By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You, the pastoral letter Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone released on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, has sent tremors through the hierarchy as well as the political world.
The most notable response to his letter came six days later, addressed to Los Angeles Archbishop and USCCB President José Gomez. Written by Luis Cardinal Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the letter constitutes a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card for pro-abortion Catholic politicians in the United States.
Cardinal Ladaria telegraphs that message first by adopting the language of the abortion industry, addressing such politicians as “pro-choice.” But are they really the problem? Perhaps the discussion “would best be framed within the broad context of worthiness for the reception of holy Communion on the part of all the faithful, rather than only one category of Catholics, reflecting their obligation to conform their lives to the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ as they prepare to receive the sacrament.”
Bishops should avoid the view that “abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest level of accountability on the part of Catholics,” he continued.
Are we to apply the entire Catechism when considering those who, in the terms of Canon 915, “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin”? After all, how dare we single out “one category of Catholics” who support abortion while ignoring others who deny global warming or oppose sanctuary cities!
And what about the rest of the world? Aren’t other countries dealing with the same issues? Have we consulted them? So Cardinal Ladaria recommends that “every effort should be made to dialogue with other episcopal conferences as this policy is formulated in order both to learn from one another and to preserve unity in the universal church.”
And of course, our bishops should embark on an “extensive and serene dialogue,” both with each other and with the pro-abortion Catholic politicians under their care. As the Vatican Press Office put it, “Cardinal Ladaria warned that without the unanimity of the bishops, a national policy, ‘given its possibly contentious nature,’ could ‘become a source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate and the larger church in the United States’.”
This calls to mind the crucial exchange between Pontius Pilate and his centurion, Abenader, in The Passion of the Christ, as the crowd roars, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
“I want to avoid sedition,” the harried Pilate mutters.
“Seditio iam est,” replies Abenader. “We’ve already got sedition, boss.”
And yes, we’ve already got “discord,” Your Eminence. That’s why we’re here.
“Waiter, Another Round
Of Dialogue!”
The cardinal then addresses the rather pointed observations raised by his predecessor at the CDF, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, to America’s bishops in 2004. We recall that the letter was addressed to then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who defied Ratzinger’s firm request that it be shared with all the bishops of the United States (the letter was eventually leaked two years later).
But Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter was only a “personal communication,” Ladaria writes, and during the ad limina visits by U.S. bishops that followed, “it was clear that there was a lack of agreement” among the bishops. Moreover, during the ad limina visits of 2019-2020, “the Congregation advised that dialogue among the bishops be undertaken to preserve the unity of the episcopal conference in the face of disagreements over this controversial topic.”
Of note, Ladaria does acknowledge (and then ignores) that “Cardinal Ratzinger’s communication should thus be discussed only within the context of the authoritative doctrinal note which provides the teaching of the magisterium on the theological foundation for any initiative regarding the question of worthy reception of holy Communion.” According to that 2002 document, “Those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose’ any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.”
And speaking of “authoritative,
One wonders why the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would put the Faith on hold while America’s bishops “dialogued” the issue to death.
Enter the National Catholic Register, which “confirmed through Vatican sources that the two cardinals [Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark], both of whom oppose stricter rules on the issue, visited the Vatican mid-morning on April 30, during which they met with CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria.”
Commenting on that report, Gerhard Cardinal Mueller, Ladaria’s immediate predecessor at the CDF, told EWTN that “I think [that] these two bishops came to Rome as members or representatives of the Democratic Party.”
And sure enough, on cue, Nancy Pelosi accepted Cardinal Ladaria’s invitation. When EWTN’s Erik Rosales asked her about receiving Holy Communion, she replied, “I think I can use my own judgment on that,” she was adding that she was “pleased with what the Vatican put out on that subject,” which she understood to mean “don’t be divisive on the subject.”
The Archbishop
Doubles Down
Archbishop Cordileone was not impressed by Ms. Pelosi’s comment. “We must never lose sight of this fact,” he wrote. “In the last 50 years, in the United States alone, 66,000,000 babies have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs. This is not a matter about which one can use judgment. It is a fact. 66,000,000 babies murdered in their mothers’ wombs. If we look around us and see what is happening in our society today, we will see that this fact once again demonstrates that violence begets violence. 66,000,000 babies murdered in their mothers’ wombs. The response to a woman in a crisis pregnancy is not violence, but love.
“It is for this reason that I’m happy to know that Speaker Pelosi said she is pleased with the letter of Cardinal Ladaria, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to Archbishop Gomez, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, regarding the issue of Catholics prominent in public life who advocate for practices that are gravely evil. In that letter, Cardinal Ladaria advises the U.S. bishops to use as a guide in discerning how to address this situation the principles laid out in a private letter in 2004 from the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the CDF at the time, to the bishops of the United States.
“In his letter, Ratzinger confirmed that consistently advocating for abortion and euthanasia constitutes formal cooperation in grave sin, and that bishops must dialogue with Catholics prominent in public life who do so in order to help them understand the grave evil they are helping to perpetrate and accompany them to a change of heart. He goes on to say in that letter that, if these dialogues prove to be fruitless, then, out of respect for the Catholic belief of what it means to receive Holy Communion, the bishop must declare that the individual is not be admitted to Communion. Speaker Pelosi’s positive reaction to Cardinal Ladaria’s letter, then, raises hope that progress can be made in this most serious matter.”
Cardinals Cupich and Tobin might oppose any “dialogue” when the USCCB meets in June, but Cardinal Ladaria affirms every bishop’s consecrated duty to apply Canon Law within his own see.
And Salvatore Cordileone is Nancy Pelosi’s archbishop.
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