THE QUESTION:

Who should receive Christian Communion?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

By coincidence, Christianity’s practice for sharing the Communion bread and wine (or juice) is popping up in two separate controversies.

Item: San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone sparked an ongoing fuss with his May 19 declaration that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is not to receive the sacrament at Masses in her hometown because she vehemently advocates liberal abortion laws while openly identifying as Catholic.

Item: On June 27, Episcopal Church delegates will confer online on whether the agenda at a national convention in Baltimore July 8–11 will take up a radical proposal to offer Holy Communion to people who are not baptized and thus not affiliated with the Christian religion.

Let’s first walk through the Catholic situation. Last year the U.S. bishops debated whether a forthcoming policy statement on the sacrament of  Communion would address the fitness of pro-choice Catholic politicians to receive the elements at the altar. The advent of an ardently pro-choice and actively Catholic President, Joseph Biden, energized the discussion.

Kansas Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on pro-life issues, said it’s “a grave moral evil” to identify as Catholic and advocate open abortion choice “contrary to the church’s teaching.” In the end, however, the bishops’ statement sidestepped the problem.

Cordileone’s related stance toward Pelosi has been joined by the bishops of neighboring Santa Rosa, California; Tyler, Texas; and Arlington, Virginia. But policy on this is set by each local bishop and in Cardinal Wilton Gregory’s Washington, D.C., Pelosi has no problem finding a church to receive the sacrament.

In a similar action, on June 6 Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila and three other Colorado bishops asked Catholic state legislators who voted for an abortion rights bill to “voluntarily refrain” from taking Communion.

Cordileone explained that he is simply implementing canon law, which prescribes that parishioners “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion” (#915).

The Canon Law Society of America commentary explains that “manifest” means the sinful deeds are “publicly known,” which is certainly the case with Pelosi or Biden. “Obstinately” means the sinner refuses to “heed the warnings of church authorities or adhere to church teachings.” The commentary adds, however, that if there’s “any prudent doubt” about the gravity of the sin the decision should be resolved “in favor of” the parishioner seeking Communion.

Does abortion advocacy count as “grave sin”?

Pope Francis’ Vatican has signaled a preference to shun such showdowns with Catholic Democrats. But as Cordileone informed Pelosi, prior popes have drawn a red line. In a 2002 “doctrinal note,” John Paul II stated that a legislator who knows what the church teaches yet “supports procured abortion” does in fact commit “manifestly grave sin” subject to the canon law penalty. In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office and later Pope Benedict XVI, said the same in a pronouncement directed to the American bishops.

After the Communion announcement, Pelosi remarked that “I respect people’s views” against abortion, including members of her own family, “but I don’t respect us foisting it onto others.” Her attitude was defended in America magazine by John Whitney, former head of the Jesuit order’s Oregon province. He accuses bishops and priests who restrict Communion access of acting “contrary to the practice of Jesus” in “welcoming and inviting all people.” Such clerics “abuse the very sacrament they claim to defend,” he charged.

Which brings us to the pending Episcopal legislation, on which proponents likewise contend that “it is uncomfortable to visualize Jesus turning anybody away who desires to remember Him.” The bill would repeal the provision in Episcopal canon law that “no unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church” (#1.17.1). Appropriately, the idea comes from the diocese based in “Sacramento,” and be it noted is opposed by the bishop there.

Christians across the millennia have observed the baptism requirement. The Didache, a church teaching manual experts date to the 1st Century A.D., declares, “Let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord” (9:10). The tradition holds whether a particular church considers the rite a “sacrament” or an “ordinance,” whether it is called Communion, Mass, Eucharist, Divine Liturgy or Lord’s Supper, and whether the limitation is encoded in enforceable church law or an informal understanding.

It seems reasonable if people who do not choose to identify as Christians by joining a church are not welcome to receive the elements, since membership almost universally is signified by obeying the baptism teaching Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:19). But the Episcopal left wants to reverse matters, opening up Communion in hopes that outsiders might then be drawn to seek baptism and church membership.

The proposed “open Communion” was criticized in a May 31 statement from 22 theologians, including teachers at eight Episcopal seminaries.

CONTINUE READING: “Who should receive Christian Communion?”, by Richard Ostling.

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