Cathal BarryIreland’s most senior Churchman has rejected calls for more decision-making power about Church teaching to be given to local bishops’ conferences.
Archbishop Eamon Martin also said he struggles to envisage how the Church could lift its ban on Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics while remaining faithful to its teachings on marriage and the Eucharist.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic from Rome where he is participating in the Synod of Bishops on the theme of the family, Archbishop Eamon insisted that he did not support “the idea that somehow it’s up to individual bishops’ conferences to interpret the teaching of the Church”.
“I think if we are part of a universal teaching Church, then we do have a very clear vision for marriage and the family and I don’t think that should be subject to interpretation at the level of individual episcopal conferences,” the Primate of All-Ireland warned.
Admitting he found it “difficult to be able to reconcile the idea” of Communion for remarried divorcees with the “understanding in the Church of the indissolubility of marriage” as well as the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist “as being in communion with the Church and what the Church stands for”, Archbishop Eamon insisted there remained a need to “reach out” to couples and families who feel excluded from the Church.
“I do believe that there is very much room, even in a country like Ireland, to engage with couples whose marriages have perhaps not worked out despite their very best intentions, to make them feel welcome in the Church.
“We could be much more welcoming to couples and families who perhaps feel excluded completely to the life of the Church, because of what they perceive as the Church’s judgement of them. I think there is an awful lot of room in that for us to show a more welcoming and Christ-like pastoral approach,” he said.
Meanwhile, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told the synod that Ireland in the wake of the same-sex marriage referendum is still marked by a “very strong family culture”.
In his personal intervention, the Archbishop of Dublin insisted that it was too simplistic to infer that an authentic Christian culture of marriage has disappeared in Ireland on the basis of the referendum outcome.
“The numbers who get married – and who get married in Church – are high and divorce statistics are among the lowest in Europe. Families are strong and generous. That has not changed substantially,” he said.
Full interview: http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/%E2%80%98mistake%E2%80%99-overlook-abuse-%E2%80%93-primate