2002 Conference Speaker's Texts

"Divorced Catholics Need Our Pastoral Help to Remarry"

Presentation to the CTA Conference, November 2, 2002

by Charles N. Davis

As you can tell from Sr. Maureen Fiedler's gracious introduction, I have never darkened the door of a seminary, nor have I taken a class in theology.

But I think I have two credentials that give me a unique way of figuring out why we, as a church, are in the mess we are in on divorce and remarriage.

The first credential is that I have been through the divorce process not once, but twice. I am now well into my second decade of my third marriage. Through learning from life's experiences ,Äì and with God's grace being introduced to my extraordinarily talented and gracious third wife ,Äì my marriage is a very happy one. I have four children from my fist marriage and six grandchildren. And from my current marriage, a step-son and daughter in law,. I recently celebrated my 70th birthday and gathered all the family around including the mother of my four children. From my life's journey, I know the work that is required to ultimately achieve reconciliation ,Äì an important part of this talk.

Because of having arrived this far on my life's journey, I believe God has blessed this third marriage ,Äì or remarriage. It is not a first marriage because the first two were not annulled. I refused to participate in the annulment process because of its inherent hypocrisy but I receive the Eucharist with a clear conscience.

My second credential is that my intelligence career was spent analyzing Communist doctrine of the Soviet Union. As an old Benedictine professor said to me over lunch in Rome, "Charlie, the more you understand about the Vatican the more you understand about Moscow; and the more you understand about Moscow, the more you understand about the Vatican." Well, I retired in 1992 after the fall of Communism and no longer study its doctrines, but I am still working on analyzing Vatican doctrines.

What any intelligence analyst soon realizes is that doctrine, whether of secular communism, whether of Iranian fundamentalism of the late Ayahtola Khomaeni, or whether of the Catholic Church, is formulated to give a rationale to policies after the fact. As has happened so many times over history, doctrine is changed to legitimize whatever the particular ruling structure wants ,Äì Well the same criticism can be said about doctrine as St. Paul said about law: "the law is made for man, not man for the law. I say: doctrine is made for men and women, not men and women for doctrine.

In the past, we have had church doctrines that have upheld slavery, encouraged the persecution of the Jews, labeled women as inferior to men, asserted the superiority of celibacy and virginity to marriage and labeled sexual love in marriage as impure and unclean ,Äì a sin, even if undertaken for procreation. In the face of these previous, erroneous teachings by the male celibates of the church, it is no wonder that they also characterize remarriage, without an annulment, as a sin.

In our session today, "Divorced Catholics Need Our Pastoral Help to Remarry," I believe we cannot arrive at a way to help the divorced if they want to remarry without first understanding that we have gone through a turning point in how society views men and women but have yet to go through that same turning point in the church.

In society, we have moved from a hierarchical model, in which men were viewed as superior and having the final say in intimate relationships, to a co-equal model, with shared authority and responsibility. One person cannot be subordinate to another based on gender. This change has increased the divorce rate because spouses will no longer put up with the old model where one spouse would dominate and the other had to be submissive.

But in the church, it is clear that the hierarchy insists on maintaining dominance. The whole controversy that centers on the Vatican's insistence on revising the Dallas Agreement on zero tolerance of pedophile priests revolves around the role of the laity on diocesan review boards.

And we read in this morning's paper ,Surprise! Surprise! ,The laity will have only an advisory role. Thus, bishops, who have rejected intimate, personal relationships in their own lives, will not have to take the counsel of the laity on the pedophelia problem. They also will continue to make the rules on conduct in other personal relationships: Contraception, marriage, divorce, and gay and lesbian relationships.

How we got into the mess of having doctrines that enable dominance in the church must be examined before we understand the solutions to the problem of the hierarchy forbidding divorce and forbidding the remarried from taking communion.

In Part I, I will lay out what I believe are the blessings of marriage and committed, intimate, sexual relationships.

Part II will give some examples of the real damage caused by "hierarchical teachings" against divorce and requiring going through the annulment process for re-marriage.

Part III will discuss the poor theology that must be overcome to achieve the acceptance of remarriage.

Finally, in Part IV, until reform in the church advances to the acceptance remarriage, we must provide realistic alternatives and safe havens for the remarried as well as for other Catholics in irregular, intimate sexual relationships.
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Part I. The blessings of marriage and committed, intimate, sexual relationships. If you have a vocation to marriage and you have a spouse who deserts the marriage or otherwise acts in un-Christian ways, there is the need in the church to create ways to carry on that vocation with another person.

