Catholic Church May Allow Divorcees Receive Holy Communion

The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is bracing for open
conflict over its treatment of remarried divorcees as powerful
conservatives mobilise ahead of a highly anticipated summit called by
Pope Francis for next month,The Guardianreports.

Ever since he announced the extraordinary session of the synod of
bishops last year, the Argentinian pontiff has raised the hopes of
many liberals that the church may ease its ban on divorced and
remarried Catholics receiving holy communion - a move that could
affect millions of people around the world.

In February, in an address setting the scene for the meeting due to
start on 5 October, German cardinal Walter Kasper outlined the case
for a loosening of the rules that would eventually allow some people
access to the sacraments after a period of "penance".

But his views are by no means shared by all the so-called princes of
the church, some of whom are taking a harder line on the thorny issue
and insisting that such a proposal would, in effect, violate the
doctrine on the permanence of marriage.

It emerged on Wednesday that five leading conservative cardinals have
collaborated on a book to be published simultaneously on 1 October in
the United States, Italy, Spain, France and Germany in which they make
clear their opposition to Kasper's vision.

"It [Kasper's proposal] is being talked about as a form of not
recognising the second marriages of divorced and remarried Catholics,
but simply looking past them, of tolerating them, and allowing those
individuals who are Catholics under certain circumstances... to go to
confession and subsequently to go to communion on a regular basis. We
oppose that solution as a false form of mercy and we're united on
that," editor Robert Dodaro told the Guardian. "It's false mercy in
the sense that it ignores the status of the original marriage, which
we believe to be indissoluble."