catholics to receive communion without a declaration of nullity would cause confusion. He is certainly right in that. <\/span><\/p>\n

If a person leaves his spouse, and then tries to take another spouse, he commits adultery, according to the words of Jesus. But if the first union was not a true marriage, then the following marriage is a true marriage, and is not adulterous.<\/p>\n

The Church, for good reasons, has added the requirement that an objective, outside judge examine the circumstances, on the principal that nemo judex in causa sua \u2013 no one should judge his own case. <\/span><\/p>\n

But this legal principal has to take second place to the good of souls, and a person may be truly convinced that the previous marriage was no marriage at all, but is unable to prove it in a church court. Should he be denied the sacraments? <\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, would allowing each person to decide in effect make the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage a dead letter? <\/span><\/p>\n

I suspect that with much waffling and obscuring of issues Francis will allow the German bishops to do what they have decided to do (and in fact are doing already), all the while claiming that nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

Hans “King” Kung <\/a>has put his two cents in – which is more than his opinion is worth..<\/p>\n

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\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Benedict’s contra Germanos The German Bishops have decided to put into effect a policy that Cardinal Gerhard M\u00fcller of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not like. From what I understand, the Germans bishops will allow Catholics who have divorced and remarried to receive communion without an declaration of nullity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,201,713],"tags":[794,793],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany","category-pope-benedict","category-pope-francis","tag-divorce","tag-german-bishops","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}