The Church did not exist to dictate law but to help people discover God's grace, the Archbishop's delegate for Catechesis, Fr Renè Camilleri said in light of the controversy over Holy Communion.
The debate was sparked when Fr Ġorġ Dalli said on TV discussion programme Xarabank he would be abusing his power were he to refuse communion to a person whom he knew to be in an extramarital relationship.
The bishops had reacted by issuing a statement saying that while cohabiting couples were still welcome to share in the life of the Church they could not, in line with Church teaching, receive the Eucharist.
"If the whole truth were to be found in the law, it would have been futile on Jesus's part to speak of the Spirit the way he did," Fr Camilleri said.
Gozo Bishop Mario Grech said last Sunday that "if one is behaving in a way which in itself is a form of moral disorder, even if the person in question, subjectively, has reasons that excuse him or her or reduce guilt, this person still cannot receive Holy Communion because this would create scandal to others".
Fr Camilleri said he did not want to contrast such "faithful" transmission of the Church's doctrinal position to date, however "we cannot stop at that".
"On an issue of such great pastoral concern for the entire Church, we cannot uphold the 'everything or nothing' principle. Discipleship of Jesus Christ aspires to radicalness but respects gradualness in the different circumstances of people's lives," he said.
"For 2,000 years, the development of Christianity has been marked by the grey areas separating the authority of law and the authority of conscience. Christian life is about a personal journey of faith, which, within the community of the Church, has its parameters.
"But respect for these parameters can never substitute or ignore respect and reverence for the dignity of each person genuinely searching for the truth. If a 'perfect' life means one that is without faults, then one is left with unrealistic goals," Fr Camilleri said.
Fr Paul Galea, a lecturer at the University's Faculty of Theology, said Mgr Grech's talk of scandal had a particular relevance in the close-knit Gozitan community. However, scandal was relative to the "circumstances and the time one was in".
He warned against taking a "one size fits all" approach to such problems, adding that Christians had to take particular care not to scandalise their fellow Church members.
On scandal, Fr Galea made a distinction between those living irregularly and those living immorally. "If a person is living immorally, he or she should voluntarily refrain from receiving the Eucharist," Fr Galea said, echoing this basic teaching of the Catholic Church.
However, if a person was living in an irregular manner but not an immoral one, s/he still had to make sure that by receiving the Eucharist s/he did not scandalise fellow brethren, Fr Galea said, referring to St Paul's letter to the Corinthians where he had said that "if food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall".
"It could be that in some circumstances people are not scandalised by anything," Fr Galea said.
It was important, however, for people not to appear to be defying the Church's teachings by their actions or compromise the priest by going for communion at the altar, which was "no place for making a scene", Fr Galea said.
He referred to the case of Piergiorgio Welby, an Italian advocate for euthanasia, who, after making his death a public act of defiance to the Church's teachings, was denied a Christian burial because the Church could not appear to be condoning his acts.