Pope: Keep door open to divorced Catholics who remarry

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Pope: Keep door open to divorced Catholics who remarry

Frances D'emilio, Associated Press
Updated 8:11 am, Wednesday, August 5, 2015

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis declared on Wednesday that divorced Catholics who remarry, as well as their children, deserve better treatment from the church, warning pastors against treating these couples as if they were excommunicated.

Catholic teaching considers divorced Catholics who remarry are living in sin and are not allowed to receive Communion, leaving many of these people feeling shunned by their church.

Francis' emphasis on mercy in church leadership has raised hope among many such Catholics that he might lift the Communion ban. Catholics who divorce after a church marriage but don't take up a new union, such as a second marriage, can receive Communion.

The Vatican this fall is holding a month-long follow-up meeting on family issues, after a similar gathering last year left divorced Catholics who remarry hoping in vain that a quick end to the ban would have resulted from those discussions.




Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/article/Pope-Keep-door-open-to-divorced-Catholics-who-6425761.php

[shenmue]

1. All the Republican talk show hosts will pee themselves

[merrily]

3. Will they? Many Republican politicians remarried after a divorce, some more than once.

Newt Gingrich, former candidate for POTUS comes to mind. Someone like Newt still may not get the religious vote, but, even some Republican faithful churchgoers are divorced and remarried.

[pnwmom]

5. Those politicians could do that because they converted to Catholicism AFTER they remarried.

As Catholics, they couldn't divorce their current wives and remarry.

[merrily]

6. Unless the vatican granted an annulment. Or doesn't that happen after the

re-marriage?

[pnwmom]

7. Right, Merrily, I should have added that. They can divorce and remarry only in the Church if they

can get an annulment of their previous marriage.

Depending on the diocese, that can be harder or easier, and it can take a long time, often years. They want you to prove that you had never entered into a Christian marriage. So if your first marriage was by a Justice of the Peace, no problem. But if you were married in a Christian ceremony, then you're supposed to show that there was an impediment that prevented it from being a valid sacrament (like fraud on the part of one of the parties.)

[spiderpig]

2. Yay, Pope!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Both members of the Catholic League must be

pissed as hell. Well, maybe his wife not so much.