1. Pelosi’s Abortion Stance Is Out of Communion, The archbishop of her home diocese calls out the Catholic House speaker., By J.D. Flynn, The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2022, Pg. A15, Opinion
San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said Friday he would bar House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion in her home diocese. Mrs. Pelosi, a Catholic, has been at the center of a Democratic push to codify abortion protections in federal law after a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade leaked this month. She has spent decades framing her political career as an expression of her faith, all the while working to expand abortion access in defiance of Catholic doctrine.
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Everybody sins, but there is a difference between struggling to get things right and publicly rejecting that struggle altogether. Church law says a Catholic “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” should not be offered communion because incoherence between life and practice causes spiritual harm.
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The focus now shifts to how other bishops will react. Bishop Robert Vasa of Napa Valley, where Mrs. Pelosi has a vacation home, said Friday that the San Francisco ban will apply when she is in his diocese. But it isn’t likely that Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., will uphold the ban. He has compared the prospect of sacramental discipline to a “gun on the table” during dialogue with pro-choice politicians. But dialogue is not always fruitful. And on major moral issues, such as abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, politics have lasting spiritual importance.
Archbishop Cordileone said this week that when Catholics flout moral reality in political discourse, souls—and lives—hang in the balance. And when souls hang in the balance, pastors have an obligation to act.
Mr. Flynn is editor and co-founder of Pillar Catholic.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-abortion-communion-archbishop-cordileone-catholic-church-sacrament-alito-opinion-leak-jackson-women-health-pro-choice-life-roe-v-wade-11653247524?
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2. Survivors, advocates push Italian bishops for national abuse inquiry, By Elise Ann Allen, Crux, May 23, 2022
A collective of abuse survivors and advocacy groups have published an open letter to the Italian bishops as they meet to elect new leadership, calling for the adoption of several measures aimed at acknowledging the problem, and prevention.
“Abuses perpetrated within the Church affects people in their bodies, in their lives, in their conscience: they are violations of human rights. If the Church does not respect human rights, it cannot preach the Gospel,” the letter said.
This, it said, is why “obedience to the Gospel can push us to ‘disobedience’ whenever in the name of ‘prudence’ we risk becoming accomplices to crimes.”
The nearly 50 signatories of the letter asked the bishops to obtain “truth and justice for the victims of abuse – minors, adults, vulnerable people, religious – perpetrated by people in various capacities involved in the Church, as well as preventive measures so that the Church regains credibility and authority.”
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2022/05/survivors-advocates-push-italian-bishops-for-national-abuse-inquiry
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3. As communion ban debate heats up anew, don’t count on Rome to settle it, By John L. Allen Jr., Crux, May 22, 2022, Opinion
In itself, Friday’s announcement that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone formally has barred House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion over her support for abortion rights probably shouldn’t be surprising, and it also may not be very consequential, at least in the short term.
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Nevertheless, there are three aspects of the Cordileone/Pelosi story worth unpacking, for what they reveal both about the Catholic Church and the political temper of the times.
First, in one sense Cordileone’s act is an echo of the past, in that disputes over communion bans reach back at least to the Bush/Kerry race in 2004. Ever since, what wags have dubbed the “wafer wars” have been a source of contention in American Catholic life, tending to resurface whenever the Democrats nominate a Catholic who’s also pro-choice.
Yet in light of the pending Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, assuming it’s confirmed, we may be entering a new era. One key effect of that decision would be to expand the battleground over abortion to the state level, thereby putting new pressure on bishops to make difficult decisions who, heretofore, have stayed on the sidelines.
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Second, in the 18 years since the first flare-up of the communion ban issue in 2004, it’s become steadily more clear that Rome is unlikely to bail the bishops out by resolving the debate itself.
Under Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church had eight years of a papacy that clearly leaned more towards discipline and doctrinal clarity when it comes to the conditions for receiving communion. It was then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, after all, who wrote the famous letter to the U.S. bishops in 2004 that’s been cited ever since by those in favor of denying the Eucharist to politicians who support abortion rights.
Now under Francis, the church has had eight years of a papacy that leans in the opposite direction, towards tolerance and pastoral flexibility.
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Third and finally, the fact that a figure such as Pelosi could be denied communion in one setting but welcomed in another points to a deep truth about the Catholic Church, which is that despite public mythology of being hyper-centralized and rigidly controlled, in truth Catholicism is actually one of the most decentralized institutions on earth, with most of the decisions that really matter being made on the local level.
