The decree is dated June 2nd. It was announced on June 6th in a press release posted to the diocese's website. The release singles out Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, both Catholics from Chicago who are the leaders of their respective chambers and the two most prominent members of the Illinois legislature. News media in the Chicago area quickly picked up on the Madigan and Cullerton angle. But the decree bans all Catholic legislators who voted in favor of the bill.
Bishop Paprocki's background is in canon law, and the decree is very much a legal document, citing the specific canons which the Catholic legislators are accused of violating. The press release also notes that letters have been sent to each legislator affected by the ban, notifying them that they are barred from receiving communion in the diocese.
This is not Bishop Paprocki's first venture into disciplining Catholic public figures who don't toe the line on church teaching. This Chicago Sun-Times article reports that Catholic US Senator Dick Durbin has been barred from receiving communion in the Springfield diocese for a number of years now. The same article notes that, in 2013, when then-Governor Pat Quinn, also a Catholic, announced he would sign a same-sex marriage bill, Bishop Paprocki led a public prayer service that reportedly included an exorcism.
Springfield is the state capital of Illinois. News reports suggest that neither Madigan nor Cullerton attend church when they're in Springfield, so it's not clear whether the ban will have any practical effect.
I should add that Bishop Paprocki, before his appointment to lead the Springfield diocese, was an auxiliary bishop in Chicago. To the best of my knowledge, I've never met him.
It seems that his brother Illinois bishops are not unanimous in their adoption of Bishop Paprocki's approach, according to the Chicago Tribune:
When asked if Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich has ever imposed similar sanctions on lawmakers who supported abortion-rights legislation, the Archdiocese of Chicago released a statement: “Cardinal Cupich has had a longstanding position over his 20-plus years as a bishop that it is important to place the emphasis on teaching what the Church believes about important issues of the day, all the while maintaining an unshakable confidence that the Eucharist is an opportunity of grace and conversion to bring people to the truth.”My own views on the question of barring politicians are a little complicated (but only a little). I believe that no penalty that severe should be imposed unless it's preceded by plenty of pastoral intervention - at the very least, some personal, one-on-one conversation. Of course, the public figure in question may have no wish to meet with a bishop or priest (or deacon or anyone else who might challenge him/her). But the attempt should be made. And the attempt should be pastoral - it should be offered in a spirit of openness and a willingness to listen. The goal and approach should be to accompany the public figure, not confront or scold him/her. All that said, I admit I do believe there are circumstances when banning a public figure from Communion is warranted.
Here are some theses to nail to the wall.
ReplyDelete1. Canon lawyers are not moral theologians, even though a lot of them think they are.
2. The answer to the question before Bishop Paprocki was not as clear to St. Thomas Aquinas as it is to Bishop P. (I don't have time to look it up now, but I've cited it here before.)
3. Abortion is a moral failing. It is up to the Church, led (as I am sure he would insist) by folks like Bishop P, to stop it. When they fail, the duty of dealing with their mess within civil society falls on politicians. Political leaders would only make things worse if they tried to do by law what the bishops failed to do by persuasion. How to adjust the polity for the situation then becomes a prudential judgment for the politicians. Canon law doesn't control prudence.
Bishops are the last people I want exercising political prudence, anyway, because they do such a lousy job of it. E.g., has anyone been denied Communion for open, trumpeted and flagrant violations of Commandments 1 through 4 and 6 though 10? One-issue prudence, as exercised by Bishop P smacks, to me, of hypocrisy and laziness.
The only problem I see with #3 is that it ignores CCC 2273 which requires equal protections under the law for all human life from the moment of conception, and thereby holds culpable legislators who do not protect embryonic and fetal life.
DeleteBishop P sounds like a grandstander. Maybe a bit off mentally too (the exorcism stunt)
ReplyDeleteTom's analysis seems pretty solid to me. Especially the last paragraph.
These things usually end badly. I live neighbors to a diocese in which the bishop issued a mass excommunication for people who retained membership in 12 organizations. Most of the organizations were Masonic affiliates (I guess they are the axis of evil?) One or two of them, I could sort of see the logic, such as the Hemlock Society. But if it was a teaching tool it didn't work very well. And now the present bishop is stuck with the task of walking back the edict without officially reversing it, since the bishop emeritus is still alive. All kinds of messy and awkwatd.
ReplyDeleteThe Church should simply auto-excommunicate any politicians who don't vote for any and all measures to protect fetal life and have done with bishops publicly casting people out of their dioceses.
ReplyDeleteAccompaniment strikes me as silly. Church teaching on abortion, divorce-remarriage, and birth control are crystal clear and well-known. It's also crystal clear and well known that receiving communion with those sins on your soul compounds the sin.
Make an announcement before the Eucharist that only Catholics in a state of grace may receive. All others, stand and pray for mercy.
You'd end up with a church in which about 90% of the members were de facto excommunicated. Smaller, purer church crowd would like it, I guess. So how do the Episcopalians handle it? I assume they also teach that certain things are serious sins.
DeleteThere's no Big Book o' Sins in the Anglican communion. Anglican teaching is that abortion is a sin, though my guess is that if you're in a Catch-22 (you will die without one, for example), most priests would counsel doing what your conscience tells you. Artificial birth control is also a sin except to limit family size for economic or health reasons.
DeleteAnglican eucharist is seen as strengthening one's resolve to do Christ's work and to be a better person. If you feel you are not in a fit state to receive it (i.e., you have broken one of the Ten Commandments), you're supposed to talk to the priest. I don't think that's too far off what Catholics believe, but the RCC seems to be much more definite in what constitutes a fit state.
I decided long ago that I would never be able to figure out what constituted a fit state by RCC definitions, so I just got out of the line so as not to incur more heavenly wrath for adding insult to injury.
