*German bishops ready to approve Holy Communion for divorced and re-married

Bishop Gebhard Fürst

By Deacon Nick Donnelly, Nov 26th, 2013

Reuters is reporting that Bishop Gebhard Fürst, the ordinary of Stuttgart, has told the Central Committee of German Catholics that the German Bishops’ Conference will soon vote to approve guidelines allowing divorced and re-married Catholics to receive Holy Communion.

According to Reuters Bishop Fürstt ‘was the most explicit of several German bishops to rebuff Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, head of the Vatican doctrinal office, who last month ruled out any change after Freiburg archdiocese in Germany unveiled its own reform proposals.’

Bishop Gebhard Fürst said to the  Central Committee of German Catholics:
‘We want to approve new guidelines at our plenary meeting in March. Expectations (of reform) are great, and impatience and anger are greater still.’

Protect the Pope comment: If this report is accurate such a move would further signal the German Bishops Conference’s defiant rejection of the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Successor of St Peter. The German bishops conference have a history in this regard when they undermined Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae with their  Königstein Declaration which stated that couples were free to follow their consciences in the choice of contraception, thereby repudiating the authority of Gaudium et Spes paragraph 51.

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2013/11/25/german-bishops-push-reform-to-welcome-divorced-and-remarried-catholics/