Bishops’ Split On Eucharist Bursts Into Open

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

USCCB President José Gomez issued his mild-mannered statement addressing Joe Biden’s support of a multitude of objective evils on January 20, and the response has finally exposed the profound divisions that have long riven the bishops’ conference.
We recall that bishops voted 143-69 in November 2019 to make abortion the “preeminent issue” in the 2020 political campaign. But it wasn’t a done deal. The bishops’ dissident faction had run the conference for years, and that crew quickly put both “abortion” and “preeminent” on the shelf. In the USCCB’s expensive “Faithful Citizenship” campaign outreach during 2020, the “Prime Mandate” of abortion was nowhere to be seen.
Gomez’s Inaugural message set the stage for a major battle, and it has been proven to be historic. “In the Womb,” the May 1 pastoral letter from San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, brought things to a boil. Cordileone, who is Nancy Pelosi’s bishop, wrote: “Abortion is the axe laid to the roots of the tree of human rights.” It’s “genocide,” he wrote, and we must confront it.
But unlike virtually all of his brother bishops, Cordileone included this action item:
“When other avenues are exhausted, the only recourse a pastor has left is the public medicine of temporary exclusion from the Lord’s Table. This is a bitter medicine, but the gravity of the evil of abortion can sometimes warrant it.”
The response from the conference’s dissident faction came swiftly. Cardinal Ladaria’s letter to Gomez came on May 7, spurred on by the quiet intervention of U.S. Cardinals Cupich and Tobin. In his letter, the Vatican official calmly advised the U.S. bishops to postpone any public discussion of abortion and politics until a wide consensus was privately achieved both in the conference and worldwide.
In other words, “never.”
The next step in hostilities came this week with a letter to Gomez signed by sixty-some bishops, a number similar to that of the dissidents in November 2019. The text, excerpted in The Pillar blog, cites Ladaria’s May 7 letter, and demands that the President Gomez shut down any possibility of discussing the abortion issue this year. Curiously, one of the signers was the same Wilton Gregory who, together with then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, had successfully hidden the no-nonsense instruction on Canon 915 sent almost two decades ago by Cardinal Ladaria’s Vatican predecessor, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to USCCB members.

A Promising Response — Will It Resonate And Grow?

Two U.S. archbishops were not intimidated by the dissidents’ demand for censorship. This past Tuesday, Cordileone told Catholic News Agency that “I’m deeply grieved by the rising public acrimony among bishops and the adoption of behind-closed-doors maneuvers to interfere with the accepted, normal, agreed-upon procedures of the USCCB. Those who do not want to issue a document on Eucharistic coherence should be open to debating the question objectively and fairly with their brother bishops, rather than attempting to derail the process,” he wrote
The same day, Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver weighed in. “St. Paul is clear that there is danger to one’s soul if he or she receives the Body and Blood of our Lord in an unworthy manner,” he said. “As bishops, we are failing in our duty as shepherds if we ignore this truth and how it is manifesting itself in today’s society, especially with regards to those in prominent positions who reject fundamental teachings of the Church and insist that they be allowed to receive Communion,” Aquila added.
And that’s where things stand as we go to press.
So what’s really going on here?
The text of Canon 915 is clear and straightforward: “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
Curious: none of these letters mention Canon 915 at all.
And they don’t mention “Catholic Joe” Biden either. The Canon’s clarity is too powerful to ignore, and Joe Biden is too popular among bishops and their staffs, and too important to the federal funding so critical to their survival.
Like their secular counterparts, the Catholic Left is not open to logic and persuasion. For them, “dialogue” is a cover for deception and destruction. Our good bishops have no choice: They must call infanticide and its enablers by their proper names, pull back the curtain on their perfidy, and brace themselves for Satanic attacks from all the usual suspects.
Ask your bishop: “Did you sign the Cupich-Gregory letter”? If he says “no,” support him. If he says “yes,” or (like mine) won’t answer, let him know that you strongly disagree, and pray for him.

Politics Is To Charity As
Pope Francis Is To Clarity

“Charity is a necessary part of politics,” Pope Francis said in a talk to young people in several countries last Thursday. “Politics are the highest form of charity. Love is a political matter,” he added.
Is that so? Well, consider: Politics is the realm of the mandatory. Laws and regulations, even illegal executive orders — they are all obligatory. Disobey and you go to jail.
Charity — love, caritas, and both agape and philia in Greek — is voluntary. But these days the politicization of everything has also infected the realm of charity to the point of ruin: “Government Charity,” once universally recognized by the Church as an oxymoron and a lie, has become our Social Justice bishops’ secular idol.
True, their secular NGOs are desperate for taxpayer dollars. They weren’t forced to accept that money when the government first offered it decades ago. They accepted it — voluntarily. It has quickly grown from a bad habit into a racket. They are free to renounce even today — but they can’t: they beg for it. They’ve driven away so many of the faithful that they need the money.
Mandatory money. Supplied by force, thanks to the American taxpayer — because we aren’t giving enough voluntarily.
The moral? “Politics perfects charity,” says Caesar — so relax and feel good about yourself.
And ask your favorite theologian: Do we get merit in Heaven for paying our taxes?

Waiter, Another
Round Of Equity!

On May 20, Lori Lightfoot celebrated the second anniversary of her inauguration as Chicago’s first lesbian black mayor. To mark the occasion, she announced that she will grant one-on-one interviews only to “journalists of color.”
Meanwhile, undoubtedly inspired by the same spirit of equity, another group is demanding that whites who have a good job should quit to make room for “more deserving minorities.”
Speaking of minorities, the Biden Administration is urging U.S. embassies abroad to promote the violent, Marxist, pro-abortion Black Lives Matter organization. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw has upped the ante, offering awards of up to $20,000 for “projects supporting the LGBTQI+ community” in Poland.
Will Catholic Poles recognize this as a generous personal gesture from “Catholic Joe” Biden and all Americans? Or a deliberate slap in the face of the faithful?

California’s AWOL Bishops Embarrassed Yet Again

While they’re celebrating sanctuary cities and welcoming illegals, California’s bishops continue to no-show on the real issues.
CBN News reports: “This week, a California District Court approved the settlement of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry’s lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom, establishing the first statewide permanent injunction in the country against COVID restrictions on churches and places of worship.”
A great victory for religious liberty, a hard-fought battle bravely won.
But no Catholic bishops dared to join the suit on behalf of their own locked-out parishioners.
Like Virginia’s governor, the blackface infanticide advocate Ralph Northam, Newsom apparently has California’s bishops so frightened that they dare not confront him.
So they leave the heavy lifting to the Evangelicals.
Lesson learned.