'Catholic' politicians and Communion

Not being Catholic, I probably don't have standing to weigh in here, but I don't think either side in the "Communion for proabortion politiians" hubbub is stating the issue well. One side is imprecise, and the other is duplicitous.

The Gannett News Service describes the issue this way:

While issuing instructions on Mass on April 23, a top church official said that politicians who publicly support abortion rights are "not fit" to receive communion, one of the Catholic sacraments, because their position clashes with church doctrine that holds abortion to be murder. A task force of U.S. bishops is trying to decide what that should mean for politicians like Landrieu of New Orleans, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate.

We've all heard the duplicitous side. Nancy Pelosi's remarks at the recent march for killing the unborn: "I am a mother of five, a grandmother of five, and a devout Roman Catholic who supports a women's right to choose"; and John Kerry's "courageous stand" on receiving Communion: "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry received communion from a Catholic priest Saturday, one day after a top Vatican cardinal said politicians who support abortion rights should be denied the Eucharist."

The imprecision is in the phrase "not fit," whether it comes from Catholic hierarchy or the Gannett reporter (probably the latter).

It's a matter of definition, not fitness.

Before I was Orthodox, I attended a Catholic Mass, and because of where I happened to be sitting, the bishop celebrating the Mass assumed I was Catholic and offered me Communion. I said, "No, I'm not Catholic." It wasn't a rejection of good feelings, friendliness or my rights; it was simply a fact.

When I discovered the Orthodox Church, I never had any problem with the "closed Communion" there, because I understood that if I accepted the Church for what she says she is, then I accept her on her terms. If not, then I am rejecting Communion.

What politicians like Pelosi and Kerry do, though, is--whether they acknowledge it or not--enter into a teaching position with the Church. For them, abortion is not a privately held belief--as in the case of a hypothetical parishioner who thinks abortion is a good idea but nobody listens to her anyway. For public figures, their position is a public proclamation: "I'm a devout Catholic, and abortion is just another issue." When the bishops say otherwise, Pelosi-Kerry-Kennedy, et al., reply, "We understand our faith. Vatican II says we're right."

Faithful Catholics may take the argument apart, but the reality is that the politicians have a larger platform to explain the faith to the Catholic and non-Catholic world than the bishops do. If the pro-abortion Catholic pols had the honesty to say, "I believe abortion is right. Here, I'm in conflict with my church," it would be better, but the reality is that they want to persuade Catholics and non-Catholics to share their opinion, which returns to Catholic politicians taking a "teaching" position in the Church.

And when the pro-abortion Catholic pols do go to Communion, over the objections of local bishops, the priests decide that they don't want to disrupt the Mass by refusing John Kerry at the Cup, with the TV cameras running and the punditocracy revving its engines outside. So Sen. Kerry emerges and says, "See? I'm as good a Catholic as the next one." And so, it appears to many of us, he is.

I don't envy the Catholic bishops, priests or the Vatican the dilemma they face. We Orthodox have our pro-abortion politicians, but they tend to go for the ethnic vote more than the "Orthodox" vote, one of the benefits of being part of a religion most people don't know or care that much about.