It’s been a little while since I’ve written anything about the still-percolating issue of communion for Catholics who divorce and remarry without an annulment — with Pope Francis’s visit to the U.S. in September and the synod the following month, there will be ample opportunity for Catholic argument this fall — but I didn’t want to let this John Allen column slip too far into the past without highlighting its argument.
Basically, Allen is trying to throw a little practical, as opposed to theological, cold water on the idea that there is any kind of easy “pastoral solution” to the communion issue, and pointing out that there’s a reason why the church has a legal structure, the annulment process, for dealing with these kind of problems in the first place. Here’s a long excerpt from the piece:
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