Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s unfortunate assertion that the German bishops “cannot wait for a Synod” to approve Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics has drawn severe criticism from two other German cardinals. Clearly, there are significant divisions within the German hierarchy. Whenever a German bishop makes some outlandish claim that seems to undermine the Church, other German bishops take exception to it.
As well they should, of course, for the German Church is among the weakest and most secularized in the world. Unsurprisingly, then, Germany has become a flashpoint for changes in sacramental discipline which seem to sideline the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. In late 2013, for example, the Diocese of Freiburg in effect adopted the Kasper proposal of admitting contrite divorced and remarried Catholics to the Eucharist, while the Synod on the Family was only in its planning stages. The Vatican had to instruct the diocese to revise that policy.
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