The bishops of Malta have issued guidelines allowing for people living in “irregular” unions to receive Communion.
In a new 35-page document dealing specifically with implementation of the section of the papal exhortation Amoris Laetitia on divorced-and-remarried Catholics (Chapter VIII), the bishops go beyond the language of the exhortation to stress to their priests that it may be impossible to deny Communion to such Catholics if they believe themselves to be “at peace with God”.
Process
“If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with ‘humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it’ a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”
Further, in answer to a previous call for remarried Catholics to abstain from sexual activity so as to be allowed receive Communion, the Maltese guidelines insist “there are complex situations where the choice of living ‘as brothers and sisters’ becomes humanly impossible and give rise to greater harm”.
In an introduction to the guidelines on the website of the Malta diocese, the bishops state: “Although [divorced-remarried Catholics] may have lost their first marriage, some of these persons have not lost their hope in Jesus. Some of these earnestly desire to live in harmony with God and with the Church, so much so, that they are asking us what they can do in order to be able to celebrate the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”
Significantly, the Maltese document, co-authored by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna, a former Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been republished in the Vatican’s own newpaper, L’Osservatore Romano, suggesting a seal of approval for it in Rome.
The Maltese document can be read in full at www.thechurchinmalta.org/en/
