How cruel, rigid, and legalistic to deny Holy Communion to decent, wonderful people who are living generous lives! Pope Francis' move to change this seems sensible and kind. But consider:
1. The "Bond" is the thing. The Church is required to protect the bond of marriage. A valid, sacramental marriage establishes an invisible, spiritual bond that cannot be dissolved by anyone. It resembles the seal of the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Orders that cannot be removed by any power in heaven or on earth. A decade ago I was reproached by a fellow teacher: "What is this nonsense you are teaching our girls? They tell me you said it is alright if you abuse your wife, cheat on her or abandon her!" It took me a moment to understand: I had told them that since mine was surely a valid marriage, then if I fell to pieces and became addicted, adulterous, abusive, and abandoned my wife of 40 years (or 40 days), that would not nullify our spousal bond. Nothing and no one...not me or my wife, not the Pope or the Supreme Court...can "break asunder what God has bound." This kind of absolute, inviolate connection is not intelligible to the contemporary, liberal mind. My students simply could not get it: "People fall in love and fall out of love." "He is not the man I married." "Irreconcilable differences!" This is an objective, spiritual reality that is not related to subjective psychology and feelings. This concept is simply unintelligible to a secular, liberal mindset that knows only emotional transience and flux.
2. Who benefits from protection of the Bond? Women and children! Over the long term, the Bond is an impediment against the polygamous, promiscuous propensities of rich, powerful, irresponsible males. Think Henry VIII or Donald Trump! It is usually the male who becomes infatuated with a younger woman and wants to turn his wife in like a used car. Everyone knows the meaning of bigamy ("two-women") and polygamy ("many women"). Who knows about bi-andry ("two men") or polyandry ("many men"). The culture of easy divorce, serial polygamy, and non-marital co-habitation is destructive for women and children. The single biggest cause of poverty is women with children without a father/husband. In its strict view of the Bond, the Church is protective of the vulnerable against the preferences of the powerful and privileged (male).
3. A certain humility and deference is due to an unbroken tradition of over 2,000 years since Jesus himself spoke against the easy Pharisaic practice of divorce. Think of the martyrs in England after Henry VIII split with Rome because he wanted a new wife: many suffered brutal torture rather than comply with his adultery. Think of the legion of the faithful who have suffered broken marriages and sacrificially obeyed the law...and do so even today! The change proposed by Pope Francis sends the message: "The Church has been wrong, overly rigid, unkind! Your intentions were good, but all your suffering was mistaken!" Additionally, if the Church has been wrong, so insistently for so long about something so important, why trust Her about other things: Maybe the priest can't forgive sins! Maybe there is no purgatory or hell or heaven or angels or devils! Why trust such an unkind, inflexible institution?
4. The absolutely essential distinction in this (and all moral thought) is between the objective and the subjective. No one...not the Pope or priest or bishop...can judge the soul of another! No one! The interior moral and spiritual guilt and innocence is a sacrosanct temple into which none by the Holy Spirit can enter. Indeed, we cannot confidently judge even ourselves in regard to guilt and innocence because the human psyche/spirit is so boundlessly deep, dense, complex and subtle. We can only confess as best we can, relish our sense of innocence, but implore the Spirit to enlighten us and deliver us from the subtle deceptions of self and Satan. For practical purposes (in court, confession, etc.) authorities make judgments but these primarily involve the external, objective and allow for an unknowable Mystery surrounding the conscience of every person. I can judge that you lied or stole or committed adultery. But it is for God and yourself, not for me, to judge that you are a liar, thief or adulterer. So, for numerous reasons communion is refused to people: the non-baptized, those too young, the inebriated, those in irregular marriages, those who ate or drank withing the preparatory fast period and so forth. These are not judgments about the person: You are a bad person and you are condemned and you are going to hell! No: they are objective rules to protect the sanctity of the sacrament. It is a simple objective principle: you just drank a six-pack and ate a whole pizza with pepperoni, you cannot receive right now! You are remarried without an annulment, you cannot receive right now! Nothing personal! In light of this, consider the impossible burden Pope Francis and his lieutenants would place upon a priest: he must judge the interior of a supplicant and subjectively decide whether she/he is worthy to receive! How can he presume to say Yes to these three and No to those four? Such is unspeakably presumptuous! The Church provides us with rules, guidance and boundaries; She does not judge the soul!
5. Let's attend now to the actual person: victim of a broken marriage and possibly a cruel spouse, she is now happily remarried and striving generously to live a Catholic life of faith and love. She loves the Church. She feels distant, condemned, and lonely in the communion ban. These feelings are real, painful and entirely understandable. But they are inaccurate. The truth is that the Church is not judging, condemning and excluding, even if it feels that way. That is the devil whispering in her ear since he wants you to feel distant and alone. The Church loves her and longs to hold her close! The Church is constrained to protect the Ban and so to require her to abstain from communion. It is not personal! It is objective! Imagine your school has a strict policy on tardiness so that anyone late does a detention...absolutely NO exceptions! Friday morning you leave late because you are washing and feeding your sick grandmother; on the way you see a young child drowning in the river so you jump in to rescue and get her to safety; then you see a teen being mugged by a gang of thugs and you call the police and then rush in to save him. You arrive at school three minutes late. You explain what happened to the Dean. He is a fine man and congratulates you for your generosity and heroism, but explains that he cannot exempt you from the detention. At this point you can whine and moan in self-pity: "Not fair! I don't deserve a detention! This is a stupid rule and a stupid school and a stupid Dean!" Or you can say: "I understand Dean. You have to do what you have to do. I will serve the detention. No problem!" All that generosity and heroism is that much increased by this humility.
6. Lastly, what are the options in this situation. First, of course, is an annulment which declares the first marriage null and opens the path for a genuine, sacramental marriage in the present. The grounds for annulment are surprisingly wide, especially in regard to the consent, which must be free and knowledgeable. Failing that, two good options remain. First, the Church allows reception of the sacraments if the man and woman live as brother-and-sister, in what is sometimes called a "Josephite Marriage" (in imitation of Mary and Joseph) in that they would sleep separately and abstain from intercourse. To our sex-saturated culture, this is cruel and unthinkable. Our society believes that sex is a NEED, so that deprivation will lead to pathology. This is sheer nonsense! No one dies from continence! No one rushes to the emergency from abstaining too long! This theory reminds me of my son who in forth grade got in trouble for too much flatulence and told us that he had learned from his cousin that if you hold in the gas you get sick. The truth is: almost all of us are abstinent almost all of the time for a million reasons. Even in marriage: sickness, schedule, nervousness, marital spats, and so forth. For the better part of 20 years I worked nights at UPS. Thousands of us returned home to an empty bed for day rest. We never complained, never filed for disability, never felt sorry for ourselves. If we could abstain to get the packages delivered, perhaps some can do so to remain in sacramental union with Christ. Nevertheless, there may be situations where such continence would be truly onerous for one or both spouses. In that case, if the conscience is at peace in the irregular situation, the Catholic can maintain spiritual communion with the Church, while abstaining from physical communion. Here is where the "spiritual communion" occurs: the communicant asks Christ for such invisible union since the visible is not available. My saintly aunt practiced this, along with myriads of others, as she declined in heath and could not get to mass. When I see someone at mass, daily or Sunday, who abstains I am always inspired: "There is someone who loves our Eucharistic Lord so much that she comes here even as she cannot receive, for whatever reason. That is real love! That might the the holiest person in this Church!"
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