Now marriage is not for everyone and celibacy is fine for those who freely choose it. But celibacy should not be your only alternative if divorced, if you leave the priesthood, or if God created you gay or lesbian. To remarry you should not have to go through the hypocrisy of the annulment process.

There is a fundamental yearning in most of us to live in sexual intimacy with another. Ecclesiastes said it best for those in ordained ministry as well as in life: "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have the other to help. Again, if two lie together, they will keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will quickly withstand one" [Ecclesiastes 4: 9- 12]. I am not a theologian, therefore I cannot say that a good intimate relationship is a replication of the intimacy and mutual support that the Three Persons in one God give each other in the Trinity, but it seems logical. This basic yearning to be enjoined with another comes because in our maleness or femaleness we know that each, by ourselves is incomplete ,Äì we wish to couple our natures with our opposite so that as "two in one flesh" we can mirror the wholeness of God.

This model of the Holy Trinity that is replicated in a good marriage ,Äì that is: participation and intimate interaction with co-equal partners who share responsibility and decision-making ,Äì I believe is the model for the way we should image God.

Part II. The real damage caused by "hierarchical teachings" against divorce and requiring an annulment for re-marriage.

In this section, I am going to go back and forth between the hierarchy's need for dominance and discussions of marriage, remarriage, sexual love, and contraception ,Äì they are all intertwined.

In history, there are at least four major tragic events and factors that have resulted from the Vatican's prohibition of marriage for priests and remarriage for the laity. These are slavery for wives of priests, impoverishment of women, the need to be a participant in hypocrisy to obtain an annulment and, in some cases in those who might participate in the annulment process, severe psychological damage.

Slavery for wives of priests: Up until the 12th century, marriage was accepted in ordained ministry ,Äì in fact, some 39 popes, including St. Peter, were married. When marriage was outlawed for the clergy, priests not only had to divorce their wives, some spouses were sold into slavery. So much for the concept that we hear over and over today ,Äì that marriages are indissoluble. From the 12th to the 20th century, Divorce was forbidden and annulments were mainly available only to the aristocracy.
Impoverishment: For ordinary folk, the history of not allowing divorce is tragic. The cruelest story I have heard about the church's lack of compassion on the issue of remarriage comes from the English historian, Edward Keegan. He writes of four major naval engagements that changed world history. In the battle of Trafalgar, England's victory over the French and Spanish fleets in 1805, one of the factors that contributed to the defeat of the French was that, when their sailors were killed by an English broadside, the dead were not thrown over-board to enable the French ship to better survive and fight. The reason Keegan explains, was that a Catholic widow in France needed evidence of burial of her husband's body if she was to remarry ["The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare," Penguin Books USA, NY, 1989, pp. 86-87]. Can you picture the scene when That French warship came into port? Some wives rejoiced because their husbands were alive. Some wives grieved over their husband's dead body, but they could eventually remarry. But pity the poor women whose husband was missing; her fate was the worst. She has no husband to support her and she could not remarry for the church would take no one's word that he died. Well, one of the main reasons Christ railed against divorce was to prevent women from being thrown out into the street with no means of support. In this case, remarriage ,Äì the probable economic salvation of the woman - was forbidden by our hierarchy in the name of Christ. To bring this into perspective, if the hierarchy would still continue this heartless policy of the early 19th century, no one whose spouse was missing in the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in NY or the Pentagon in DC on 9/11 [2001] would be able to remarry, if their body could not be found. Since there are around 3,000 missing, this means the children of the surviving spouses would never be able to be brought up by two parents. What a violation of human rights.

Hypocrisy: Since the 1970s, while the criteria for annulments has been expanded, divorce is still condemned and there are persistent violations of human rights.

In 1972, Pope Paul VI issued new canonical norms for the granting of degrees of nullity. These considerably simplified the process leading to an annulment. In 1977, the hierarchy also lifted the penalty of ex-communication that had been. imposed on any Catholic who remarried without getting an annulment ,Äì while still forbidding those Catholics from receiving communion. To me, and I believe to most Catholics, this is a distinction without a difference - if you can't go to communion or receive the other sacraments, is this not the same as being excommunicated?

The new norms for annulment rested on psychological grounds such as the inability "of assuming the essential obligations of matrimony due to causes of psychological nature" [Canon Law 1095, # 3] These psychological factors include "emotional immaturity." Pierre Hegy and Edward Schillebeeckx have trenchant comments on granting annulments due to psychological factors ["Catholic Divorce: The Deception of Annulments," edited by Pierre Hegy and Joseph Martos, Continuum, NY, 2000].

