The Pope, Pelosi, Eucharist
This is really something. It happened in Rome earlier this afternoon:
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights.
Pelosi attended the morning Mass marking the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, during which Francis bestowed the woolen pallium stole on newly consecrated archbishops. She was seated in a VIP diplomatic section of the basilica and received Communion along with the rest of the congregants, according to two people who witnessed the moment.
Pelosi’s home archbishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, has said he will no longer allow her to receive the sacrament in his archdiocese because of her support for abortion rights. Cordileone, a conservative, has said Pelosi must either repudiate her support for abortion or stop speaking publicly of her Catholic faith.
Pelosi has done neither. She called the recent Supreme Court ruling removing constitutional protections for abortion an “outrageous and heart-wrenching” decision that fulfils the Republican Party’s “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.”
So, Pope Francis overrules Pelosi’s own bishop, and gives her communion just days after the Dobbs decision, which, as the AP reports, she denounced in vivid terms.
Of course this Pope has a rather liberal view of these things. From a transcript of his press conference on the flight back from his visit to Hungary and Slovakia last fall:
O’Connell:You have often said that we are all sinners, and that the Eucharist is not a reward for the perfect but a medicine and food for the weak. As you know, in the USA after the last elections, there was a discussion among the bishops about giving communion to politicians who supported abortion laws, and there are bishops who want to deny communion to the president and other officials. Some bishops are in favourable, others say not to use the Eucharist as a weapon. What do you think and what do you advise the bishops to do? And have you as a bishop in all these years publicly refused the Eucharist to anyone?
Pope Francis:I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone; I don’t know if anyone has come in these conditions! This even as a priest. I have never been conscious of having a person like the one you describe in front of me, that is true. [Emphasis mine — RD] The only time I’ve ever had a nice thing happen was when I went to serve Mass in an old people’s home, I was in the living room, and I said: who wants Communion? All the old people raised their hands. One little old lady raised her hand and took Communion and said: “Thank you, I’m Jewish” And I said: “What I gave you is Jewish too!”
Communion is not a prize for the perfect – think of Jansenism – Communion is a gift, a present, it is the presence of Jesus in the Church and in the community. Then, those who are not in the community cannot take Communion, like this Jewish lady, but the Lord wanted to reward her without my knowledge. Out of the community – ex-communicated – because they are not baptised or have drifted away.
The second problem, that of abortion: it’s more than a problem, it’s homicide, whoever has an abortion, kills. No mincing words. [Emphasis mine — RD] Take any book on embryology for medical students. The third week after conception, all the organs are already there, even the DNA… it is a human life, this human life must be respected, this principle is so clear! To those who cannot understand, I would ask this question: Is it right to kill a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to kill a human life? Scientifically, it is a human life. Is it right to take it out to solve a problem? That is why the Church is so harsh on this issue, because if it accepts this, it is as if it accepts daily murder. A Head of State told me that the demographic decline began because in those years there was such a strong law on abortion that six million abortions were performed and this left a decline in births in the society of that country.
Now we go to that person who is not in the community, who cannot receive Communion. And this is not a punishment, he is outside. But the problem is not theological, it is pastoral, how we bishops manage this principle pastorally. And if we look at the history of the Church, we will see that every time the bishops have not dealt with a problem as pastors, they have taken sides on a political front. Think of the night of St Bartholomew’s, “Heretics, yes, let’s cut their throats!… Think of the witch-hunts… of Campo di Fiori, of Savonarola. When the Church defends a principle, when it does so in a non-pastoral manner, it takes sides on a political level, and this has always been the case, just look at history. What must the pastor do? Be a pastor, don’t go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated. Pastors with God’s style, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness. The whole Bible says so. A pastor who does not know how to act as a pastor… I am not very familiar with the details of the United States… But if you’re close, tender, and give communion? It’s a hypothesis. The pastor knows what to do at all times. But if you go beyond the pastoral dimension of the Church, you become a politician, and you can see this in all the non-pastoral condemnations of the Church… If you say you can give or not give, this is casuistry… Remember the storm that was whipped up with Amoris laetitia? “Heresy, heresy!” Fortunately, Cardinal Schoenborn, a great theologian, was there, he clarified things… They are children of God and they need our pastoral closeness, then the pastor resolves things as the Spirit indicates to him.
I don’t understand this position at all. Francis clearly believes that abortion is murder. He also says he has never denied communion to anyone, and that he has never knowingly had a politician who favors abortion present themselves for communion. Well, it happened today at the Vatican, and there is no way he can plausibly claim to have been in the dark about Nancy Pelosi’s stance.
He communed a politician who believes that the Supreme Court’s finding that there is nothing in the US Constitution that constitutes a right to kill the unborn is an outrage. It sounds like Francis’s bottom line is that anybody who is in the Catholic Church has a right to receive communion. What is the point of confession, then? If you can receive communion despite having unconfessed sins, what does this do to the rite of confession?
In the Orthodox Church in America, my wife and I are not permitted to receive Communion now because of our pending divorce proceedings. I don’t like it, especially because I did not initiate the divorce, but those are the rules. They aren’t meant to punish us; they are meant to underscore the profound significance of holy communion. In some Orthodox jurisdictions — I believe the Antiochians are like this — believers are kept away from the chalice for six months after the marriage has been dissolved by the Church. I think we can argue about the pastoral wisdom of all this in good faith, but I greatly appreciate how the disciplines of the Orthodox churches underscore how serious they take Eucharistic theology — this, even when those disciplines are being used against me.
Let me ask you readers who attend churches where the Eucharist is offered: does your priest or parish ever refuse the Eucharist to anybody? Or is it understood that anybody is welcome to receive, under any conditions? Whatever your church’s policy, do you think it’s a good policy, or not?
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I do believe that stricter policies are better. I agree with the Pope that the Eucharist is medicine for sinners, but the ability of the medicine to work inner healing depends on the internal disposition of the recipient. A person who is guilty of serious sin, but is not repentant? The “medicine” is wasted on that sort of person, I think. This is why the Catholic and Orthodox churches insist on confession (which entails repentance) before receiving communion. To separate receiving the Eucharist from confession (and repentance) is to do violence to the meaning of the Eucharist, I believe.
This conflict between the Pope and the Archbishop of San Francisco reminds me of the e-mail I received from a reader who taught religion in a Catholic high school in the South. He wrote after Francis said his “who am I to judge?” remarks about homosexuality. The teacher said that he had worked hard, for a long time, to explain the Church’s teaching to his students, and in a single ill-chosen phrase, Francis had destroyed all of his work. He told me that his students said that the Pope doesn’t think it’s a big deal, so why should they? Similarly, how can priests and educators teach young Catholics the meaning of the Eucharist if the pontiff himself doesn’t seem to care who receives it, beyond them being at least nominally Catholic?
And: to what extent does the Pope doing this, in contravention of the San Francisco Archbishop’s ruling, constitute a meaningful split between him and Archbishop Cordileone? Catholic priests, canonists, and theologians who read this blog, help me out here.
