Catholic Bishops Have Said These Politicians Should Not Receive Communion Because Of Their Abortion Stances
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
MARY MARGARET OLOHANSOCIAL ISSUES REPORTER
- A Catholic priest refused to give Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden communion, citing Biden’s pro-abortion stances.
- Catholic bishops have a history of refusing to give communion to pro-abortion politicians or warning these politicians not to receive.
- “To be publicly endorsing and privately opposed to abortion is an evil charade,” one bishop said.
Catholic bishops have a history of telling politicians who support abortion, like Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, that they should not receive communion at Catholic masses.
A Catholic priest denied communion to Biden in South Carolina on Sunday, a move that prompted Biden to defend himself Tuesday, saying, “I am a practicing Catholic, I practice my faith.” This is not the first time Biden has been censured for his abortion stances and prevented from receiving communion. Bishop Joseph Francis Martino of Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, told the pro-abortion former vice president in 2008 he could not receive communion.
The practice of refusing communion to pro-abortion politicians is not an uncommon one. Many politicians who profess themselves to be Catholic, such as former presidential candidate John Kerry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have all expressed public support of abortion and been told by Catholic bishops not to receive communion for this.
Abortion surfaced as a conflicting issue for Catholic politicians after the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade in 1973, pronouncing a constitutional right to abortion. About 10 years later at a 1984 press conference, New York Archbishop John Joseph O’Connor spoke out against pro-abortion politicians.
“I do not see how a Catholic, in good conscience, can vote for an individual expressing himself or herself as favoring abortion,” he said.
Then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo responded to the remarks by criticizing the archbishop for correlating politics and religion. (RELATED: The Clintons Coined The Phrase ‘Safe, Legal And Rare,’ But Abortion Activists Say This Is Stigmatizing)
“So I’m a Catholic governor,” Cuomo said. “I’m going to make you all Catholics — no birth control, you have to go to church on Sunday, no abortion.”
As he delivered a 1984 speech at the University of Notre Dame later that year, Cuomo added, “I accept the church’s teaching on abortion. Must I insist you do?”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan similarly censured Cuomo’s son, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a January op-ed to the New York Post. The op-ed came after Andrew Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act into law — a bill that removed abortion from New York’s criminal code and allows abortions after 24 weeks.
Though Dolan said on Fox News that excommunicating Andrew Cuomo from the Catholic Church for this move was “not the appropriate response,” he also said Cuomo “likes being the … bad boy when it comes to the Catholic Church,” according to the New York Post.
San Diego Bishop Leo T. Maher banned former Democratic California state Sen. Lucy Killea from receiving communion over her pro-abortion stances in 1989, a move The New York Times reported helped Killea win a California Senate seat in a heavily Republican district.
Killea, though she said she was personally opposed to abortion, said she would not oppose a woman’s decision to obtain one. Maher told Killea that she could no longer receive communion because her abortion stances were ”a grave scandal against the Church.”
The bishop also issued a statement at the time, saying, ”to be publicly endorsing and privately opposed to abortion is an evil charade.”
Jenni Logan holds up a sign urging presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry to be denied Holy Communion in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral June16, 2004 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Cardinal Raymond Burke called for both Kerry and Pelosi to be prohibited from receiving communion due to their stances on abortion. As the former Archbishop of St. Louis, Burke warned presidential candidate Kerry before the Missouri primary in February 2004 that Burke would not give him communion.
Burke later referred to Pelosi in 2013 as a perfect example of “Catholics who have divorced their faith from their public life and therefore are not serving their brothers and sisters in the way that they must — in safeguarding and promoting the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in safeguarding and promoting the integrity of marriage and the family.”
Burke added that under no circumstances should Pelosi should be given communion until she changed her abortion stances. He also said in 2007 that he would not give communion to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or any other candidate who supports abortion rights.
Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze spoke out after Planned Parenthood endorsed Kerry for president in 2004, saying a Roman Catholic politician who supports abortion “is not fit” to receive communion.
Arinze did not specifically name Kerry, but his statement came mere hours after Kerry said, “‘Abortion should be rare, but it should be safe and legal, and the government should stay out of the bedrooms. We are going to have a change in leadership in this country to protect the right of choice.”
”Objectively, the answer is clear,” Arinze said, when questioned as to whether Catholic politicians who support abortion should receive communion. “The person is not fit” to do so. If they should not receive, then they should not be given.”
Boston Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley warned at the time that politicians who oppose church teaching “shouldn’t dare come to communion,” though he did not explicitly say Kerry could not receive communion.