,Ä¢ Hegy says: With such vague terms as "emotional immaturity" or "lack of empathy," any marriage can be annulled. "The Catholic Church has opened its gates to the pro-divorce culture" [p. 20].

Schillebeeckx . . . "would point to the judicial practice of many papal and episcopal marriage tribunals. Here also the reality of complete marriage breakdown appears to function as a possibility, for a second marriage, whether by cunning or formal circumventions. . .yet juridically [marital breakdown] does not function as a ground for the dissolution of marriage. . Marital breakdown in Rome and diocesan churches is in fact a fundamental reason for looking for holes in the juridical net [for the happiness and harmony of the people involved], in order to declare the marriage invalid for reasons that may be irrelevant. . ." [Schillebeeckx, p.88].

Despite Pope Paul VI's change in the criteria for allowing annulments on psychological grounds, Pope John Paul II remains draconian on forbidding divorce.

We laity reject the hierarchy's prohibition against divorce and avoid an annulment process that is based on psychological factors. Many of us believe that while the revised annulment process is an attempt to be pastoral, it is highly flawed. Instead of re-examining the criteria, the Vatican attempts to provide relief from an unjust prohibition by not changing the prohibition against divorce and remarriage. There are two major reasons to vigorously object to the annulment process.

First: The process can result in "intense shaming to yourself your own family and your closest friends. Here are the types of questions that a typical applicant for an annulment must respond to:

"Describe the type of family from which you came, indicating in detail any unhappiness in childhood and adolescence which stemmed from your family circle, i.e., unstable marriage of parents, dominance of one parent over the other, divorce of parents, special problems such as drinking, infidelity, over strictness, significant deaths or illnesses or unhappy experiences, mental or emotional difficulties."

"Describe the role played by your family, friends, school, and church in the formation of your sexual understanding and attitude. Would you describe yourself as being well prepared for sexuality in marriage?" Parenthetically, one must ask, how can a person be "well prepared for sexuality in marriage" when sexual love before marriage is forbidden in the church?

"Briefly evaluate your own personality profile [i.e., inferiority or superiority complex, sensitivity, judgment, temper, moodiness, selfishness, sense of confidence, responsibility, honesty, erratic or unpredictable conduct: your strengths and weaknesses]." Give the same description of your former spouse."

Describe any significant physical or emotional mistreatment that was part of your marriage."

Severe psychological damage: The second major reason to vigorously object to the annulment process is that participation in the process can result in severe psychological damage. At Parris Island, the Marine Corps recruit training base in SC, the Marines make available a pamphlet through their Community Services called: "Getting Over a Violent Relationship." That pamphlet warns of what they call "Triggers." "Triggers are those situations that make you remember and relive the worst of your relationship." Well, if you were recovering from spousal abuse, would you want to spend hours and hours answering the Tribunals questions? The kind of questions that the Tribunal asks are just the kind of questions most likely "to make you remember and relive the worst of your relationship."

There are other major difficulties to the annulment process as well.

For example: How do you respond to your child who asks: "Daddy, if the church says your marriage to Mommy was sacramentally invalid, does not that make me a bastard?

It is not the bishop who has to try to explain that the marriage was valid in the eyes of the state "but it was not valid" that is "not sacramental" in the eyes of God. If God does not view the marriage as sacramental, bishop, how does God view the offspring of that marriage?

If you, in the audience, like me, had a number of children and your marriage fell apart after 18 years, are you subsequently going to say to your children that your marriage is not sacramental?

Conversely, if you remarry without an annulment, the hierarchy says the church welcomes you but will not serve you communion. Bishop, how welcome would feel if, you were invited to a dinner party, but the host refused to serve you while others were seated at the dinner table?

Besides the aspects of shaming and the risk of triggering memories of spousal abuse, there are other dark sides to the annulment process.

Some people try to manipulate the process to wreak concessions from their former spouses. In a divorce a good lawyer can protect you. In an annulment, Canon Law provides no such protection.

Those who participate claim that hearsay is almost encouraged. Moreover, there is no cross-examination of the testimony of witnesses. There is little objectivity. Marriage Tribunals seem geared to facilitating an annulment rather than "defending the bond of marriage."

