http://directionstoorthodoxy.org/mod/ne ... le_id=6744
Divorce is not sinful, former top canonist says
Vatican, Jan. 13 (CWNews.com) - Divorce is not a sin, an outspoken former Vatican official has told an Italian newspaper.
"In itself, divorce is not a sin, and in certain cases it could even be recommended, to resolve patrimonial or civil problems," Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda told the daily La Stampa. Until his retirement in May 2004 at the age of 75, Cardinal Pompedda was the Vatican's top judicial official, as prefect of the supreme tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.
With his remarks to La Stampa Cardinal Pompedda came to the support of Spanish Jesuits who had recently suggested that the Church should allow Catholics who are divorced and remarried to receive Communion.
The Italian prelate had been asked to comment on an article that appeared in a Spanish Jesuit journal in December, in which Father Eduardo Lopez Azpitarte argued that Catholics who encounter marital difficulties are often treated harshly by the Church. The Jesuit author argued that divorce is not a sin, and that Catholics who divorce and remarry are not excommunicated.
Cardinal Pompedda supported that view. The cardinal-- speaking with some authority, since he had once been the Vatican's top canon-law official-- said that there is no provision in canon law requiring the excommunication of someone who remarries despite an earlier valid union. He argued that "the principle of the indissolubility of marriage does not prevent us from regarding divorce as licit."
Although the Church does not recognize divorce, the cardinal said, the Code of Canon Law does allow for the separation of married couples. In some cases, he continued, there are legal complications that "simple separation cannot resolve." Those cases justify civil divorce, he concluded.
The question of whether Catholics should be allowed to receive Communion after divorce and remarriage has prompted some intense debate in recent years. The Vatican has consistently answered in the negative, upholding the traditional teaching that a valid marriage can never be set aside, and a second union is therefore adulterous. In October, after a lively discussion of the issue, the Synod of Bishops affirmed the existing norm, barring remarried Catholics from the Eucharist.
Nevertheless, opinions on the controversial issue appear divided even within the Roman Curia. Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has argued in the past for allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Shortly after the conclusion of the October Synod, Cardinal Kasper said that he did not think the question was closed, despite the Synod's statement. His public statement drew a rebuke from Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, who said that any suggestion the Church might change her invariable teaching was "unacceptable." The Synod "left no doubt about the doctrine of the Church," Cardinal Lopez Trujillo observed.
Cardinal Pompedda himself has been a figure of controversy in the months since his retirement from the Apostolic Signatura. In February 2005, as Pope John Paul II faced his final illness, the Italian cardinal raised some eyebrows by suggesting that the Roman Curia should have greater authority to work without the Pope's oversight. In September, after Pope Benedict met with leaders of the Society of St. Pius X, Cardinal Pompedda ruffled feathers once again by saying that many members of the traditionalist group refuse to recognize the validity of papal elections. Later in the year the former canonical judge said that he was sympathetic to a proposal for recognition of civil unions in Italy, and argued that it is not necessarily sinful to vote for a political candidate who supports legal abortion.