By Mikael Corre
What does the church specifically say about divorced and remarried individuals? Are they still prohibited from receiving Communion or confession? This issue, which was hotly debated in Rome about a decade ago during the Synod on the Family, has since faded from the spotlight. Nevertheless, it remains a case study of how new norms are established under Pope Francis—in three steps.
“The ‘logic of integration is the key to their pastoral care’ for (…) divorced and remarried people,” Pope Francis told participants Nov 25 during an address to the academic community of the Pontifical Theological Institute “John Paul II” for Marriage and the Family Sciences. “Their presence in the church bears witness to the willingness to persevere in faith, despite the wounds of painful experiences,” he said, citing Amoris Laetitia, the 2016 apostolic exhortation released after the conclusion of the Synod on the Family.
Step 1: A call to discernment
In Chapter VIII, Paragraph 300, of this exhortation, the pope—intentionally refraining from offering “a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases”—wrote: Priests have the duty to “accompany in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the church and the guidelines of the bishop.” But what does this mean in practice?
Step 2: Local interpretation
On Sep 5, 2016, the bishops of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis’ former diocese, published their interpretation of this passage in a document titled “Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia.”
In this document, the Argentine bishops allowed, after a process of pastoral accompaniment, access to Communion and confession for divorced and remarried individuals. They also emphasized the need “to accompany the parish community to grow in a spirit of understanding and acceptance, without creating confusion about the church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.”
Step 3: Papal validation
Archbishop Sergio Alfredo Fenoy, a delegate for the Buenos Aires pastoral region, wrote to Pope Francis to present these new criteria. In his response, the pope affirmed: “The document is very good and fully explains the meaning of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations. I am confident it will do much good.”
In a pontifical rescript (equivalent to a decree) dated Jun 5, 2017, and signed by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, it was decreed: “The Sovereign Pontiff decrees that the two preceding documents (the Argentine bishops’ criteria and the pope’s letter) are to be published on the Vatican website and in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (the official journal of the Holy See) as authentic magisterium.” A new norm was thus established. No further clarification was deemed necessary.
By 2023, the question of divorced and remarried Catholics was removed from the working document of the Synod on Synodality. “Some of the issues raised during the consultation of the People of God concern topics on which there is already magisterial and theological development to refer to,” the Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, noted, citing “the integration of divorced and remarried persons, a topic addressed in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.” – La Croix International
