On Denying Holy Communion
Oct 16, 2004
During a series of spring ad limina visits by American bishops, Ratzinger gave several the private impression that he favoured “going slow” on denying Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians.
(The Tablet, 18 September 2004) When a couple of these bishops passed the word to their colleagues, Ratzinger felt the need to strike a firmer line. He sent a letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop of Washington DC, in which he said that if such a politician does not heed warnings from his pastor, then the pastor would be justified in withholding the Eucharist. This would not be a sanction, Ratzinger argued, but a response to the person’s public unworthiness. When that in turn was perceived as at odds with the stance taken by the Americans to allow each bishop to decide, Ratzinger wrote yet another letter on 12 July: the position of the US bishops was “very much in harmony” with his own, he said.
On Denying Holy Communion