Forbidding politicians who support abortion from receiving communion “makes perfect sense,” Burke said in a 2013 interview with EWTN, according to the Global Dispatch. The cardinal warned that priests must protect the Holy Eucharist from “being profaned, being violated by someone receiving unworthily,” or someone “who knows that he or she is unworthy and yet presumes to come forward and to take the Holy Eucharist.”
Burke was later demoted to a “largely ceremonial” role by Pope Francis in 2014 as patron of the charity, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
“One gets the impression, or it’s interpreted this way in the media, that he thinks we’re talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman,” Burke said at the time. “But we can never talk enough about that.”
Conversely, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick discouraged preventing Catholic politicians from receiving communion. His comments on the matter prompted then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI, to cite the Catholic Church’s Canon Law, number 915, saying that those “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.”
McCarrick has since been found to have used his status, his contacts, flattery and familial language to make young seminarians and young men feel special before allegedly harassing or sexually abusing them. He was defrocked in disgrace.
Father Thomas Petri similarly cited Canon 915 when he banned former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s pick for vice president Tim Kaine from receiving communion in his parish, saying in a 2016 tweet, “Do us both a favor. Don’t show up in my communion line. I take Canon 915 seriously. It’d be embarrassing for you & for me.”
The active politicians mentioned in this article did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Joe Biden pulls rank on little priest who denied him Communion
Joe Biden is out pulling rank.
In response to a little priest in South Carolina denying him Holy Communion for advocating pro-abortion positions inconsistent with Church teaching, the former vice president and Democratic Party presidential frontrunner made it clear he didn't deal with pipsqueaks.
Asked about the incident, Lifesite News reported Biden's response:
“It’s not a position that I’ve found anywhere else, including from the Holy Father, who gives me Communion.”
So instead of thinking about the priest's position and offering some kind of contemplative thought, Biden declared it was all O.K. to be advocating for abortion from his position, complete with public funding, because the pope gave him Communion. Despite the fact that even the pope is a priest and Communion is dispensed by priests with equal weight, even if a priest is tainted, Biden seems to be saying that because the pope gave him Communion instead of the priest, that proves the righteousness of his position.
In other words, he's got connections.
He completely sidestepped the issue the priest as concerned about, which was Biden's abortion advocacy under color of Catholicism. Instead of address that, he pulled rank, reminding everyone that he used to be vice president and he's still got connections.
Biden's response was roughly parallel to that of a Mafia don justifying himself after killing rivals on weekdays that he too deserves Communion on Sunday, (something the Church opposes) so he'll get it, too.
But it also had an elitist element. Who is this troublesome little priest to bother him when he's got the pope in his tree? As Joe Biden's trough-feeding through his son Hunter Biden has demonstrated, Joe's in good with the elites.
It's a risky move because it's something the pope might not appreciate, given the criticism he takes for his leftist ideas inside the Church. The pope actually has a pretty good pro-life record with his condemnation of "throwaway culture" including throwaway babies, as one of the few things he's been steadfast on. Now lefty pols like Biden are using him as their justification. Biden got communion from him? It's possible the pope didn't want to make a scene with the cameras on for a visiting dignitary, or that he didn't even know what Biden's positions were. Out on the Pontifex Twitter feed, the pope has so far kept quiet, but the odds are good he won't appreciate being used as a political shield, and Biden's arrogant rank-pulling might just force his hand.
Even if it doesn't, the message from Biden is clear: He's got connections, so to heck with any truth a little priest speaking truth to power might say.
Pope Francis Laments Aborted Babies, ‘Who Never See the Light of Day’
2:24
Pope Francis pushed for a “culture of life” Friday, noting that among the most fragile people on earth are the many rejected children “who never see the light of day.”
In an address in the Vatican to the Hospital of the Innocents Institute of Florence, the pope told his audience we must promote a “culture of the child” and learn to be like little children because Jesus said, ‘If you do not become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.’”
“How badly we need a culture that recognizes the value of life, especially of the weak, threatened, and offended,” Francis said, “a culture that recognizes in every face, even the smallest, the face of Jesus: ‘Whoever welcomes one child like this in my name, welcomes me’ (Mt 18.5).”
Many mothers abort their children because they “suffer economic, social, cultural conditioning that pushes them to give up that wonderful gift that is the birth of a child,” he stressed. And many other children are “robbed of their childhood and their future” oftentimes facing desperate journeys to escape hunger or war.
“Today the goal we must set for ourselves,” he said, “is that no mother find herself in a position to have to abandon her child.”
The solution to helping so many unwanted children, the pope said, is to promote a “culture of adoption.”
“So often there are people who want to adopt children, but there is such a big bureaucracy, not to mention when there is corruption at play,” he said.
