The Extraordinary Synod of Bishops is under way until Sunday. I am following most of the interventions by bishops and cardinals and my general impression is that most of them are trying to please the media.

Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio said that the Pope’s hermeneutics can be boiled down to “safeguarding doctrine will bring about departing from individual persons and from their concrete situations and sufferings.”

Then he referred to the giving of Holy Communion to the divorced and remarried. He said that “Communion to the remarried divorcees can never be a general rule”. But according to him, following the Pope’s hermeneutics, “the Catholic Church must give an answer to concrete individuals who find themselves in conditions of urgency and gravity”.

And the cardinal refers to Christ’s criticism of observing the Sabbath when a son (or an ox) falls into a well. He pointed out two ways: either doing nothing to observe the Sabbath or seeing the need of a person and intervening.

As an example of a person in need he mentioned the case of a woman who unites in marriage with a man with three little children to look after them and the Church tells her to abandon that union on pain of not receiving Communion.

Coccopalmerio’s argument is a fallacy. The Sabbath case refers to the Third Commandment of God which admits of exceptions for a good reason, while adultery concerns the Sixth Commandment which admits of no exceptions. No one can morallycommit adultery for any reason whatsoever.

Christ’s words are clear: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her” (Mk 10,11). Adultery is always a grievous sin. So how can the Catholic Church give Holy Communion to adulterous persons when she knows that receiving Communion unworthily, i.e. in the state of mortal sin, brings about one’s condemnation (1 Cor. 11,29)?