The former Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, said that Catholics "simply do not understand the theology behind them [annulments], even after lengthy explanations of the church's practice and reasoning in this regard. They consider it to borrow on dishonesty and casuistry of the worst kind" [America Magazine, April 18, 1997].

Although most American Catholics are probably unaware of the Archbishop's description of annulments, they have instinctively internalized for themselves what the Archbishop said. Almost 50 percent of Catholics find themselves to be divorced and most remarry ,Äì but only around 10 percent seek an annulment.

Gallup surveys show that a large majority of American Catholics believe they can be faithful to the teachings of Christ without having their divorce and remarriage approved by the church. In other words, Catholics have too much integrity to go through the hypocrisy of the annulment process. Against the "teachings of the hierarchy," lay Catholics follow their conscience.

Part III: The poor theology that must be overcome to achieve the acceptanceof remarriage.

The types of psychological cruelty the hierarchy currently requires forremarriage were not the way of the church in its first 1100 years whenbishops and popes were themselves married.

Various councils and synods allowed divorce and remarriage ,Äì primarily incases of desertion, adultery or if one of the spouses entered a religiousorder.

In the year 325, the Council of Nicea said: That those who belonged to a sect[probably like today's Opus Dei] had to promise in writing to accept theteaching of the Catholic Church before they could be reconciled with thechurch. Specifically, the sect had to agree to live in communion with thosewho had been married twice [Lawler, Michael G., "Marriage and the CatholicChurch: Disputed Questions," A Michael Glazier Book, The Liturgical Press,Collegeville, MN, 2002, p. 97].

The historian, Joseph Martos [who holds an S.T.B from the PontificalGregorian Univ. in Rome], writes that some 400 yeas later. . ."Pope GregoryII in 726 advised Boniface, the missionary bishop to Germany, that if a wifewere too sick to perform her wifely duty [sic] it was best that her husbandpractice continence but, if this were impossible he might have another wifeprovided he took care of the first one" ["Doors to the Sacred: A HistoricalIntroduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church," revised edition, p. 369]..

The factors that caused the tradition of the church to change that previouslyhad accepted divorce and remarriage. In the 12th century the teachingchanged so marriages were indissoluble except on the death of one of thepartners. The factors that overcame the earlier compassionate approachincluded a misinterpretation by St. Augustine of St. Paul. In Ephesians 5:32,Paul spoke metaphorically about the mysterious union of Christ and the Church- not literally about the marriage bond. Augustine interpreted this to meanthere was a sacred bond between husband and wife that could only be dissolvedby death, He argued that Christians should be faithful to an originalmarriage even if the other partner was faithful. Martos asks whether it isnecessary or even possible to hold the bond of marriage as indissoluble: "ametaphysical entity which cannot be broken except by the death of one of thespouses?" He asks, is the indissolubility of marriage not more of a moralideal rather than a divine law? He says it seems to have been a moral idealat the time of Jesus and during the first centuries of Christianity [p. 391]..

By 1139 Pope Gregory VII influenced the Second Lateran Council to makemarriage of clerics unlawful and invalid. Married priests were declared to beliving in sin. To my mind, this cut the clergy off from the direct experienceof marriage and ultimately led to the prohibition of divorce.

According to Martos, the early Christian approach of allowing divorce andremarriage, however, still lives on in the Orthodox Church. Remarriage isrecognized as real, although not sacramental. A second marriage does notsymbolize the union between Christ and the Church and those who remarry areallowed to receive the sacraments.

This approach is not only compassionate, it is necessary for our Catholichierarchy to adopt if Rome is ever going to reconcile with the Orthodox andProtestant Churches.

How do we return the church to its original stance of compassion?

It won't be done in the short run without a return to other early traditionsof the church such as married popes and bishops and elected, rather thanappointed bishops.

Marriage and election are the keys to enabling the bishops to get in touchwith how many Vatican directives are adversely affecting the lives of hefaithful.

To prepare the way we must keep chipping away at the poor theology thatcondemns divorce and condemns remarriage without annulment ,Äì much astheologians are doing in the area of women's ordination.

Over the last 20 years, the Vatican has issued three major condemnations ofremarriage based on poor theology: Pope John Paul's 1981 apostolicexhortation, Familiaris consortio, the 1994 letter of the Congregation forthe Doctrine of the Faith [known as the CDF] and, in 2000, a Declaration bythe Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts. These allexplicitly rule out communion for the divorced and remarried who have notbeen granted an annulment.

