CORPUS CHRISTI, USA, September 28 2004 (CNA) - In
a statement sent to Catholic News Agency, Bishop Rene Gracida, emeritus of
Corpus Christi (Texas), explained why there is no excuse to not deny Holy
Communion to pro-abortion politicians, and describes in detail a case he dealt
with during his tenure as Bishop of Corpus Christi.
Bishop Gracida, with reference to the Code of Canon Law, the Scriptures, and
the teaching of the Magisterium, clearly and unequivocally presents the Catholic
Church’s prohibition against the reception of Holy Communion by pro-abortion
Catholics.
Since this prohibition is based on divine revelation, writes Bishop Gracida,
the Church, and therefore bishops and priests at the Communion rail, have no
right to oppose it and have a duty to protect the Sacrament of the Eucharist -
Christ Himself - from objective and grave sacrilege.
He staunchly affirms, in a paragraph clearly aimed at certain U.S. bishops
and priests, that those “who maintain that they cannot support the refusing of
Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians because the time of the distribution
of Holy Communion is a time of unity in the Body of Christ are indeed
relativizers of the objectively established precepts.”
The bishop charges that they are “guilty of relativizing the objectively
based precepts” and thus they “directly relativize Truth Himself!”
The bishop states that “there can be no doubting that most of the major
political figures who are on record publicly as favoring abortion-on-demand,
euthanasia, cloning or fetal experimentation …qualify for being denied Holy
Communion.”
However, he also states that “there is no need for public denial of Holy
Communion…it can be carried out in complete privacy and confidentiality,”
without requiring the “worst case scenario” of a loud public confrontation
between a pro-abortion politician and the priest distributing communion.
Included in the bishop’s statement is a 1993 case history of his
implementation of the Church’s prohibition against a self declared “very
good Catholic” politician, a member of the House of Representatives of the
Texas Legislature, who’s public support of abortion in an interview with the
Corpus-Christi Caller Times - a strongly pro-abortion newspaper - constituted a
public scandal.
Bishop Gracida wrote to the politician as his pastor, since he was domiciled
in Corpus Christi, explaining Catholic teaching on the issue, and that no
Catholic in good standing may hold views contrary to the teaching of the
Catholic Church. He invited him to meet with him with an aim to elicit a public
retraction.
The politician never responded, nor did he respond to a letter sent six
months later by Bishop Gracida after the same politician publicly re-affirmed
his pro-abortion stance. In this letter the bishop warned him that if he did not
repent, that he would have no choice but to impose an interdiction forbidding
the man to receive the sacraments of the Eucharist or the Annointing of the
Sick.
Therefore the interdiction was imposed, and, the bishop states, had not been
lifted at the time of the man’s death in 2001. If the man had received
Communion in the years before his death it would have been a further sacrilege.