One of the world’s most resolute defenders of the Church’s teaching is Raymond Leo Burke, the Cardinal Prefect of the Vatican’s highest court.
The American Cardinal told an Irish newspaper last week, again, that a person who persists in the “grave sin” of supporting abortion in law must both refrain from presenting himself for reception of Communion, but must be refused when he does so.
In a lengthy interview with the Irish newspaper Catholic Voice,
the Cardinal Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest
court, said again that it is not possible to remain in good standing as a
Catholic and support the killing of children in the womb as a
politician.
“There can be no question that the practice of abortion is among the
gravest of manifest sins and therefore once a Catholic politician has
been admonished that he should not come forward to receive Holy
Communion,” he said.
Not only should he not come forward himself, “as long as he continues
to support legislation which fosters abortion or other intrinsic evils,
then he should be refused Holy Communion,” the cardinal added.
Burke made it clear that the duty lies ultimately with the bishop to
both instruct and, when there is no change in behaviour, to withhold
Communion.
“The local Bishop should teach clearly in the matter and also encourage
his priests to make sure that the Church’s discipline is observed, in
order to avoid the grave sin of sacrilege on the part of the Catholic
politician who approaches to receive Holy Communion when he is
persisting obstinately in grave moral evil, and to prevent the scandal
which is caused when such individuals receive Holy Communion, because
their reception of Holy Communion gives the impression that the Church’s
teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is not firm,” he stated.
“At a much deeper level of faith and of personal relationship with our
Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, a person’s love of Christ ought to be
enough to compel him to refrain from reception of Communion, that the
Church teaches is literally the body and blood of Jesus, if he cannot
give up his sins," he added. “A person obstinately persisting in
manifest grave sin will refrain from approaching to receive Holy
Communion because of his love of our Lord and his sorrow for the grave
sin which he is committing against our Lord and His Holy Church.”
The controversy continues unabated in the Church as long as many other bishops, including the current and previous archbishops of
Washington, D.C., continue to refuse to countenance the idea of
refusing Communion to the Catholic political supporters of legalised
abortion like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Cardinal Donald Wuerl has
frequently said that he will not use the reception of Communion as a
“political weapon.”
The so-called Canon 915 controversy came
to the fore in the U.S. when the strongly pro-abortion Senator John
Kerry was running for leadership of the Democrat party and insisted on
campaigning on his credentials as a “devout” Catholic.
Canon 915 refers
to the section of the Church’s Code of Canon Law that forbids those who
“persist” in “manifest grave sin” to receive Holy Communion.
The issue
has become a flash-point in American politics, and Burke has long upheld
the Church’s teaching that support of abortion by a politician is well
within the canonical definition.
He called it the “duty” of all Catholic politicians to “support all of
those measures which will most reduce the evils which attack human life
and the integrity of marriage.”
“To decriminalize abortion,” he said, “is a contradiction of the most
fundamental principle of the legal system, the principle that human life
is to be safeguarded and defended at all times.”
Referring to the now-notorious case of media manipulation by
abortion activists in the Savita Halapannavar case, Cardinal Burke
said, “The Irish people, and especially the Irish government, should be
very alert to the kind of argumentation which will be used by the
secular media and by secular ideologues, particularly “claiming that the
destruction of the new human life in her womb could have saved the life
of Savita Halappanavar and, therefore, would have been justified.”
On an issue that has often divided some in the pro-life movement, the
cardinal also appeared to favour the use of graphic abortion images --
"images which portray the horror of abortion" -- in public education
campaigns. “One must observe that we have a habit in society today to
use language which helps us to avoid the reality about which we are
speaking,” he said.
“Certainly one must be careful not to use graphic images for the sake
of being graphic,” Cardinal Burke added. “On the other hand, our fellow
citizens should know what an abortion actually is. Images of the act of
abortion or the results of abortion, when carefully presented to the
public, can help the public, in general, to recognize the grave evil
which besets us and to take appropriate action.”