Pope Francis asked the bishops of Germany to continue working together to find broader consensus on guidelines for allowing a Protestant married to a Catholic to receive the Eucharist. “Pope Francis appreciates the ecumenical commitment of the German bishops and asks them to find, in a spirit of ecclesial communion, a result as unanimously as possible,” the German bishops were told, according to a Vatican statement.
The Pope had invited six German bishops and the general secretary of the bishops’ conference to Rome for a May 3 meeting with top officials from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
A German bishop has said he believes Pope Francis has given a clear nod of approval to the German episcopal conference’s controversial proposal which would allow some Protestant spouses to receive Holy Communion.
But Cardinal Willem Eijk, the Archbishop of Utrecht, Holland, said the statement was “completely incomprehensible” as the Church’s doctrine and practice is “perfectly clear.” By failing to create clarity, “great confusion is created among the faithful and the unity of the Church is endangered,” he said, adding that he was reminded of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which warns of a “religious deception” that offers man “an apparent solution” at the “price of apostasy from the truth.”
In February, the Vatican statement said, “more than three-quarters of the members” of the German bishops’ conference approved a “pastoral handbook titled, ‘Walking with Christ — In the Footsteps of Unity: Mixed Marriages and Common Participation in the Eucharist.’”
Pope Francis invited leaders of the bishops’ conference and some of the bishops opposed to the guidelines to come to the Vatican for a discussion with officials from the three offices. “Various points of view were discussed; for example, how the question relates to the faith and to pastoral care, its relevance for the universal church and its juridical dimension,” the Vatican statement said, without providing further details.
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, one of the seven German bishops who objected to the conference guidelines, participated in the meeting at the Vatican May 3. In his letter to the Vatican, which prompted the meeting, he had asked whether the guidelines were not simply pastoral, but went to the heart of Catholic faith and practice, and whether the German guidelines could have a wider impact on the question of eucharistic hospitality in countries around the world.
