‘The 60’

Richard A. Sokerka

Last month at their spring meeting, the U.S. bishops voted decisively to approve the drafting of a teaching document on the Eucharist that in a proposed outline includes a subsection on Eucharistic consistency.

The bishops’ doctrine committee, said it would include a “special call for those Catholics who are cultural, political, or parochial leaders to witness to the faith” and uphold Church teaching in public life.

Immediately after the bishops’ vote, 60 Catholic House Democrats boldly issued a joint “Statement of Principles” to the bishops that said in part, “We solemnly urge you to not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments, the source and the summit of the whole work of the Gospel over one issue.” The 60 signers of the statement are pro-abortion, and asked not to be denied the Eucharist because they support “a woman’s safe and legal access to abortion,” adding that denying Communion to Catholic public officials who support permissive legislation on abortion would be a “weaponization of the Eucharist.”

One of the statement’s signers, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) was even more emboldened than his cohorts as he issued a series of tweets from his personal social media account brazenly calling the U.S. bishops “partisan hypocrites” and saying, “Next time I go to Church, I dare you to deny me Communion.”

In a statement, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., lambasted secular media coverage of the USCCB vote to draft a document on the Eucharist. He addressed the inaccuracy of secular news reports tying Eucharistic consistency to being only about abortion (as the 60 Democrats did to the bishops in their “Statement of Principles”). Bishop Paprocki said Eucharistic consistency is not simply about “abortion” but the problem of grave sin “of any kind.”

While secular news reports gave the impression that the bishops decided only abortion will prevent someone from receiving the Eucharist, he said, “It has been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church for the past two thousand years that those persons conscious of grave sin must first repent, confess their sins to a priest, and receive sacramental absolution before receiving Holy Com­munion. This teaching is reflected in the Church’s canon law and sacramental discipline.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, who recently issued his Pastoral Letter, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew You” on the human dignity of the unborn, Holy Communion, and Catholics in public life, rebuked the Democrats’ “Statement of Principles” in a paragraphby-paragraph response published in First Things.

To the point that Democrats stated they are “committed to making real the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching: helping the poor, disadvantaged, and the oppressed, protecting the least among us,” Archbishop Cordileone offered this rebuttal: “One of the ‘basic principles’ of Catholic belief is … do not intentionally kill, or collude in enabling others to kill, innocent human life. Catholic principles build systematically on one another. The protection of innocent, defenseless life is first and foundational.”

And he refuted the accusation that bishops were beginning a “weaponization of the Eucharist,” a charge the Archbishop vehemently denied. “The bishops’ motivation is pastoral: the salvation of souls and reparation of scandal. There is nothing punitive in stating and restating the truth of Catholic belief, and its implications for an authentically Catholic life,” he stated.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, the bishops’ pro-life chair, said that the bishops needed to call for “integrity” from Catholic public officials. He said that those Catholic politicians who contradict the Church’s teachings on grave issues and approach to receive Communion anyway were the ones politicizing the Eucharist.

“Those who advocate for abortion no longer talk in the language of choice,” he said. “They talk about it [abortion] as a right.”

“We’re calling everybody to integrity, including those in public life,” Archbishop Naumann said.

Sadly, integrity — the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles and moral uprightness — is lost on “the 60” when it comes to life in the womb.