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Document Details :

Title: Responses to Cardinal Ratzinger's Introduction to a Publication of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith
Author(s): BUCKLEY, Timothey , PETRÀ, Basilio , GRÜNDEL, Johannes
Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality
Volume: 5    Issue: 2   Date: Autumn 1999   
Pages: 187-194
DOI: 10.2143/INT.5.2.2014729

Abstract :
Last year the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a collection of Church documents and theological studies on the subject of the divorced and remarried. Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the same Congregation, has written an extensive introduction to this publication in which he highlights the essence of the Church teaching and practice and responds to some major objections that have been made against it in the past.
In the following comments, three well-known experts in the field of marriage theology take the opportunity to place Cardinal Ratzinger’s position in the context of the previous discussion. TIMOTHY J. BUCKLEYis a Redemptorist priest from Canterbury whose study on marital breakdown commissioned by the Bishops of England and Wales was accepted in 1996 as doctoral thesis at Heythrop College in London. BASILIO PETRÀ, Professor of Moral Theology in Florence and Rome and a specialist in Orthodox theology, has recently written a profound study on the pastoral care of the divorced and remarried under the revealing title: “Can a marriage die?” (Il matrimonio può morire?). JOHANNES GRÜNDEL who taught Moral Theology in Munich until 1997 has in several publications pointed to the ethical implications of dealing with broken marriages.

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