The Archbishop of San Francisco has declared that Speaker of the House - Nancy Pelosi - is barred from accepting Holy Communion at any church in San Francisco because of her pro-choice position on abortion.
If a politician’s pro-choice position on abortion is publicly known - should pro-choice politicians be denied Holy Communion in the Catholic Church?
The question of whether pro-choice politicians should barred from receiving Communion during mass at a Catholic Church has been an issue with President Joe Biden’s admissions and actions that he is a devout Catholic, but President Biden’s position on the abortion issue is definitively pro-choice.
If the Church is opposed to abortion and President Biden supports a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion up to a certain point - should the president be allowed to take Communion?
The issue of barring pro-choice politicians from accepting Communion in the Catholic Church has been resurrected by the ruliing of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone in San Francisco.
“You are not to be admitted to Holy Communion,” was part of Archbishop Cordileone’s official announcement barring Pelosi from accepting Communion. Citing the Second Vatican Council, the archbishop mentioned that “the Church’s ancient and consistent teaching that “from the first moment of conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infaticide are unspeakable crimies.’” The announcement continued, “those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose’ any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.’”
Archbishop Cordileone’s decision is a serious departure from the position of Pope Francis and the Vatican. Pope Francis specifically condemned the conservative Catholic bishops in lock-step with former President Donald Trump and made it clear that they are not to deny Biden, or other Catholics, the invitation to receive Holy Communion. In his effort to set the record straight, Pope Francis reminded the bishops that Communion “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners.”
Archbishop Cordileone is guilty of making bad decisions on several occasions. In August of 2012, Cordileone was arrested and jailed for drunk driving. He paid a fine and was placed on a 3-year probation and required to attend a Mothers Against Drunk Driving meeting. The archbishop apologized for his decision to drive drunk.
In 2021, Archbishop Cordileone refused to release the official list of clergy members who were “credibly” accused of sexually abusing children and requested that a judge dismiss a 2019 law allowing accusers of clergy sexual abuse to sue even in cases that were decades old.
For many years, the Catholic Church knowingly protected priests who were having sex with children in the Church. The priests who were sexually abusing children and the Church hierarchy that moved the guilty priests from parish to parish to cover up their actions, were all allowed to give Communion to parishioners while this atrocious behavior was going on.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines abortion as “evil,” and that position remains unchanged. However, Pope Francis, considered a liberal pope to many, refused to support the idea of barring pro-choice politicians from receiving Holy Communion.
In 1973, when I was going through the Catholic Church’s protocol to get married, the use of birth control pills was very controversial. The Church was vehemently opposed to birth control pills, but many parishioners who were part of the young Boomer generation viewed birth control pills as logical way to be sexually active without the concern of a pregnancy.
I specifically remember the priest who was to marry my wife and me said that while the Church is opposed to birth control pills - each parish priest was granted the power to make the decision of whether or not to use the pill was left up to each individual couple.
The fact that there are archbishops and priests within the Catholic Church that now want to deny Holy Communion to politicians with whom they disagree is an embarrassing reminder of the Church’s hypocritical tendencies.
If the Catholic Church supports barring pro-choice politicians from receiving Communion, then why is Communion offered to pro-choice parishioners? If denying Communion based on a pro-choice position is viable, then why not ask every person in line to receive Communion whether they are pro-choice? It seems unfair to deny Communion only to those whose pro-choice position is known and not to every pro-choice Catholic.
And what about the list of other sins?
The Catholic Church is still officially in favor of barring Communion to remarried Catholics who have not had their previous marriage annulled. One can only imagine how many remarried Catholics are receiving Communion in churches across America and around the world.
For the record, I am Catholic and enjoy going to Mass; but I don’t believe I have to agree with every aspect of the Church’s teachings as a prerequisite for receiving Communion. I think it’s time to stop selective enforcement of punishment for specific sins that are not the sins of those who are judging who should receive Communion.
And while the abortion issue is a matter of life and death in the minds of many Americans, it is clearly a political issue that some of the Catholic Church’s conservative hierarchy feel free to use to promote a political agenda within the Church.
