Cardinal Kasper's 50 Percent

I’ve referred a couple of times to Cardinal Walter Kasper’s very interesting interview with Commonweal Magazine, in which the prelate/theologian discussed the proposals on communion for remarried Catholics that (apparently with a papal blessing) he’s been promoting in advance of the looming Synod of Bishops, which is dedicated to family life and scheduled for this fall. This is going to be the first of two posts on his argument; the second — which won’t be forthcoming till next week at the earliest, I expect — will deal with the communion-for-the-remarried proposal itself, but first I want to address the frame he puts around his ideas, and particular his claim that a truly remarkable number of contemporary marriages may actually be, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, invalid.

Here is a passage from the interview, with the interviewer’s question first, then part of Kasper’s answer: