“You dodged it,” I smiled at my priest as the congregation was filing past him after Mass, and he grinned, knowing what I meant. The theme of the readings and sermon had been divorce and Our Lord’s uncompromising views upon the matter. And Fr Costello had looked at every aspect except the one that a lot of those in church would have been mentally focusing on: the exclusion of divorced and remarried Catholics from the sacrament of Communion.
I can murder somebody in the morning and receive the bread and wine in the evening provided I repent in between. But were I married to a drunken philanderer with thousands of child abuse images on his computer, divorced him and married a quiet, devout soul, I would be barred from the Lord’s table for ever in the Catholic Church. If I observe that in such circumstances the Church would be more understanding if I murdered rather than divorced him, that is not dark humour but a cry of incomprehension, for it is true.
