VATICAN CITY
Omaha.com
POSTED: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2014
Associated Press |
VATICAN CITY — From his living room overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Cardinal Walter Kasper doesn’t come off as a figure at the center of one of the greatest storms swirling in Catholicism in decades.
The German theologian said he fully expected the knives would come out when, at Pope Francis’ request, he made a suggestion that challenged a deep church taboo and has dominated debate ahead of the meeting on Catholic family life that opens today.
The issue is not abortion, contraception or same-sex marriage. It is the fate of Catholics who divorce, and the outcome will be a key test of Francis’ reform agenda.
Delivering a speech to a closed meeting of cardinals in February, Kasper suggested that Catholics who remarry without annulment — a church declaration that the first marriage was invalid and thus never existed — might receive Holy Communion after a period of penance.
Church teaching holds that without annulment these Catholics are living in sin and thus ineligible to receive the sacraments.
Based on the mudslinging the remarks set off between church liberals and conservatives, outside observers might have thought that Kasper had proposed that women be ordained as priests.
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