Just after the news about Pope Francis’ support of more liberalizing approaches to the “remarried” question in Argentina and in Rome, news is now coming to us from Germany that other elements of the Catholic Church are moving in the same direction. Stephan Burger, Archbishop of Freiburg, Germany, has just announced that he expects the German Bishops’ Conference soon to allow Communion for the “remarried” throughout Germany. Katholisch.de, the official website of the German Bishops’ Conference reports on this same news today:
Stephan Burger, the Archbishop of Freiburg, expects a document of the German Bishops concerning marriage and the family and concerning the Church’s dealing with the remarried divorcees. The Bishops’ Conference has seen it as its task to pick up on Pope Francis’ recent explanations and to make them more concrete, said Burger to the Diocesan newspaper Konradsblatt in Karlsruhe.
More importantly, moreover, Burger says that Pope Francis himself wants to allow Communion for the “remarried,” as Katholisch.de also reports:
An essential point of the papal document concerning marriage and the family (Amoris Laetitia) is, in the eyes of Burger, that Francis himself wants to make free the path for the remarried to receive Holy Communion. This is, in individual cases, possible after an ‘in-depth examination and formation of conscience and after a pastoral accompaniment.’ The Archbishop stressed that ‘life is too complicated in order to have at hand a clear and unequivocal solution for everybody and everything.’
Katholisch.de rightly reminds its readers that the Diocese of Freiburg has already allowed, “for several years now, the giving out of Communion to remarried divorcees and to admit them to the Sacrament of Penance in individual cases.” However, in 1993, the Vatican had condemned a similar decision made by the German Dioceses of Freiburg, Rottenburg-Stuttgart and Mainz.
Nonetheless, since the papacy of Pope Francis, things have changed. It is to be expected that Archbishop Burger is correct and that the German Bishops’ Conference will soon publish its own guidelines which will be most probably similar to the laxer standards of some of the Argentine bishops with regard to the question of Communion for the “remarried.” The Francis Revolution keeps showing its disastrous effects. Another example of just how damaging the effects of this papacy actually are can be seen in a report by the Italian journalist Marco Tosatti. He reports today that the Belgian Bishop Johan Bonny – appointed by Pope Francis himself – has now proposed in the form of an indirect question “whether it would not be possible to establish a new rite to celebrate homosexual unions as well as cohabiting couples.”
