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Hope is glue that holds people together, cardinal tells students
26-03-2010
ATLANTA (CNS) -- Hope is the glue that holds people together, a top Vatican official told a roomful of Emory University students in Atlanta.
"Hope today is a scarcity in our world. Hold up the torch of hope in the world, it is a very, very important thing," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, "Without hope between people, no church, no faith community will survive."
Addressing a "Modern Catholicism" class during a recent weeklong visit to Emory, he was at ease in the classroom.
He said the experience reminded him of the 25 years he spent as a university professor. He fielded a range of questions about issues ranging from Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to reform in the church and the church's outreach to other faiths.
Brittany Whitmore, 21, a history and Spanish major, asked about a 1993 decision that he and two other German bishops made to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion as long as they believed in conscience that their first marriage was invalid.
The policy in Germany was changed a year later at the Vatican's request, but Cardinal Kasper said at the time that the question still needed pastoral and theological attention.
In answer to Whitmore's question, the cardinal said divorce "remains a strong pastoral problem," with a growing number of people in this situation. "Every pastor knows it," he said.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20100325.htm
