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Washington D.C., Jun 21, 2021 / 14:25 pm (CNA).
In a series of tweets from his personal social media account over the weekend, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) called the U.S. bishops “partisan hypocrites” and dared them to deny him Communion over his support for contraception, legal abortion, and “same-sex marriage.”
In a tweet tagging the U.S. bishops’ conference on Friday, Lieu, a Catholic, wrote that he supports contraception, “A woman’s right to choose,” and “The right of same sex marriage.”
“Next time I go to Church, I dare you to deny me Communion,” Lieu wrote to the bishops.
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles – which includes the territory of Lieu’s congressional district – did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNA on Monday.
The issue of Communion for pro-abortion politicians has resurfaced following the election of President Joe Biden – a Catholic who supports taxpayer-funded abortion. Although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted last week to draft a teaching document on the Eucharist, a proposed outline of the document did not single out the president or any public official.
It included a subsection on “Eucharistic consistency,” or worthiness to receive Communion. The bishops’ doctrine committee said the proposed document would include “a special call for those Catholics who are cultural, political, or parochial leaders to witness to the faith.”
Some bishops last week did affirm the need to safeguard the Eucharist from scandal, during debates over the document. They cited cases where Catholic politicians who support permissive legislation on grave evils approach to receive Communion, despite having been warned about their positions.
Canon 915 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law states that Catholics “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.” Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a 2004 memo on Communion, said that Catholic politicians who are “consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” are considered to be formally cooperating in the grave sin of abortion, and in a “manifest” way.
In such cases, Ratzinger said, the pastor of the official must meet with them and admonish them, instructing them that they cannot receive Communion. If the politicians persist in their pro-abortion advocacy, the minister of Communion “must refuse to distribute it,” he said.
On Friday, 60 Catholic Democratic members of Congress issued a joint statement asking not to be denied Communion over their stances on the abortion issue. Lieu, one of the signers of the statement, issued a series of tweets from his personal Twitter account that criticized the U.S. bishops, and dared the bishops to deny him Communion.
In other tweets over the weekend, Lieu criticized the U.S. Bishops for not denying communion to Catholic Republicans, especially to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for his extramarital affairs and multiple divorces. Lieu also brought up the case of former Attorney General Bill Barr, a Catholic who sought to resume use of the federal death penalty and pushed for the execution of 13 inmates in the span of seven months.
He also brought up other hypothetical scenarios and asked the bishops if they would deny Communion in those cases.
“Dear @USCCB: Are you going to deny Communion to Catholic athletes who use condoms?” he asked. “Or deny Communion to Catholics who believe people should have the right to decide if they want to use contraception?”
“How radical is the @USCCB decision? A Catholic can love Jesus with all her heart, oppose abortion & work at Catholic Relief Services. But if she believes government shouldn’t put women in jail for an abortion, then she can be denied Communion,” Lieu tweeted.
Lieu also argued “God’s love is not a quid pro quo transaction.”
“Dear @USCCB: Instead of denying God to Catholic human beings who disagree with your political views, you should be inviting everyone to God’s table. God’s love is not a quid pro quo transaction. Remember Agape?” he asked. “It’s no wonder Catholic membership has been rapidly declining.”
During their meeting last week, some bishops warned against drafting the Eucharistic document with the section on “Eucharistic consistency,” saying that they could be seen as partisan actors or as politicizing the Eucharist.
Supporters of the document, including the bishops’ pro-life chair, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, said that the bishops needed to call for “integrity” from Catholic public officials. Archbishop Naumann said that those Catholic politicians who contradicted the Church’s teachings on grave issues and approached to receive Communion anyway were the ones politicizing the Eucharist.
“Those who advocate for abortion no longer talk in the language of choice,” Naumann said on Thursday. “They talk about it [abortion] as a right.” Pope Francis, he added, expressed agreement that the issue of abortion is a “preeminent” concern for the Church, during the ad limina meetings with the U.S. bishops in Rome during 2019 and 2020.
“We’re calling everybody to integrity, including those in public life,” he said.
In their joint statement, the 60 Catholic House Democrats affirmed their commitment to “the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching.” The members said they also believe “the separation of church and state allows for our faith to inform our public duties and best serve our constituents.”
They referred to their position on abortion as “support of a woman’s safe and legal access to abortion,” and said that denying Communion to Catholic public officials who support permissive legislation on abortion would be a “weaponization of the Eucharist.”
“We solemnly urge you to not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments, the source and the summit of the whole work of the gospel over one issue,” the statement said.
They added that no elected officials “have been threatened with being denied the Eucharist” on issues such as the death penalty, family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border, or failing to reduce food insecurity.
On Friday, Biden was asked about a “resolution” by the U.S. bishops to deny him and other publicly pro-choice politicians Communion – even though the bishops’ vote was not on a national Communion policy, but rather on whether to begin drafting the teaching document. Biden replied, “That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
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Biden replied, “That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“…don’t think that’s going to happen”? Or, already happened? The self-inflicted record is clear (shall we say not “inadmissible”?) that weather-vane/anti-pope Biden and his cancel-morality activists have already excommunicated themselves. The shoe is on the other foot…
A quite self-deluded move for Biden to impose the new cult by executive order and Administrative-state fatwa, and then to proclaim that it’s “a private matter.” As the perennial guarantor of the Deposit of Faith (and morals), do we still have a Catholic Church [upper case], or instead, only a big-tent church [lower case] now fully in step with the Big Lie and the Big Denial?
It’s long past time for the “fishers of men” to either fish or cut bait.
Its hard to imagine that the Bishops do not recognize how much damage they have done by refusing to speak out forcefully on SO MANY issues, long before now about this situation. By continuing to delay the inevitable they worsen the drama.Lieu will not be the last “catholic” politician to say “double-dare you”. Once he goes to judgement however, I dont think he will have the last laugh.
Call his bluff! Oh please, oh please.
I guess these 60 don’t understand what preeminent means. For their souls sake, i pray they figure it before it’s too late.
Lieu’s “I dare you” sounds like a threat to me.
Does he think this is a good look?
Lieu should have been excommunicated immediately, but while at least some of our bishops are talking a good game, they are still shy about actually doing anything. Sigh.
The reality of “Catholic Bishops in the United States” is that they persist to this very day in adhering to the “McCarrick Communion Policy,” which is based on the public lie told by McCarrick and his fellow-fraud “then-Bishop” Wilton Gregory, when they deceitfully withheld the letter from the Congregation for the Faith, and lied that the CDF agreed with their own opinion, that Bishops were not duty-bound to enforce Canon 915.
There are numerous accounts of this fraud. It was addressed in the summer of 2004 by Fr. Richard Neuhaus in the print journal First Things, where he publicly called McCarrick a liar.
You can read one account here:
https://creamcitycatholic.com/2021/02/26/an-explanation-not-an-excuse-canon-915-and-the-american-episcopate-2/?v=7516fd43adaa
So there we have it. In 2021, 17 years hence the great lie, and 3 years since the 2018 disclosure that McCarrick was a sociopath sex-abusing fraud, our “Eminences” and “Excellencies” of the USCCB remain in solidarity with the policy confected by the sociopath sex-abusing anti-Christ fraud McCarrick.
Is it any wonder why young Catholic people leave the faith, when they are “taught” and “led” by false shepherds such as the collective US Bishops, who persist in doing “the will of McCarrick.”