Ralph has been married for 22 years. His wife and four teen-age daughters are, like him, devout Catholics. But when the family goes to Mass together each Sunday, only his daughters receive Communion. Why? Ralph had an earlier, unsuccessful marriage, and when he remarried he was automatically excluded from the church's sacramental life. His wife is likewise barred from the sacraments because she is a baptized Catholic who has married a divorced man.
Ralph's case is hypothetical. But his plight is a reality for perhaps 5,000,000 American Catholics, many of whom have resolved the conflict by abandoning their faith. Others simply ignore the church's prohibition, continuing to receive the sacraments without official sanction. But there are also Catholics like Ralph who feel morally bound by the stern strictures of canon law and who would rather have a second-class citizenship in the church than none at all. To live this way, as one sympathetic diocesan official puts it, "you practically have to be a religious nut."
Deus Dux. One way out of the dilemma would be for Ralph and his wife to separate or seek the church's permission to live together platonically. (Since the church does not recognize his remarriage, conjugal relations between them are considered adulterous.) Another way would be for Ralph to try to get his first marriage annulled by church tribunals—a process that despite recent reforms may take years and entail a considerable outlay of money.
Since Vatican II, a number of U.S. dioceses have adopted formal procedures to readmit estranged Catholics to Communion without judging the validity of their existing marriage. One of the first to do so was Portland, Ore., where archdiocesan chancellor, Father Bertram Griffin, set up a so-called "good conscience" plan seven years ago. Says Griffin: "We were trying to bring canon law and pastoral practice together."
The Portland plan specified three criteria for readmission, which are similar to those used in other dioceses: the petitioning Catholic must deem his existing marriage stable and binding; the risk of scandal arising from the return of the petitioner to Communion must be minimal; finally, the petitioner must in "good conscience" believe that his former marriage was invalid. His reasons for this must be of the kind that are unprovable in church tribunals. Such cases would include those where the former spouse is accused of fraudulent intent and is unwilling to talk, or where he was homosexual or impotent and declined to undergo the required psychiatric or medical examinations.
The most recent diocese to adopt good-conscience procedures, Baton Rouge, La., has also become the scene of the innovation's undoing. In June, Bishop Robert Tracy announced that he was setting up a good-conscience committee to regularize the process of bringing certain remarried Catholics back to the sacraments. "The church has a pastoral responsibility of healing and forgiveness," the bishop said. "I trust this announcement will be met by all the people of our diocese with joy."