 This article appears in the
November issue of Catholic World Report.
As the US presidential campaign accelerated toward its
conclusion, political analysts became increasingly persistent with their
questions about how John Kerry’s Catholicism would affect the outcome.
American Catholic voters appeared tobe split on that issue—as did their
bishops.
By Philip F. Lawler Philp Lawler is
the editor of Catholic World Report and CWNews.com
Since July, when
John Kerry formally accepted the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party,
each passing month has brought a sharper question about the candidate’s
Catholic identity. At first loyal Catholics were debating whether Kerry should be
denied the Eucharist, because of his public advocacy for abortion, embryonic
research, and homosexual unions. Later, the focus shifted to the question of
whether it would be sinful for a Catholic to cast his ballot for a pro-abortion
candidate. By late October a new and still more provocative question was raised:
Was Kerry subject to the penalty of excommunication because of his support for
legal abortion?
All of these questions figured, sometimes
prominently, in the secular media coverage of the presidential campaign. Each
question elicited a flurry of arguments and counter-arguments—not only from
avowedly partisan supporters and opponents of John Kerry, but also from members
of the American Catholic hierarchy. But none of these key questions would be
resolved definitively before Election Day.
“A
political battleground”
In June, at a
closed-door meeting in Denver, the US episcopal conference had approved an
interim policy that allowed each diocesan bishop to set his own policies as to
when—if ever—a prominent public figure should be denied Communion.
Archbishop Raymond Burke had forced the discussion of that issue, by announcing
that he would not administer the Eucharist to a political figure who dissented
from Church teachings on the dignity of life, and making it quite clear that he
was including John Kerry in that category.
Several bishops
quickly took the opposite position. In Cleveland, Ohio, Bishop Anthony Pilla
issued a statement pointing out that “refusing Communion to politicians who
support keeping abortion legal is not part of the pastoral tradition of the
Church.” If by “tradition” he meant to refer to the past 30
years of pastoral practice in the US, his statement was undeniably correct. Since
the Roe v. Wade decision, no American prelate has ever denied Communion to
a pro-abortion politician, although—perhaps not coincidentally—the
number of prominent Catholic officials endorsing legal abortion has grown
steadily.
But now Archbishop Burke was calling upon his
brother bishops to take more decisive steps. Church leaders had issued countless
statements condemning the slaughter of the unborn, he reasoned; and
authoritative Vatican documents such as Evangelium Vitae had made it
abundantly clear that the Church’s teaching on this point was
non-negotiable. Insofar as some politicians persisted in their public dissent,
the time had come for disciplinary action.
But Bishop
Pilla demurred. While conceding that abortion is a grave in justice, he argued
that “the battles for human life and dignity and for the weak and
vulnerable should be fought not at the Communion rail, but in the public
square.” From Pensacola, Florida, Bishop John Ricard sounded a similar
theme, saying: “I do not support those who would want to turn the reception
of the holy Eucharist or the Communion line into a partisan political
battleground.”
Bishop Ricard’s statement was
remarkable in that his criticism seemed clearly directed at a brother bishop
(Burke). Moreover, he seemed to be making the very damaging claim that a brother
bishop’s policy was guided not by religious zeal or pastoral concern, but
by political enthusiasm.
Who was it, after all, who
proposed to turn “the Communion line into a partisan political
battleground?” Archbishop Burke had explained that he felt compelled
to deny the Eucharist to dissident politicians, in order to avoid a grave public
scandal. And one could argue that it was Kerry who made the question a political
issue, when he persisting in coming forward for Communion, even after several
prelates— including his own Archbishop Sean O’Malley of
Boston—had said that he should not do so.
There was
an oddly asymmetrical quality to the debate among American bishops earlier in the
summer. The “conservative” bishops like Archbishop Burke—soon
joined by others including Bishops Robert Vasa of Baker City, Oregon, and Fabian
Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska—directed their public statements against
the actions of unrepentant public sinners. The “liberal” bishops
replied by criticizing their own brother bishops. One group of bishops tried to
address the source of a scandal; the other group tried to quiet the complaints
without addressing the scandal itself.
Successive
volleys The debate started by Archbishop Burke had
begun to simmer down in late July, when Bishop Vasa joined the fray by saying
that he, too, would deny the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians in his Oregon
diocese. Asked whether that policy would apply to Kerry, he answered:
“Absolutely.”
Two weeks later, three bishops
from southeastern cities joined in a public statement, unequivocally saying:
. . . we declare that Catholics serving in public life
espousing positions contrary to the teaching of the Church on the sanctity and
inviolability of human life, especially those running for or elected to public
office, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in any Catholic church within
our jurisdictions: the Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Dioceses of Charleston and
Charlotte.
