ARTICLES
SEPTEMBER 2004 ARTICLES
Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Lest They Be Guilty
L.A. Archdiocese Condones Public Scandal
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
Cardinal Roger Mahony seemed pleased.
At their June meeting in Colorado, the American bishops had issued a statement on what to do about Catholic political leaders who ignore the teachings of the Church; and it was to Mahony’s liking. “I welcome and support the Statement made by the Bishops of the United States, ‘Catholics in Political Life,’” wrote Mahony in a press release after the meeting. The statement, the cardinal wrote, reiterates the “consistent Catholic teaching on the value of human life from conception through natural death, and the responsibility of all to protect and enhance human life through all its stages.”
And this is what the statement did. Having noted that “the killing of an unborn child is always intrinsically evil and can never be justified,” the bishops’ June statement said that making “such intrinsically evil actions legal is itself wrong” and that a legal system “can be said to cooperate in evil when it fails to protect the lives of those who have no protection except the law.”
Further, the bishops spoke to political leaders and their duty to protect the innocent. Political leaders, said the bishops, “have an obligation to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil and in sinning against the common good.” In doing this, political leaders are not confounding their religion and civic duties but are bringing “their moral convictions into public life.” In doing so, they do not “threaten democracy or pluralism but enrich them and the nation. The separation of church and state,” the bishops said, “does not require division between belief and public action, between moral principles and political choices, but protects the right of believers and religious groups to practice their faith and act on their values in public life.”
To make sure Catholic political leaders bring their moral convictions — properly formed according to Church teaching — to public life, the bishops committed themselves to counseling “Catholic public officials that their acting consistently to support abortion on demand risks making them cooperators in evil in a public manner.”
The bishops did not say whether those politicians who inconsistently support abortion on demand may be cooperating in evil, or even why those who do so consistently are only at “risk” of such cooperation, but Cardinal Mahony indicated he was doing what the bishops said should be done. “The present practice in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” Mahony said, “is to continue forward with clear teaching and respectful dialogue with all members of the Church on the value of all human life. I welcome the opportunity to meet with Catholic public officials within the Archdiocese to forge a new dialogue on how ethical and moral values need to illumine the formation of sound policies.”
But, despite the cardinal’s support for “Catholics in Political Life,” his statement departs somewhat from it on the question of whether a minister may deny communion to a political leader who consistently supports pro-abortion legislation. But before discussing this, some background is in order.
For six months before the bishops’ June meeting, a task force under the presidency of Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been meeting to offer recommendations on the question of denying communion to Catholic pro-abortion politicians, or even to Catholics who vote for pro-abortion politicians. Cardinal McCarrick consulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the matter, and Ratzinger issued a memorandum to the task force. The memorandum was not intended for publication, but on July 3, the Italian magazine L’Espresso published the memorandum, which, according to Catholic News Service, a Vatican official said was authentic. Catholic News Service, however, noted that a cover letter that supposedly accompanied the memorandum, was not published with it.
In his memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger notes the Church teaches that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin. Citing Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Ratzinger says that “with reference to judicial decisions or civil laws that authorise or promote abortion or euthanasia ... there is a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. [...] In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to “take part in a propoganda [sic] campaign in favour of such a law or vote for it”’ (no. 73). Christians have a ‘grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. [...] This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it’ (no. 74).”
Though on some moral issues that do not deal with intrinsic moral evils (such as “the application of capital punishment” or the “decision to wage war”) a Catholic can disagree with the Holy Father, abortion and euthanasia do not allow any “diversity of opinion among Catholics,” Ratzinger said. Pastors should meet with anyone guilty of formal cooperation in abortion or euthanasia (as a Catholic politician “consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws”), “instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.” Then, citing a 2002 Vatican ruling on divorced and remarried Catholics, Ratzinger writes: “When ‘these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible,’ and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, ‘the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it’... This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty. Nor is the minister of Holy Communion passing judgement on the person’s subjective guilt, but rather is reacting to the person’s public unworthiness to receive Holy Communion due to an objective situation of sin.” [Emphasis added.]
This is the second time Ratzinger uses the imperative “must refuse” in the memorandum; earlier, he says, “the minister of Holy Communion may find himself in the situation where he must refuse to distribute Holy Communion to someone, such as in cases of a declared excommunication, a declared interdict, or an obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin (cf. can. 915).” [Emphasis added.]
But Cardinal McCarrick, it seems, in an address before the bishops assembled in Colorado on June 15, softened Cardinal Ratzinger’s words. Relaying Ratzinger’s communications (received, said McCarrick, both by memorandum and in telephone conversations), the Washington cardinal said that Ratzinger “recognizes that there are circumstances in which Holy Communion may be denied.” [Emphasis added.] McCarrick added that “Cardinal Ratzinger clearly leaves to us as teachers, pastors and leaders WHETHER to pursue this path.” [Double emphasis in original.]
Did Cardinal McCarrick deliberately soften Ratzinger’s words? Or did he faithfully transmit Ratzinger’s sense, culled from the memorandum and other communications? According to the July 16 National Catholic Reporter, McCarrick did not deny the accuracy of the memorandum in L’Espresso, but said (cryptically enough) that it “may represent an incomplete and partial leak of a private communication from Cardinal Ratzinger and it may not accurately reflect the full message I received.” What is clear is that in relaying the recommendations of the task force to the bishops, McCarrick abandoned the potential and segued into the indicative. “The Task Force,” McCarrick said, “does not advocate the denial of Communion for Catholic politicians or Catholic voters in these circumstances.”