“There are many, many families who do not have children and would certainly want to have one through adoption,” he continued, adding that what is needed is to “create a culture of adoption because there are so many abandoned children, lonely children, victims of war and other things.”
With its six centuries of history, the pope said, the Institute of the Innocents “speaks to us of a city that has put the best of itself in welcoming children, so that they should no longer be called ‘abandoned’ but welcomed, entrusted to the love and care of the community.”
We must ensure that in the face of any event or tragedy that could separate a child from his parents, “there be structures and paths of welcome in which childhood is always protected and cared for, in the only worthy way: by giving children the best we can offer them,” he said.
Dr. Leah Torres, an OB/GYN in Salt Lake City, Utah, said that when she performs certain abortions she cuts the vocal cord of the baby so "there's really no opportunity" for the child to scream.
A Desensitized America Ignoring Ulrich Klopfer
It is a human tendency not to value something until it is under assault or lost, but in the case of abortion, there is little evidence to suggest that the American public, or mainstream media, is concerned with a blatant assault on the right to life of 2,246 children.
When reports surfaced that the remains of 2,246 aborted children were found in the garage and later the vehicle of former abortionist Ulrich Klopfer, Americans were horrified. But not for the reason one might think. As the news cycle passed by it was seen that Americans were not horrified by the fact that innocent children had been killed, but by the fact that the remains had been unknowingly kept by an abortionist.
The gruesome discovery in Klopfer’s garage, and the national response, is a glaring reflection that society has chosen to hide its eyes from such crimes. Rather than directly confronting the fact that thousands of lives had been lost through the practice of abortion, Americans chose to look the other way and ask why Indiana’s most prolific abortionist would not dispose of the remains.
That realization should cause people to shudder. But the lack of media attention the story has received makes it feel as though no one noticed any injustice in the legalized active killing of 2,246 children.
A quick google search will show that the story surrounding Klopfer has thus far received little attention on national television news broadcasts, with the large majority of coverage coming from local news outlets. One would think that an acceptable approach to finding the remains of 2,246 aborted children would be holding the nationwide abortion industry accountable for their business practices and nationally illustrating the reality of what abortion is, the active practice of ending indefensible human life, but that has yet to be seen.
This is not the first time that fetal remains have been discovered to be kept after being aborted. Last year in Detroit multiple funeral homes were found to have over 60 fetal remains and the clinic of former abortionist Kermit Gosnell was described by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams as filled with “rotting bodies, fetal remains, the smell of urine throughout, blood-stained.”
Without implementing policies and guidelines which will restrict the inhumane treatment of fetal remains after an abortion nothing will stop abortionists inhumanely treating preborn infants in the future. A simple truth must be accepted, abortionists should not be allowed to hide infant bodies in their garages, throw them into landfills, or burn them for fuel.
A Gallup poll in 2013 found that American’s consider individual freedoms the nation’s top virtue. Such knowledge could lead one to assume that a people who consider individual freedoms as the nation’s top virtue would seek to respect and enhance the freedom of others. Yet, while such sentiments might be held by many, the lack of interest in the murderous actions of Klopfer have shown that Americans are desensitized to violence against the preborn, exposing a incomprehension of the most basic individual freedom, the right to life.
Too much media exposure to violence through television, movies, and video games, has been linked to desensitization to real-life violence. Such findings could be correlated to a lack of an emotional and rational response to the issue of abortion and stories like that of Klopfer as a study conducted by the University of Michigan, the University of Amsterdam, and Iowa State University, has found that "people exposed to media violence become ‘comfortably numb’ to the pain and suffering of others and are consequently less helpful" in dangerous situations.
As society continually becomes more desensitized to violence, the threshold for potential shock value will continually escalate, leading some to question at what point will society stop and recognize the amount of widespread desensitization occurring.
Until then pro-life Americans will continually ask themselves:
Only after confronting the devastating truth’s hidden behind false narratives surrounding abortion can society begin to reverse the real-life damages that have been seemingly tolerated.
Viktor Fankl, a renowned Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, suggested in his book Man’s Search for Meaning that “the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” While it is unlikely a Statue of Responsibility will ever be constructed on the West Coast, an important lesson can be learned.
Liberty cannot be sustained without responsibility. If the American public desires to enjoy the blessings of liberty, and pass liberty on to following generations, it must first recognize and embrace the responsibility of protecting all human life from its earliest stages, to the final stages, of development.
Unfortunately, observing the current news cycle one can see that Americans are more concerned with their illiterate historical representation of Christopher Columbus, or the idea that climate change is the “battle of our time,” rather than accepting responsibility for the fact that Americans have allowed over 60 million children to be killed since 1973.
Ryan Neuhaus is a Regional Coordinator with Students for Life of America
No comments:
Post a Comment