Gentlemen, I read in the June 1994 edition of this Journal your Open Letter to Bishops Saier, Lehmann and Kasper (hereafter NB) concerning their joint Letter regarding Pastoral Ministry to the Divorced and Remarried (hereafter PL) and their Principles of Pastoral Care (hereafter PPC). Both their letter and yours concern me to the extent that, as you correctly point out, they concern “the entire Church” (NB, 321). As a theologian in the Church, entrusted with the theological education of the Church, married, divorced and remarried and celibate alike, I was both delighted to read your letter and intrigued by its argument. I thought you and I and the body of the Church might benefit from further clarification. You will be aware that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (hereafter CDF) and the three Bishops issued in September 1994 further communications on this topic, published in Origins, October 27, 1994 (hereafter OS). I shall return to these in my final section.

Your letter delighted me because it sought to do the theologian’s task, the pursual in the scientific manner proper to theology of a deeper understanding of the Word of God and the communication of that understanding. I am delighted to pursue the matter further with you, for your argument intrigued me, as much as from what it left unsaid as from what it said. For the sake of conciseness and clarity, I choose to deal with only two focused, and not unconnected, matters which are of concern to me as both a theologian and a marriage (and divorce) counsellor.