Holy Communion

Podcast: Let's play, 'Name that pope!' The Pope Francis vs. St. Pope John Paul II edition

Podcast: Let's play, 'Name that pope!' The Pope Francis vs. St. Pope John Paul II edition

Nearly a decade ago, I wrote my “On Religion” anniversary column (No. 26 at that time) about a game that Catholics seemed to be playing in cyberspace.

Some called this game, “Name that pope!” At this stage of Catholic life, early in the Pope Francis era, quite a few Catholics were frustrated with the many journalists who claimed there were striking differences — on social justice, poverty, the environment and peace — between the new pope and the previous two occupants of the Throne of St. Peter.

Pope Benedict XVI and St. Pope John Paul II were, you see, stern conservatives obsessed with clashes between centuries of Catholic moral theology and the Sexual Revolution. Pope Francis offered a kinder, more compassion vision focusing (all together now) on social justice, poverty, the environment and peace.

That old “Name that pope!” game played a pivotal role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). We were talking about a new Associated Press story that ran with this headline: “Pope says some ‘backward’ conservatives in US Catholic Church have replaced faith with ideology.

Hold that thought, as we return to the earlier edition of “Name that pope!” Let’s run through this unedited chunk of that column:

Start with this quotation: "The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion."

Name that pope: That's Pope Francis, believe it or not.

Round two: "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs."

Name that pope: That's Pope Benedict XVI.

Round three: "If we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, we make of our possessions a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! ... Instead of bringing life, they bring death."


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Catholic archbishop offers some candid thoughts to a conservative Lutheran crowd

Catholic archbishop offers some candid thoughts to a conservative Lutheran crowd

Serious fasting is hard, even for a Catholic archbishop, especially when the aroma of spaghetti sauce is wafting through a church during an Italian community dinner.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone learned that lesson during California's bitter battles over the meaning of "marriage," "family" and other common terms that had become controversial. But he had promised to join in 100 days of prayer, and 40 days of fasting, as part of an ecumenical coalition's efforts to defend centuries of teachings on sexuality.

It was evangelical Protestants who proposed the fast, even though traditional Catholics have practiced that discipline for centuries.

"They meant serious fasting — like not eating, or eating very little, just one meal a day. So, not just giving up dessert, you know?", said Cordileone, during this summer's "Issues, Etc." conference at Concordia University in Chicago, sponsored by Lutheran Public Radio. (This independent online network also produces my GetReligion.org podcast.)

The inside joke about Catholics "giving up dessert" hit home, even though he was speaking to Missouri Synod Lutherans.

There was a time when Lutherans would not have invited a Catholic archbishop to this kind of event, said Cordileone. There was a time when it was rare for Catholics to cooperate with evangelicals and other believers seeking common ground on moral and social issues.

"To tell you the truth, I actually long for the good old days when we used to have the luxury to fight with each other over doctrinal issues," said Cordileone, drawing laughter. "But right now, the ship is going down. … The crew cannot afford to stand on the bridge and discuss the best kind of navigation equipment to use — when the ship is going down."

The "ship," he stressed, is not the church — "It's our civilization." If clergy cannot work together to defend ancient doctrines on marriage and family, while also striving to convince their own flocks to live by them, then "our civilization is … hanging by a thread."


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Podcast: Zero elite press coverage of 'heresy' accusations against an American cardinal?

Podcast: Zero elite press coverage of 'heresy' accusations against an American cardinal?

The question at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was not whether Springfield (Ill.) Bishop Thomas Paprocki was on target with his First Things essay that all but accused San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy of heresy.

The question was not whether Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg — a strategic leader in the Vatican’s Synod on Synodality — was right when he said the church's teaching on homosexuality are “no longer correct,” and added, “I think it is time for a fundamental revision of the doctrine."

The question was not whether Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich was correct when he suggested, in print, that priests should absolve Catholics who come to Confession, allowing them to receive Holy Communion, even if these individuals refuse to repent of behaviors that Catholic doctrine insists are sin.

The question was not what Pope Francis meant when he told bishops in the Congo, “Always. Always forgive in the Sacrament of Reconciliation” — even if there is confusion about whether penitents are repenting of their sins or not.

No, the journalism question discussed during this podcast was this: Why are these developments — especially that stunning “Imagining a Heretical Cardinal” essay by Paprocki — receiving (as of this morning) zero coverage in the mainstream press?

