Rules against Remarriage Driving Souls Away

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In one of the more distant Chicago suburbs where there are no alleys, there is a mega-church that can draw over 15,000 worshipers on a Sunday in Ordinary Time and over 30,000 on holidays of the first class. From time to time, I'm told, the minister will ask for a show of hands. "How many of you are Catholics?" he asks.

And half the crowd stands to acknowledge their cradle faith.

One reason that Catholics take their souls to a heretic church is that they feel they have forfeited their membership in the Roman church because they violated one or more of the complex marriage laws. Their numbers are growing faster than some other branches of the tree of Christianity. But the church does not seem inclined to relax the rules. In fact, just last July 6, the Vatican announced that divorced and remarried Catholics are prohibited from receiving the Eucharist while sacramentally bound by a …