The 1994 letter from the CDF arose out of an exchange of letters between theCDF and three German bishops [two of whom the pope elevated to therank of Cardinal in 2001]. The German bishops say they were not trying tooverturn Vatican doctrine but were making a case for responsible use ofpastoral flexibility. In an article entitled, "Divorce and Remarriage," inthe English magazine, THE TABLET, 10/29/94, the moral theologian, Kevin Kellysays: Theologically, the 1994 letter of the CDF declares that the secondmarriage of a divorced person "objectively contradicts" the union of lovebetween Christ and the church signified by the Eucharist. And, pastorally,the CDF claims that the reception of the Eucharist by such a person would bea source of scandal, since the impression would be given that the church doesnot believe in the indissolubility of marriage. It also repeats the solutionsthat Pope John Paul II had previously made, namely: separation of theremarried parties or, when this is impossible, living together "as brotherand sister," without expressing love in sexual intimacy.

In his critique, Kelly says the CDF pastoral argument about scandal is anargument from consequences. The CDF asserts that the reception of Communionby someone who is divorced and remarried would weaken the witness of theChurch to the indissolubility of marriage. Kelly says, no empirical evidenceis offered to prove the truth of this assertion. Hence, [the argument]carries no more weight than the opposite assertion that an across-the-boarddenial of the sacraments to divorced people who have remarried gives scandalby weakening the witness of the church to the compassion and forgiveness ofChrist and its healing mission to those who have been wounded on theirjourney through life.

Kelly goes on to address the two solutions suggested by the CDF He says theytend to be received by theologians with some incredulity and are rejected asimpractical for the majority of the couples concerned:

"Separation of the spouses into separate households," in most instanceswould create a further injustice since the second marriage carries with itnew responsibilities [such as the care of children born into the secondmarriage].

As for "living together as brother and sister. . ." this solution seemsto imply that the heart of marriage, according to the Vatican, lies in sexualintercourse rather than in the whole loving relationship of a shared lifetogether. Kelly humorously adds: "Unless a couple had a "brother and sister"logo on their doorpost, neighbors and fellow parishioners would be none thewiser and so the alleged scandal, of which the CDF seems to be concerned,would presumably still be given.

There are other alternative approaches: To my mind, the best is to go back tothe tradition of divorce and remarriage of the early church.

A second approach, recommended by Michael G. Lawler, is to examine thecriteria for a valid marriage. That is: "When does consummation take place?"

Marriage is a life-long journey - to insist that, after vows are pronounced,one instance of sexual love forever binds a couple who are not truly bondeduntil after years of marriage - stretches credulity to the extreme. For thehierarchy to insist that it does is to fly in the face of reality.

Only after a couple is truly bonded do they achieve indissolubility. Ofcourse, after they are truly bonded there is very little need for divorce.And before they are truly bonded, divorce should be ipso facto evidence thatthey were never truly a couple. In that case the current annulment processwould no longer be necessary.

Ideally, cannon lawyers should get out of the annulment racket. MarriageTribunals could be abolished. Divorce and remarriage should be handledpastorally at the parish level.

Another solution advocated by Lawler is for the hierarchy to acknowledge whatthe laity have already internalized ,Äì remarriage without an annulment is NOTa grave sin.

As we know from our Catechism to commit a grave sin requires full awarenessthat what one is doing is an objectively grave matter. Well, we laity haveexamined the problem for a long time and like members of the Protestant andOrthodox Churches we do not consider remarriage "an objectively gravematter." And, no matter how many times our male, celibate hierarchy tells usit is so, we continue to reject their assertions.

Lawler says: "No minister of the church should assume the state of mind ofthose asking for communion and no pronouncement of any Roman dicastry can barthem from communion to which they are entitled by faith and law.

Such a solution reflects the ancient Catholic tradition called "The Doctrineof Reception." Hermann I Pottmeyer, Professor of Fundamental Theology inGermany wrote in "The.HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism" [generaleditor: Richard P. McBrien, HarperCollins, NY, 1995, p. 1081]: "Receptiondoes not legitimate or validate the decision of the ecclesial teachingoffice. It is the confirming witness of the sense of the faith by the Peopleof God regarding a decision's truth and serviceableness. When non-receptionoccurs, those responsible for the decision need to examine the reasons forthe lack of acceptance. "Regarding the infallibility of the teaching office,the Second Vatican Council says: 'The assent of the Church can never belacking to such definitions on account of the Holy Spirit's influence,through which Christ's whole flock is maintained in the unity of the faithand makes progress in it' [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, n. 25]. 'Anexample of non-reception or partial reception is the anti-birth controlencyclical Humanae Vitae [1968] by [Pope] Paul VI. The great majority ofCatholics do not accept the teaching that the use of artificial means toprevent conception is always morally wrong . . .'"