By the way, it’s important that Bishop Paprocki is the chairman-elect of the Canonical Affairs and Church Governance Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It may also be relevant that, in 2017, Paprocki and McElroy clashed — in print — over the Springfield bishop’s decision not to allow Catholics to receive Holy Communion if they are openly living in same-sex marriages and, thus, rejecting centuries of Catholic doctrines on marriage and sex.

Why the lack of coverage? I have several theories.


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Pope Francis and a liberal U.S. cardinal spark new firestorm on sex, sin and Eucharist

Pope Francis and a liberal U.S. cardinal spark new firestorm on sex, sin and Eucharist

When popes talk about sex, it tends to make headlines.

This was certainly true when Pope Francis told the Associated Press, "Being homosexual isn't a crime." He said the Catholic Church opposes criminalizing homosexuality and that, "We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are." The pope then noted that homosexual activity is "not a crime. Yes, but it's a sin."

The pope immediately responded to questions from Outreach.faith, a website serving LGBTQ Catholics. Francis explained: "I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin. … This is to speak of 'the matter' of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin."

The timing was striking since the AP interview ran on January 25 -- one day after the Jesuit magazine America published a controversial essay by Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego, who Pope Francis selected as a cardinal last year.

"It is a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities," concluded McElroy. "The church's primary witness in the face of this bigotry must be one of embrace rather than distance or condemnation. The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not."

The cardinal linked this "pastoral" approach to another hot-button issue -- offering Holy Communion to Catholics divorced and remarried outside the church. Previously, he had claimed that the "Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare" by bishops attempting to withhold Communion from Catholic politicians who publicly promote abortion rights.


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Some trends in global Anglican Communion are starting to look rather Black and White

Some trends in global Anglican Communion are starting to look rather Black and White

There was nothing unusual about Nigerian Archbishop Henry Ndukuba leading the 2021 dedication rites for Holy Trinity Cathedral Church, which was packed with Nigerian Anglicans and a dozen or so bishops.

But this historic service was held in Houston and the cathedral is not part of the Diocese of Texas or the U.S. Episcopal Church. Some clergy at this Church of Nigeria North American Mission event were recognized as Anglicans by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some were not.

This puzzle became more complicated recently during Lambeth 2022, which Nigeria boycotted, along with the churches of Uganda and Rwanda. Other Global South bishops, during Lambeth standoffs with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby over the status of doctrines on marriage and sex, declined to receive Holy Communion with openly gay and lesbian bishops.

"There is a profound asymmetric quality to the Anglican Communion, where the voice of the bulk of its membership is either absent or muted," said the Rev. David Goodhew of St. Barnabas Church in Middlesborough, England. He is the author of a series of articles about African Anglicanism for Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church, an independent Anglican publication founded in 1878.

"If one adds up the number of bishops who didn't share Holy Communion at Lambeth … that is a very large number," he said. "I have been startled by the number of descriptions that said this Lambeth was a success. I don't know how one makes that claim when it would appear the bulk of the Anglican Communion's bishops couldn't come together to receive Communion. That looks like a disaster."

Bottom line: Global South Anglicans are experiencing a "volcano of growth" and remain "at loggerheads" with the shrinking churches of the United Kingdom, North America and other western nations. While most Global South bishops serve growing flocks -- roughly 75% of active worshipers in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion -- many western bishops lead what Goodhew called "micro-dioceses" with under 1,000 active members or "mini-dioceses" with fewer than 5,000.

The Church of Nigeria, meanwhile, claims 17 million members and the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, near Boston, estimates active participants at 22 million. The other churches skipping Lambeth 2022 were Uganda, with 10 million members, and Rwanda, with 1 million members.

The Church of England remains Anglicanism's power hub. It has 26 million members, but 2019 weekly attendance was about 679,000 -- before the COVID-19 crisis.


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Question for Catholic politicos and others: Who receives Holy (Christian) Communion?

Question for Catholic politicos and others: Who receives Holy (Christian) Communion?

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 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).


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Red hat for San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy: Vatican message to U.S. Catholic bishops?

Red hat for San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy: Vatican message to U.S. Catholic bishops?

Two years before long-standing rumors about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick leapt into headlines worldwide, America's most outspoken activist on clergy sexual abuse met with his local bishop -- San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy.

"It was clear to me during our last meeting in your office, although cordial, that you had no interest in any further personal contact," wrote the late Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine priest who then worked for the Seton Psychiatric Institute in Baltimore. While church officials asked him to report to McElroy, "your office made it clear that you have no time in your schedule either now or 'in the foreseeable future' to have the meeting that they suggested."

