Bishops Called To “Convince, Rebuke, And Exhort”

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

The sanity and spiritual security of parish life continues for us as an island of faith and reason in a world increasingly adrift, cut loose from rational moorings which cooperate with grace.
Our dedication to the Traditional Latin Mass as the core of our spiritual life remains the anchor which secures us to the rock of faith. The Sacrament of Confession is frequented by a higher percentage of traditional Catholics, who also attend Sunday Mass in greater numbers. They are also generous in terms of financial support.
We are thus able to provide for the faithful a serene and joyful place to express and to grow in the fullness of Catholic faith. Our healthy need for community is also nourished in associations outside the Holy Mass, such as our weekly Sunday lunch.
The strange discordant notes of heresy emanating from certain predictable quarters of the Catholic world provoke sneers of scorn and words of derision, as well as reactions of incomprehension. Humor also aids us especially as reasonable conversation in some cases remains unattainable, even with some baptized Catholics, while prayers for conversion are yet unanswered.
The USCCB makes occasional ineffective bleatings about the outrage of a baptized Catholic president who boldly receives Communion at public Masses while also publicly flouting the moral teachings of the Church. One runs out of superlatives to describe the absurdity.
Words without actions are a tired trope. For those charged with leading they amount to sinful neglect.
Signs of Catholic faith yet emerge in the Church. San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone recently issued a statement in accord with Canon 915, which law makes clear that public figures who persist in grave sin and who, despite correction, continue to do so are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.
I’ve made the point before that, despite the charge that those who deny the Eucharist to public heretics in political life are engaging in politics or are weaponizing the Eucharist, the opposite is the case. It is, in fact, when giving the Eucharist to pro-abortion public figures that one is politicizing the sacrament. This is for the reason that one cannot sacramentally communicate a pro-abortion public figure without at the same time signaling indifference, if not outright support, in regard to their rejection of Catholic faith and morals.
Defending the faith and the faithful from confusion and scandal is the first priority for the Church and thus also for our bishops, while never ceasing to pray and work for the conversion of heretics known and unknown. 2 Tim. 4:2 beautifully describes the work of bishops and all priests, whose first task is the ministry of Word and Sacrament:
“. . . Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”
Fr. Joseph Illo made the point well, in a recent homily, that the first task of bishops is not Confirmations or raising money but, rather, teaching the faith, as described in the above quotation from 2 Timothy.
Also, from the same city of San Francisco, there was a recent sign of hope as mentioned above with Archbishop Cordileone’s clear and decisive teaching in full accord with Catholic morals in his new letter, “Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You: A Pastoral Letter on the Human Dignity of the Unborn, Holy Communion and Catholics in Public Life.”
He writes therein, “Our responsibility to the rest of the Catholic community is to assure them that the Church of Jesus Christ does take most seriously her mission to care for ‘the least of these,’ as Our Lord has commanded us, and to correct Catholics who erroneously, and sometimes stubbornly, promote abortion.”
The clincher comes in the following paragraph:
“This correction takes several forms and rightly begins with private conversations between the erring Catholic and his or her parish priest or bishop. Because we are dealing with public figures and public examples of cooperation in moral evil, this correction can also take the public form of exclusion from the reception of Holy Communion.”
As has already been evident for some time, a number of bishops have publicly assured pro-abortion public figures, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi among them, that they will give them Communion at Mass. This unfortunate and scandalous denial of Church teaching short-circuits the process of dialogue described by Archbishop Cordileone in his recent letter and also urged by Pope Benedict many years ago in another letter to the U.S. bishops.
A bishop fails in the necessary part of his vocation to “convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching,” as St. Paul describes it, at the moment he give public assurance that he will administer Communion to persistent public sinners. What hope have we for repentance of the many who lack it if the bishop won’t ask it of the prominent members of the flock?
How do we effectively and consistently make clear to all Catholics that merely supporting evil or error is wrong, apart from going so far as to commit it, when they see elected policymakers getting a pass on the same issue?
Without consistency in teaching, the whole Catholic edifice threatens to break apart. The evil of abortion persists with the cooperation of more than merely the mother of the unborn child. The archbishop reminds us that all those who by various acts of commission or omission in the procuring of abortion are culpable.
He defines “cooperation in moral evil”: “Who bears culpability when an abortion takes place? It is never solely the mother’s act. Those who kill or assist in killing the child are directly involved in performing a seriously evil act. Someone who pressures or encourages the mother to have an abortion, who pays for it or provides financial assistance to organizations that provide abortions, or who supports candidates who advance pro-abortion legislation also cooperate by varying degrees in a grave moral evil.”
He also charges public figures, as for all Catholics, with responsibility for examining their own conscience and abstaining from the Eucharist when unworthy because in a state of sinfulness. He writes, “If you find that you are unwilling or unable to abandon your advocacy for abortion, you should not come forward to receive Holy Communion.”
Archbishop Cordileone is pro-abort, pro-sodomy, and pro-trans Nancy Pelosi’s episcopal ordinary in San Francisco. Might we pray that other men elsewhere, likewise called to shepherd her and other gravely wayward Catholics in political life, might follow his good example? This is a case of the sheep needing to “teach, rebuke, and exhort” failing shepherds, while never losing patience.
We must pray that our bishops will act at least for their own salvation by placing first priority on teaching, sanctifying and governing, for the sake of salvation of souls, for which tasks they have been sent by the Lord Himself. God give us the strength.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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