WASHINGTON — Helen Gordon still feels pained when she recalls how other Catholics ostracized her parents after their divorce in the late 1960s. She also remembers being “shredded” by a priest during confession when she was about 11 because she had missed Mass as her father was dying. She went to confession only once more.
Yet Gordon, 53, of Bethesda, Md., kept close to her Catholicism. She sent her two children to Sunday school and goes to Mass every month or so. She takes Communion, even though as someone whose two marriages were never recognized or nullified she is technically not eligible to participate in a ritual reserved for Catholics “in union” with a church that doesn’t permit divorce.
A priest once told her that she could receive this most important of Catholic sacraments, and she agrees.
“If the church hierarchy wants to set parameters for when a person may be allowed to receive Communion, that decision, to me, is ultimately a political one, and for me has no connection to my relationship with God, and will not impact my decision to receive Communion,” she wrote in an e-mail.
While church leaders have spoken often about Catholics who leave the faith — 1 in 10 Americans is a former Catholic — Gordon represents perhaps a larger and more complicated constituency: Catholics who stay, yet have spiritual beliefs and practices that are not always compatible with the Vatican.
This dissonance between church doctrine and the attitudes and behaviors of many Catholics worldwide has prompted Pope Francis to convene a two-week summit at the Vatican that some are comparing in potential importance with the historic Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
Annulment — a required process that invalidates an earlier marriage — and the rules governing communion for divorced Catholics are among the topics to be discussed with unusual candor by 191 leading clergy.
Also on the list: same-sex marriage and living together before marriage.
The mere possibility that some concrete change in teaching or practice — however small — could result from the meeting has set off a furious debate among top cardinals.
“This synod will be very important. All of the issues regarding the family, the ones that trouble people the most (about the church) will be on the table. All the neuralgic issues — the ones that cause you pain,” said Monsignor Fred Easton, who led the Indianapolis Archdiocese’s tribunal for 31 years. “And it’s not just rehashing for rehashing’s sake. It’s: When we put them all together, do we need to make any sort of course correction?”
This type of high-level meeting, called “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization,” is rare. The most recent one was nearly 35 years ago.
Regardless, nothing concrete will change this month. The meeting, which started Sunday, is meant to open a dialogue about what’s working and what isn’t. Next fall, the bishops will propose a pastoral plan. Experts have predicted that one area most likely to see change is the practice around divorce and remarriage.
The church no longer excommunicates those who divorce, but Catholicism still recognizes only weddings approved by the church (either officiated by a priest in a Catholic church or approved by a person’s priest), and it sees marriage as ending only in death.
Catholics’ divorce rates don’t appear to be dramatically different from those of other Americans, but the stigma remains high, some divorced people say. Several people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t want to get their priests in trouble for allowing them to take Communion.
How closely priests — or other parishioners — police who comes for Communion varies widely. Disqualifiers include a lot of things that are invisible and common.
Maria Olsen went through a painful divorce this year. She said if she decides to remarry, she’s not inclined to follow Catholic rules to get an annulment to continue taking Communion.
“I find comfort in the rituals of the church’s sacraments, and I also believe I can successfully take what feeds me and discard what I consider to be man-made mistakes,” she said this past week. “We are not to judge. … It’s between me and God.”
