UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet
24 March 2015 by Christopher Lamb, Abigail Frymann Rouch
Cardinal Vincent Nichols has rebuked the almost 500 priests in England and Wales who have signed a letter resisting any change to church teaching at the Vatican’s next Synod on the Family, saying that discussions around the Synod are “not best conducted through the press”.
The 461 priests were responding to two letters, seen by The Tablet and now to be published in the Catholic Herald, sent by a group of a dozen conservative-minded clergy. As The Tablet first reported, the first letter was a draft to be submitted for publication in the press, while the second, signed by the 12 clergy, set out the reasons for agreeing to the first.
The first letter urges those who will participate in October’s synod of bishops to end the “confusion” that was caused at last year’s gathering, where some bishops put forward ways for the Church to be more welcoming to gay Catholics as well as for remarried divorcees to receive Communion. The letter states fidelity to the Church’s traditional doctrines of marriage and sexuality, and affirmed the traditional discipline of the reception of the sacraments (which bars Communion for the divorced and remarried).
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