I just want to say a word in defense of accompaniment. It's hard, it's time-consuming, it's not always realistic, especially when we consider the ratios of priests to parishioners these days. But it's the ideal of how a pastoral relationship should be. The idea of having a spiritual director is rooted in (or should be rooted in) the ideal of personal accompaniment.
DeleteBecause there are relatively few pastoral professionals in the church, priests and others need to pick their spots. I'd suggest that a Catholic governor, senator or House Speaker are definitely spots to pick. It would be good both for a House Speaker and a bishop of there exists between them a cordial and open relationship that allows them to discuss and even debate important public issues.
My personal view is that banning a House Speaker from communion isn't a promising way to cultivate a cordial and open relationship. The cultivation needs to come first. The banning, if it ever needs to happen, should be many miles down the road.
Maybe a lot of Catholic politicians would not like a personal relationship with a bishop for conflict of interest reasons. As a mental health board staff member for a public entity that funded Catholic Charities among other agencies, I was very careful in my relationships. For example I did not contribute to CC. I did not even contribute to United Way which also funded some of our agencies.
DeletePoliticians and bishops have a host of conflict of interest possibilities. The whole idea that a bishop could influence a Catholic politician personally is something both should avoid. Bishops should keep to teaching, and away from pastoral counseling of politicians. Shades of centuries past when Jesuits served as confessors to royalty, and all the intrigue there.
Politicians would be advised to seek out spiritual advice from pastors who do not have a conflict of interest. Woman religious would give good, honest advice.
Accompaniment is nicer that slamming a door. But the purpose is the same: cajoling or threatening until obedience is secured.
DeleteAll infantile relationship unworthy of human persons. All apart of the clericalism which infects Catholicism
DeleteAbout "...cajoling or threatening until obedience is secured", there is another possibility to dialogue and accompaniment. And that is that the ones doing the accompanying might learn something about the ones being accompanied. Such as that they really aren't cold blooded baby killers, that they are agonizing about the political decisions, trying to square the circle of making just laws in a secular society. And the politicians might learn something too, that some reaspnable restrictions need to apply. Of course that might be too idealistic, both would have to get off their binary narrative.
DeletePS about binary narratives: I really, really dislike Kristin Gillibrand's attempt to down-sell being prolife as being the moral equivalent of being racist. Of course I wasn't going to vote for her anyway.
"Accompaniment strikes me as silly. Church teaching on abortion, divorce-remarriage, and birth control are crystal clear and well-known. It's also crystal clear and well known that receiving communion with those sins on your soul compounds the sin."
DeleteI almost accepted that statement with a nod. But then it occurred to me that I know at least one pillar of the church who was in one (or more) of each of those situations at one time. Non-accompaniment could have left the person there. As their current lives show, the sins (assuming all conditions were met and they were sins) were not mortally wounding in the eyes of God.
Jesus, of course, forgave sinners and told us to go and do likewise. I'm not sure that has much bearing on canon lawyers who refuse Communion to politicians, though.
Yes, the accompanist might gain understanding, but his/her job is still to reconcile the accompanied party to the Church's teaching. For instance, we can accompany a divorced/remarried Catholic and be sympathetic to whatever horrors he might have endured.
DeleteBut, in the end, he has to come to terms with the fact that he's an adulterer. And we have to refrain from having so much sympathy for him that we lose sight of that fact.
Bishop Paprocki, whatever failings he might have in the way of kindly pastoral care, is saving everyone a lot of time and, likely, wasted effort.
Yes, Kirsten Gillibrand is playing shamelessly to her base, but is this a surprise?
Re: Jack Rakosky's comment June 13 @ 6:08 pm, you are absolutely right that this whole thing reflects an infantile relationship and is an expression of clericalism on steroids.
DeleteJim, about the "personal one on one conversation" between the bishop and the politician, I would agree. My guess is, it would go something like this: "I am personally opposed to abortion. I would try to encourage people facing it to consider other options. But we live in a pluralistic society. In the end I can't force my beliefs on someone else." The truth is we have the freedom to do some very bad things, if we choose to. What would happen if said politicians recused themselves from votes having to do with abortion? Would it just be political hari-kari, or would it be considered a principled stand?
ReplyDeleteKatherine - in the bill in question, there were some health care and child care provisions for women (above and beyond abortion). I could imagine a politician saying, "While I oppose abortion, we live under the Roe v Wade regime today, and that case law will continue to control what is permitted. Under that case law, coupled with court injunctions against abortion restrictions that are officially part of Illinois' 1975 law, very little actually changes in regard to abortion in this new legislation. I prayed about this and thought I could support the new legislation in good conscience: it improves health care for women and doesn't significantly change the status quo regarding abortion."
DeleteI don't know if any Catholics who voted for the bill sincerely approached it in that light; this is just hypothetical. I would say that a position like that, if received by a bishop or priest in a spirit of openness, could lead to some fruitful discussion and moral discernment.
Unfortunately, the combination of rigid beliefs, authoritarian practices, and involvement in politics by bishops like this is what is alienating young people into becoming NONES.
ReplyDeleteWhat we know about NONES is that they are mostly Democrats. So our future legislators are likely to be Democratic NONES rather than Catholic Democrats. Future bishops will have less need to send messages like this to their dwindling congregations about the dwindling number of Catholic politicians.
Very loosing strategy for bishops and Catholicism.
For all the religious right deplores the secularization of America, the lost of traditional values, the religious right is in fact pushing the young people away from religion and into secular values. Social scientists have been amazed at the vibrancy of religion in America in contrast to Europe but the religious right is trying to make us like Europe with its attempts to gain political power. What do people in Europe have against religion? Its identification with its historic elites. What does it profit religion if it becomes the establishment but loses its soul?