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2022/05/as-communion-ban-debate-heats-up-anew-dont-count-on-rome-to-settle-it
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4. Pope voices hope church in China can operate in freedom, By Frances D’Emilio, Associated Press, May 22, 2022, 8:22 AM
Pope Francis on Sunday expressed his spiritual closeness to Catholics in China, voicing hope that the church there operates in “freedom and tranquility,’’ but making no mention of a 90-year-old cardinal who was recently arrested in Hong Kong.
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Zen has been scathing in his criticism of China and has blasted the Vatican’s agreement in 2018 with China over the nomination of bishops in that country. He has characterized the deal, which is up for renewal this year, as a sell-out of Christians who worship in underground congregations in China to avoid harassment by authorities of the Communist regime.
Francis in his remarks invited the faithful in the square to join him in prayer, “so that the church in China, in freedom and tranquility, can live in effective communion with the universal church and can exercise its mission to announce the Gospel to all, offering, thusly, a positive contribution to the spiritual and material progress of society.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pope-voices-hope-church-in-china-can-operate-in-freedom/2022/05/22/ca0fd884-d9c9-11ec-bc35-a91d0a94923b_story.html
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5. Letter to the faithful on the Notification sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, By Archbishop Cordileone, Archdiocese of San Francisco, May 20, 2022
My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
Pope Francis has been one of the world’s most vocal advocates of human dignity in every stage and condition of life. He decries what he evocatively calls the “throwaway culture.” There can be no more extreme example of this cultural depravity than when direct attacks on human life are enshrined in a nation’s law, celebrated by society, and even paid for by the government. This is why Pope Francis, as much as any pope in living memory, has repeatedly and vividly affirmed the Church’s clear and constant teaching that abortion is a grave moral evil.
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As the Archbishop of San Francisco, I am bound to be “concerned for all the Christian faithful entrusted to [my] care” (Code of Canon Law, can. 383, §1). This most serious duty can sometimes become unpleasant, especially when Catholics in public life explicitly promote practices that involve the direct taking of innocent human life, which is what abortion does. I have struggled with this issue in my own conscience for many years now, especially with regard to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and member of our Archdiocese, Nancy Pelosi.
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After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiate her support for abortion “rights” and confess and receive absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance. I have accordingly sent her a Notification to this effect, which I have now made public.
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May God grant us the grace to be true advocates for the dignity of human life, in every stage and condition of life, and to accompany, support and love women who otherwise would be alone and afraid at a most vulnerable time in their lives.
In Christ, our Source of New Life,
Most Reverend Salvatore J. Cordileone
Archbishop of San Francisco
https://sfarchdiocese.org/letter-to-the-faithful-on-the-notification-sent-to-speaker-nancy-pelosi/
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6. US bishops respond to Pelosi being barred from the Eucharist, By Michelle La Rosa, The Pillar, May 20, 2022
On Friday afternoon, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco released a statement announcing that U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is barred from receiving the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, due to her efforts to codify federal protections for abortion.\
Numerous U.S. bishops have responded to Cordileone’s statement. The Pillar will compile those responses here, and update as statements become available.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/us-bishops-respond-to-pelosi-being?s=r
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7. Pope Francis’s refusal to condemn Putin spurs debate in Catholic Church, By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli, The Washington Post, May 20, 2022, 9:00 AM
In the nearly three months since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis has spoken repeatedly about the suffering of Ukrainians. He’s called the war “cruel and senseless” and kissed the Ukrainian flag. Last week, he met with Ukrainian women who said their husbands were defending the besieged Mariupol steel plant.
But the pope’s messaging about the war, even to some supporters, has also been head-scratching.
He has conspicuously avoided condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin as the aggressor. He has criticized the West’s sanctions and defense spending. And in an interview published this month by an Italian newspaper, Francis appeared to echo a Kremlin talking point, describing the “barking of NATO at Russia’s door” as one of the triggers for Putin’s wrath.
For Francis, 85, the war has become a second epochal event, after the pandemic, that has come to define the agenda of his pontificate. And while he was widely recognized for his clear-eyed take on the coronavirus — the isolation it engendered, the dangers of inequitable vaccine distribution — Francis has spurred a debate within the church about his approach to the war and whether he is being too cautious toward Russia and too bent on maintaining ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/20/pope-francis-putin-ukraine-war/
___________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association. |
