Sandro Magister features the historical rebuttal of writer Giancarlo Pani S.J. to the proposition that the Council of Trent was open to Holy Communion for those in second marriages.
In order to call the synod to “openness” on second marriages, “ La Civiltà Cattolica” has made a surprise move. It has dusted off the Council of Trent, precisely that Council which more strictly than any other reaffirmed the unity and indissolubility of the bond of marriage.
That same Council, however – as “La Civiltà Cattolica” recalls – abstained from formally condemning second marriages as practiced in the Eastern Churches, not only among the faithful of the Orthodox rite, but also – in some areas of mixed confession – among Catholics in union with Rome.
Magister concludes:
The thesis that emerges from this article of “La Civiltà Cattolica” is that Trent made a gesture of “evangelical mercy” that the synod that is about to open should adopt and reinforce, on behalf of “those Christians who suffer through a failed conjugal relationship.”
In reality, there was no beginning of “openness” to second marriages at Trent, but simply the decision not to enter into direct conflict on this point with the Orthodox Churches, with a prudence that was also exercised over the previous centuries and maintained afterward.
The exceptional case of the Greek islands of the Republic of Venice was extinguished with the loss of those islands at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. And it was not reproduced again in the communities that switched from Orthodoxy to union with the Church of Rome, which were asked for a preliminary confession of faith with the express indication of the impossibility of a second marriage.