Sipe's 2016 letter to the San Diego bishop was later posted online and is frequently cited as an example of a bishop ignoring warnings about the now defrocked McCarrick, who often boasted about his clout as a Vatican kingmaker. Now it will receive more attention because Pope Francis has named McElroy to the Sacred College of Cardinals. This promotes the San Diego bishop over several prominent archbishops -- including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, who leads America's largest Catholic archdiocese and is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In his hand-delivered report, Sipe told McElroy that his ongoing research indicated that 6% of American priests were guilty of sex with minors. Meanwhile, a "systemic" trend was clear: "At any one time no more than 50% of priests are practicing celibacy."

As for the powerful McCarrick, Sipe noted: "I have interviewed twelve seminarians and priests who attest to propositions, harassment, or sex with McCarrick, who has stated, 'I do not like to sleep alone.' "

Debates about McElroy's elevation have focused on other divisive issues in Catholic life, although decades of sexual-abuse crimes loom in the background. He has, for example, supported the ordination of women to the diaconate, allowing them to preach, perform weddings and serve -- one step from the priesthood -- at Catholic altars.

McElroy has openly clashed with American bishops anxious to address "Eucharistic coherence" as prominent Catholics, especially President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, support -- with words and deeds -- abortion and LGBTQ rights.


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Mainstream coverage of Pelosi-Communion story mangled doctrine, ignored canon law

Mainstream coverage of Pelosi-Communion story mangled doctrine, ignored canon law

Too often in the mainstream press there is a tendency for newsrooms to parrot the taking points of progressive activists. It’s due to a number of factors.

One is the type of schools most present-day journalists attend. The other is that they mostly grew up, live and work in blue zip codes along the New York-DC Acela corridor. Those values often come into direct conflict with reality, and that’s when journalism often fails to report facts and context that matter to news coverage. And always remember this GetReligion theme — politics is “real.” Religion? Not so much.

This brings us to the national news story regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being banned by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone from taking Holy Communion because of her continued support — in words and deeds — for abortion rights.

The ensuing coverage, depending on what sources you read, spanned from very good (especially in Catholic news sources such as America magazine and The Pillar) to baffling and very poor.

These last two traits were mostly found in mainstream secular outlets where the focus was predominantly on politics rather than religion. It also highlighted the blind spots of today’s journalists, where a lack of religion knowledge — or even understanding that religious voices need to be included in their coverage — was on full display in the Pelosi-Holy Communion story.

As a result, some of the news coverage surrounding Pelosi and the archbishop denying her the Eucharist openly attempted to rewrite Catholic doctrine on this issue. Since most news coverage has a good guy-bad guy quality to it, omitting what the church teaches on this particular issue helped cast the California Democrat as the aggrieved party and Cordileone as a MAGA-loving prelate (who does not deserve the red hat of a cardinal).

It really didn’t matter whether it was a news story, editorial or opinion piece — centuries of Catholic doctrine on who should receive the Eucharist and the authority of a bishop was swept to the side.

The San Francisco Examiner, in a May 23 editorial, called for Pope Francis to replace Cordelione.


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U.S. bishops, recent popes, Ted McCarrick and the soul of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

U.S. bishops, recent popes, Ted McCarrick and the soul of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

After fierce closed-door debates about President Joe Biden and Holy Communion, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops managed to release a muted document last fall that did little to please activists on either side of the church's wars about abortion and politicians in pews.

But one passage in "The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church" turned into a ticking clock in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, setting the stage for the current clash between Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and a member of his flock -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"It is the special responsibility of the diocesan bishop to work to remedy situations that involve public actions at variance with the visible communion of the Church and the moral law," noted the bishops. "Indeed, he must guard the integrity of the sacrament, the visible communion of the Church, and the salvation of souls."

Cordileone's diocese includes the 12th Congressional District of California. After six private attempts to reach Pelosi, he released a May 20 statement telling her that "you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance."

The archbishop built his case with quotes from Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II and the now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, as well as Canon law stating that Catholics who "obstinately persist in manifest grave sin" are "not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

The speaker's words and actions, he added, suggest she isn't worrying about papal authority. Pelosi, the mother of five children, recently told the Seattle Times that the "personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic. They say to me, 'Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the pope.' Yes, I do. Are you stupid?"


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