How ‘Christian’ is the excommunication of Nancy Pelosi?
by Archbishop Cranmer:
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has been banned from receiving Holy Communion by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco. The excommunication has been decreed in his Diocese because of her outspoken support for abortion, which seems a little harsh given that her co-religionist Joe Biden shares her views but hasn’t been excommunicated in the Washington Diocese. In fact, a great many Roman Catholic politicians in the US (Republican and Democrat) are pragmatically in favour of a woman’s ‘right to choose’ (though they may preach the ‘right to life’), but Archbishop Cordileone has singled out Nancy Pelosi because she has become rather strident on the issue: “more extreme” and “more aggressive”, in his words.
Roman Catholic Canon Law on ‘Participation in the Most Holy Eucharist’ states:
Can. 915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
Can. 916 A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.
So the Archbishop takes the view that Nancy Pelosi is “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” by supporting abortion up to 23 weeks. Pope Francis, meanwhile, has let it be known that he has never barred anyone from receiving Holy Communion, nor would he. “No, I have never denied the Eucharist to anyone; to anyone! I don’t know if someone came to me under these conditions, but I have never refused them the Eucharist, since the time I was a priest,” he said.
“And what should a shepherd do? Be a shepherd. Not going around condemning,” he explained. “They must be a shepherd, in God’s style, which is closeness, compassion and tenderness. A shepherd that doesn’t know how to act in God’s style slips and enters into many things that are not of a shepherd.”
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