The statement was signed by Archbishop John
Donohue of Atlanta, Georgia; Bishop Robert Baker of Charleston, South Carolina;
and Bishop Peter Jugis of Charlotte, North Carolina.
But
these statements were met by conflicting policy announcements from other American
bishops. Archbishop Alexander Brunett of Seattle, Washing ton, for instance,
counseled dissident politicians that they should “voluntarily
withdraw from Eucharistic sharing.” [emphasis added] But at the same
time he cautioned: “Ministers of the Eucharist should not take it upon
themselves to deny Holy Communion to anyone who presents
themselves.” [emphasis added]
Week after
week, the statements by American bishops came in a series of volleys. Every
bishop who spoke out on the issue agreed that Catholic politicians should oppose
abortion—although a few pulled their punches by adding that a pro-life
stance should include opposition to the death penalty and the war in Iraq as
well. Most bishops agreed that public figures who opposed Church teachings on the
sanctity of life should not receive Com munion. But only a few took the next
step, and said that these dissidents should be denied the Eucharist. The
few who took that stand emphasized that they would withhold Communion only with
great reluctance, and only after having given ample warning to the individuals
concerned. Those who took the contrary position invariably followed Archbishop
Brunett’s insistence that it would never be appropriate to withhold
Communion.
So once again the argument was not symmetrical.
One group of bishops tried carefully to draw a line, arguing that any Catholic
who crossed that line should not receive Communion. Their opponents in the public
debate did not attempt to argue that the line was being drawn in the wrong
location; they con tended that no line should ever be drawn at all.
Ranking the issues
In August, during
his ad limina visit to Rome, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick told the Italian daily
Avvenire that it was “impossible” to find an ideal presidential
candidate in the US. Nevertheless, the cardinal said, the American bishops
would “present the faithful with the criteria that should guide them toward
political choices worthy of a Catholic.” Such choices, he said, should take
into account the candidates’ views on issues involving respect for human
life.” But he quickly added that voters should give equal weight to
“questions tied to peace and social justice, as well as aid for the
poor.”
Since Cardinal McCarrick heads a special
committee of the US bishops’ conference charged with suggesting how the
hierarchy should respond to public figures who oppose Church teachings,
Avvenire understandably pressed him on the question of whether
pro-abortion politicians might be denied the Eucharist. The cardinal—who
had earlier said that he would not be “comfortable” withholding the
Communion from anyone—offered what had now become a standard reply, saying
that “the Eucharist is not the appropriate place for political
battles.” He also confirmed that his committee would not issue any further
recommendations on that topic until after the November elections. (At the June
meeting of the US episcopal conference, the McCarrick committee had recommended
against denying the Eucharist to dissident politicians; the body of bishops had
set aside that recommendation in establishing their policy that allowed
individual diocesan bishops to set their own policies.)
Cardinal McCarrick’s Avvenire interview created the impression that
abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality were important but not overriding
questions. Moreover, when he cited war and welfare policy as equally weighty
issues for Catholic voters to consider, he was raising issues on which the US
bishops’ conference has been critical of the Bush administration. But if
his statement hinted at partiality toward Kerry, it was soon directly
contradicted by another member of the US hierarchy.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on September 17, Archbishop John Myers
stated flatly: “Certainly policies on welfare, national security, the war
in Iraq, Social Security or taxes, taken singly or in any combination, do not
provide a proportionate reason to vote for a pro-abortion candidate.”
Archbishop Myers (who succeeded McCarrick as head of the
Newark, New Jersey, archdiocese) explained that since abortion involves the
direct and intentional destruction of human lives on a massive scale, Catholic
voters are morally obliged to give that issue unquestioned top priority. He
continued:
Thus for a Catholic citizen to vote for a
candidate who supports abortion and embryo-destructive research, one of the
following circumstances would have to obtain: either (a) both candidates would
have to be in favor of embryo killing on roughly an equal scale or (b) the
candidate with the superior position on abortion and embryo-destructive research
would have to be a supporter of objective evils of a gravity and magnitude beyond
that of 1.3 million yearly abortions plus the killing that would take place if
public funds were made available for embryo-destructive research.
If any readers were tempted to say that the war in Iraq
constituted a moral crime equal in gravity to legal abortion, Archbishop Myers
quickly closed that door, emphasizing that the circumstances he had sketched,
under which Catholic voters might choose a pro-abortion candidate, were purely
hypothetical. “Frankly,” he said, “it is hard to imagine
circumstance (b) in a society such as ours.”
Read Part 2 of this article here. If
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