McCarrick made it clear that none should interpret the task force’s “reservations about refusing Communion or public calls to refrain from Communion as ignoring or excusing those who clearly contradict Catholic teaching in their public roles.” Rather, the task force insists that those politicians and others who contradict Church teaching on abortion and euthanasia “must study Catholic teaching, recognize their grave responsibility to protect human life from conception to natural death, and adopt positions consistent with these principles. However, in our view, the battles for human life and dignity and for the weak and the vulnerable should be fought not at the Communion rail, but in the public square, in hearts and minds, in our pulpits and public advocacy, in our consciences and communities.” [Emphases added.]
The upshot of all this was that the bishops adopted neither the task force’s categorical “no” nor the memorandum’s “must,” but settled for the more comfortable “can.” Referring to the denial of communion to pro-abortion politicians, the bishops’ statement reads: “given the wide range of circumstances involved in arriving at a prudential judgment on a matter of this seriousness, we recognize that such decisions rest with the individual bishop in accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles. Bishops can legitimately make different judgments on the most prudent course of pastoral action.”
But Cardinal Mahony, in his response to “Catholics in Political Life,” seemingly rejects even Cardinal McCarrick’s “may” and the U.S. bishops’ “can,” settling for a decisive “can not.” “The Archdiocese,” said Mahony, “will continue to follow Church teaching which places the duty on each Catholic to examine their consciences as to their worthiness to receive Holy Communion. That is not the role of the person distributing the Body and Blood of Christ.” But is it the role even of the bishop? Cardinal Mahony, here, does not say.
But in May, Mahony told Catholic News Service that even a bishop cannot “deny someone communion unless that person is known to have been a public sinner” — that is, unless the person has been “interdicted or excommunicated or formally sanctioned in some way.” The cardinal has not said what he makes of the fact that canon law allows denial of communion also to those who, though neither interdicted or excommunicated, nevertheless “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.”
But Cardinal Mahony told the National Catholic Reporter (May 21, 2004) that he would welcome the pro-abortion John Kerry to receive communion in the archdiocese. The archdiocese, too, has gone out of its way to welcome to the altar other public dissenters from Catholic teaching. When, this spring, the pro-homosexual Rainbow Sash Movement said they would gather en-masse to receive communion in Catholic cathedrals throughout the country on Pentecost to protest the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, Los Angeles archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg wrote a note of welcome (posted on the Rainbow Sash website) to Joe Murray, the movement’s United States “convener.” “I was given a copy of your May 7, 2004 letter to the U.S. bishops,” Tamberg wrote. (Murray’s letter spoke of Rainbow Sash members as “open and honest individuals who acknowledge we are gay and lesbian;” it also complained that the bishops “have widened the Eucharistic battlefield to include Catholic Politicians, who do not share your limited view of life issues.”) “Please know that members of Rainbow Sash Movement will be warmly welcomed to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels this coming Sunday.”
Tamberg also noted that Murray’s letter “mentions the controversy over who should receive Communion, as well as the discussion over the future of the NRB [National Review Board] and the audit process. If you have not already seen them, I would be happy to provide you with a variety of recent press reports regarding Cardinal Mahony’s stance on these issues. I think you would be somewhat pleased with his positions on both of these issues.”
Cardinal Mahony’s willingness to give communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians perhaps stems from what is reportedly his stance that a Catholic political leader may take a public “pro-choice” position by opposing legislation that outlaws or restricts abortion. Writing in the May 21 National Catholic Reporter, John Allen, Jr., said he presented the following “hypothetical situation” to Cardinals Mahony and Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati: “Suppose there’s a Catholic politician who clearly and publicly upholds the teaching of the church on the inherent immorality of abortion. He or she may give money to help pregnant women, may be involved personally in counseling women on alternatives. This politician unambiguously holds that an ideal society would not permit abortion. Yet, on the basis of a prudential political judgment, this politician believes that in the present historical moment, a law abolishing abortion would not reduce the incidence of abortion, but would drive it underground and produce negative consequences. Hence, the politician concludes that the cultural ground must first be prepared, and in the meantime he or she will vote against measures to outlaw or restrict abortion — not out of any sympathy for abortion, but out of a prudential judgment that such measures will only make the situation worse.”
“Is that,” Allen asked, “a coherent Catholic position?”
When Allen presented this hypothetical situation to Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, Pavone, in Allen’s words, said that “a politician could take the view that because there isn’t support now for an outright ban, the best strategy is to move gradually. A politician may not, however, say that the law does not have an obligation to protect the unborn.”
Father Pavone, in a July 24 communication, gave me a more expanded version of his response to Allen. “My answer to John Allen’s question was, essentially, that the very purpose of government requires protection for the unborn, just as it requires protection for the born,” Father Pavone said. “Hypothetical situations like he described would no more permit a legislator to vote against measures to ban abortion than to vote against measures to ban shooting people in the streets or committing acts of terrorism.”
But what did Cardinals Pilarczyk and Mahony say to Allen’s hypothetical situation? Both prelates, noted Allen, “said that the view I described could be defended.”