Part IV: Until remarriage is accepted, we must provide realistic alternativesand safe havens for the remarried as well as for other Catholics inirregular, intimate sexual relationships.

What are practical short term solutions?

The simplest is to do nothing. Many pastors and some bishops do not enforcethe denial of communion to the remarried.

As a substitute for an annulment, many people [and some priests] recommendwhat is called the "Internal Forum Solution." Fr. Richard P. McBrien saysthose Catholics who find the public annulment process to be impossible, dueto excessive emotional strain of the lack of cooperation from one's formerspouse and/or witnesses can turn to "the internal forum." He describes theinternal forum as follows: "A Catholic, after consultation with a confessor.. .concludes he or she is free to marry again, or that he or she can remainin the present second marriage. In either case, the Catholic party makes ajudgment of conscience that he or she can return to the church's sacramentallife [McBrien, "Catholicism," Winston Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1980, pp.796-797].

Today, however, the pope prohibits use of the "internal forum."

Nonetheless, if your remarriage is working, then follow St. Paul and "live inpeace." If forced by your local pastor to choose between receiving communionand living in intimacy in remarriage, tell him why we Catholic laity chooseto live in intimacy. To us, our loved ones are the "real," real presence andChrist comes to us through our remarriage in the form of our new spousecreated in God's image and likeness. When forced to consider receivingChrist in the Eucharist vs. living in intimacy with another Christ in theform of your new spouse, most divorced Catholics choose their new spouse.

Challenge your pastor to justify why we should, at best, have to go through"intense shaming" in the annulment process and, at worst, bring back memoriesthat trigger reactions that set back our recovery from the trauma of a firstmarriage. The burden should be on the clerical priest to explain why heinsists on enforcing the annulment system, not on you.

If you have to go through such an experience makes you aware that your pastoris clueless; you should around for another parish.

If you cannot find a parish with a compassionate priest, join a small faithcommunity and partake in the Eucharist with friends. For liturgicalcelebrations with an ordained Catholic priest there are a number of Catholicgroups [obviously not sanctioned by the hierarchy] that provide solace: Theseinclude:

CORPUS:: CORPUS Member Services,570-296-4327, E-mail: corpusbase@aol.com

Federation of Christian Ministries [FCM]: Sr. Bridget Mary Meehan, President,e-mail: info@federationofchristianministries.org1-800-538-8923 Website: www.federationofchristianministries.org

Celibacy is the Issue [CITI]: Louise Haggett, Presidente-mail: Lhaggett@aol.comWebsite of CITI Ministries www.cybercatholiccommunity.com P.O Box 2850 Framingham, MA 01703 Tel/fax: 508-788-0385

CITI has also published a pamphlet: "Pastoral Care for Catholics"

The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church [ARCC] also has apamphlet: "Remarriage in the Church After Divorce: Pastoral Solutions" ARCC's address is: P.O. Box 912 Delran, NJ 08075

Finally, do not give up on the Holy Spirit. My namesake, the famous Britishborn theologian Charles Davis left the church after the Encyclical condemningbirth control was published in 1968. He said: "the church was irreformably corrupt." I say, it is certainly corrupt but we have to stick with it andhelp it to reform.

As evidence of the Spirit, I note the following:

In July, 1993, the bishops of the Upper Rhine province in Germany issued astatement of pastoral principles. In their statement they outlined adifferentiated pastoral approach by which some civilly divorced and remarriedCatholics, whose subjective state had not been judged to be gravely sinfulafter serious discussion with a competent pastor, might be allowed to shareHoly Communion. The approach suggested by the bishops was not a blanketapproach by which every civilly and remarried Catholic could share communion;it was a differentiated, case-by-case approach by which some Catholics, incertain situations and under some conditions, could be permitted to sharecommunion. Despite this pleading, in September, 1994, the Congregation forthe Doctrine of the Faith [CDF] issued a response to the German bishops whichstrongly affirmed the exclusion of divorced and remarried Catholics from HolyCommunion."

One of the German bishops who issued the statement the CDF condemned wasWalter Kasper. He now serves in the Vatican as Cardinal Walter Jasper,president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Obviouslythe Spirit is moving. Give her time. Give her a helping hand. Thank you.