The latest Vatican statement on "Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried" said nothing new, but its restatement of official doctrine has infuriated many Catholics.

The concluding document from a Jan. 22-25 assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family was couched in the language of pastoral empathy, but what made headlines was its reassertion that for divorced Catholics without an annulment, there must be no sex in any new relationship, even a marriage. The Chicago Sun-Times quoted CTA President Linda Pieczynski saying that the Vatican statement would "lead to a lot of hurt and misunderstanding as people try to make sense of their relation with the church and with each other." She said CTA knows the church's official position on divorce, but is concerned that the rules are "unpastoral" and that sex is "the glue that keeps relationships together." There is a great disparity, she said, between the rules and how they are carried out at the parish level.

COR addresses remarriage
Ironically, the negative publicity for the Vatican statement in the U.S. media helped call attention to a very different document. At a meeting of Catholic Organizations for Renewal Feb. 7-9 in Virginia, 20 COR groups signed a statement developed by Catholics Speak Out and CORPUS. It calls for "a restoration of the tradition of the first 1100 years that allowed divorce and remarriage in appropriate circumstances." It also asserts that "the present policy on annulments is not helpful because it imposes needless burdens on the faithful and forces many to violate their consciences."

A March 3 feature article in the Los Angeles Times about the Vatican pronouncement also reported on the COR statement, and quoted its principal drafter, Charlie Davis, a Catholics Speak Out board member and a leader of CTA/Northern Virginia. Davis recounted how he refused to go through the annulment process before he remarried more than 20 years ago, and discovered that priests differ on how to handle the rules. "My priest friends said, 'Do what your conscience dictates,'" Davis says. "Then another priest told me it was not valid." Davis went with the first opinion. "A Catholic priest performed the wedding ceremony for me and my second wife."