Vatican responds to Czech cardinal’s dubia on divorced and remarried Catholics
October 03, 2023
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CWN Editor's Note: The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has published an Italian-language response to ten questions posed by Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague on the pastoral care of Catholics who have remarried outside the Church.
Though he retired in 2022, Cardinal Duka sent the dubia on July 10, 2023, on behalf of the Czech episcopal conference. Pope Francis assented to the Dicastery’s reply on September 25.
“It is each person, individually, who is called to put himself before God and expose his conscience to him, with both its possibilities and its limits,” and evaluate one’s disposition to receive Holy Communion, the Dicastery said in its response. “This conscience, accompanied by a priest and enlightened by the guidelines of the Church, is called to be formed to evaluate and give a sufficient judgment to discern the possibility of accessing the sacraments.”
The Dicastery advised the Czech bishops to “agree on some minimum criteria to implement the proposals of Amoris Laetitia” to help priests “in the process of accompaniment and discernment regarding the possible access to the sacraments of divorces in a new union, without prejudice to the legitimate authority that each bishop has in his own diocese.”
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