Vatican City - Faced with growing resistance among the clergy to applying church law which bans remarriage, the Roman Catholic Church yesterday reiterated its position that remarried divorcees live in "grave sin".
In the case of a new marriage, divorced people will continue to be excluded from the sacraments of the Holy Communion, the Vatican said. "In the concrete case of admission to Holy Communion of faithful who are divorced and remarried, the scandal, understood as an action that prompts others towards wrongdoing, affects. . . both the sacrament of the Eucharist and the indissolubility of marriage," said an official Vatican document. It added that "such behaviour, unfortunately, no longer arouses surprise".