Dear Cardinal Pell,
In the lead-up to next month’s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family you and a number of your confreres are re-asserting the church’s longstanding exclusion of divorced and remarried people from communion.
Your foreword to The Gospel of the Family appears to leave us with little doubt: outsiders are not welcome.
The news, as reported by the current Tablet (http://www.thetablet.co.uk/UserFiles/Files/3_Letter_from_Fitzpatrick_to_Archbishop_Cushley.pdf)
of the behaviour of the CDF towards the Edinburgh Newman Circle makes for depressing and confusing reading.
In summary, the CDF responded to an anonymous complaint after a lecture given by Joe Fitzgerald, accusing him of challenging Church teaching on Original Sin. They made no contact with Joe, or with anyone who could give them a proper account of the lecture or of the book that Fitzpatrick has written outlining his views on the subject.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that all is not peaceful and happy in the upper echelons of the Vatican, and that the upcoming Synod on the Family is bringing things to a head. It is ironic that the conflict has centred around who should and should not go to Communion, considering that Jesus in his time caused great scandal by eating with ‘tax collectors and sinners’.
Two books are coming out in early October arguing vehemently that people who are divorced and remarried, or are in second relationships, should not be allowed to receive the Eucharist.
