Cardinal Müller’s ingenious détente

Cardinal Müller’s ingenious détente 

The Tablet

01 November 2017

Divorce and remarriage

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the recently departed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has offered an ingenious way to reconcile Pope Francis with his critics. In an introduction to a book to be published later this month, he argues that the papal document Amoris Laetitia does not, as is commonly supposed, lift the automatic ban on all divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion. Hence, he says, Amoris Laetitia is in line with traditional church teaching, which insists that any Catholic whose first marriage was valid but who has divorced and married again in a civil ceremony is committing adultery and hence is in a state of mortal sin. Catholics in this situation are not entitled to absolve themselves by an exercise of conscience.

But there is a twist to all this. Cardinal Müller then proceeds to describe conditions under which some may after all receive Holy Communion. He concentrates on cases where the previously married partner has good reason to doubt the sacramental validity of the first marriage, and good reason to believe that the second marriage was a marriage in the sight of God. Such a person may not be objectively in a state of mortal sin, he says. He also points to cases where ignorance of the requirements for a valid marriage and widespread failure to comply, even among baptised Catholics, could render the first marriage non-sacramental.
Cardinal Müller also takes account of the fact that proving invalidity before a canon law tribunal may not always be possible. Despite the absence of a church annulment, he implies, a person may not necessarily be barred from Communion. Cardinal Müller knows very well that the Church’s traditional ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion is widely ignored. That is not the issue he is addressing here. He has in mind conservative opponents of Pope Francis, such as the 62 who signed a letter of protest and Cardinal Raymond Burke, who with three other cardinals signed a dubia or statement of doubt. Müller argues that there is a way of reading Amoris Laetitia that both leaves open the door for the divorced and remarried to be admitted to Communion in some circumstances, and satisfies those critics who claim that any such practice defies the Church’s unchanging teaching.
This may sound like a game of theological chess, remote from the real lives of ordinary people. And the critics of Pope Francis are unlikely to be so easily mollified. The difficulty that Cardinal Müller ignores is that John Paul II has already ruled out his proposed solution. In his 1981 document Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II recognised the grounds that Cardinal Müller refers to, but still maintained the ban on Holy Communion. Such couples, he writes, “are unable to be admitted thereto, from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradicts that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist”. In other words, for John Paul II, it does not matter whether they are in good faith or not.
Cardinal Müller refers to Familiaris Consortio but does not quote this passage. Neither does Pope Francis. It is as if those words are being quietly airbrushed from Catholic teaching. Would it not be more honest to say so?