Progressive San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy said Monday that denying President Biden Holy Communion would be “very destructive.”
Echoing a similar controversy that came to a head in 2004 over whether or not to give Communion to Catholic Secretary of State John Kerry, who also supported abortion rights, Bishop McElroy adopted the solution proposed by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in opposition to instructions received from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
At that time, McCarrick warned of “serious unintended consequences” in using Communion as a weapon, if priests or bishops were to refuse Communion to Kerry.
The battles for human life and dignity and for the weak and vulnerable “should be fought not at the Communion rail, but in the public square,” McCarrick said at the time.
As a 2004 article in the Christian Century noted, although Vatican Cardinal Francis Arinze insisted that Catholic teaching is clear about denying communion to a politician who supports abortion rights, “two key U.S. bishops say withholding the sacrament from a dissenting Catholic like Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is not a likely option.”
Those two bishops were Wilton Gregory, the current archbishop of Washington, DC, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who occupied that post at the time.
Using the same language employed by McCarrick, Bishop McElroy warned Monday against “weaponizing” the Eucharist.
“I do not see how depriving the President or other political leaders of Eucharist based on their public policy stance can be interpreted in our society as anything other than the weaponization of Eucharist and an effort not to convince people by argument and by dialogue and by reason, but, rather, to pummel them into submission on the issue,” McElroy said.
On April 23, 2004, then-Bishop Wilton Gregory, the president of the Bishops’ conference, announced the formation of a “Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians” and named Cardinal McCarrick to head up the team. McCarrick, who was opposed to refusing Communion to pro-abortion politicians, deftly moved the discussion in that direction.
An illustrative article in the Washington Post at that time observed that in late April 2004 Sen. John Kerry had had a 45-minute private meeting with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, even though McCarrick was not his bishop. The reason for the meeting? “McCarrick heads the task force on Catholic participation in public life established by the U.S. bishops.”
“About to become the first Catholic since John F. Kennedy to be nominated for president, Kerry was lobbying McCarrick against being denied Holy Communion as an unwavering pro-choice abortion advocate,” The Post article stated.
“Whether his lobbying helped, Kerry likely could not have been more pleased by the interview McCarrick published,” the article added, in which McCarrick downplayed the importance of abortion, noting it was one of many issues to be weighed in the balance.
In a letter sent to then-Cardinal McCarrick and then-Bishop Gregory in early June, 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that in the case of a Catholic politician supporting permissive abortion laws, his bishop should meet with him, instruct him about the Church’s teaching, and inform him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin.
“When these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible, and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it,” Ratzinger wrote.
On Monday, Bishop McElroy insisted that in dealing with President Biden the American bishops first and foremost must “signal unity” to help heal and unify the country.
“We need to be a part of helping to forge that unity and healing,” McElroy said.
This call for unity and reconciliation beyond differences will strike some as curious, given the San Diego bishop’s history of open hostility toward President Trump.
In a February 20, 2017 speech, just a month after Trump’s inauguration, Bishop McElroy declared war on the president, telling his audience of social justice warriors to disrupt Trump’s efforts whenever possible.
In a 20-minute address, McElroy said, “President Trump was the candidate of disruption. He was the disrupter.”
“Well, now we must all become disrupters,” he said.
In his address, the bishop urged his hearers to resist the temptation to unite under the president and rather to oppose him at every turn.
“We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families,” McElroy said. “We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies, rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need. We must disrupt those who train us to see Muslim men and women and children as sources of fear rather than as children of God.”
“We must disrupt those who seek to rob our medical care, especially from the poor. We must disrupt those who would take even food stamps and nutrition assistance from the mouths of children,” he said.
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