Catholic Bishops Set To Debate The Worthy Reception Of The Eucharist

Bishops Set To Debate The Worthy Reception Of The Eucharist
Photo: Avalon_Studio/Getty Images

Next week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) meeting in Baltimore will confront a pressing question: should Joe Biden be permitted to receive the Eucharist?

While millions of Catholics prayerfully await the answer, they aren’t likely to get it.

The USCCB’s agenda includes time for debate on the adoption of a proposed document on the Eucharist. It comes as a response to Biden, a baptized Catholic whose support of abortion has become ever more extreme during his years in federal office.

When attending Mass, Biden routinely presents himself to receive Communion, and his bishops in Washington and Delaware support him. However, an increasing number of USCCB members have condemned Biden for doing so, and their disagreement will undoubtedly be a focus of the bishops’ deliberations.

Biden might have brought new attention to the issue, but Church’s catechesis on the Eucharist has not changed over the centuries. In fact, the draft of the resolution that will be discussed next week presents no new teaching. While it mentions the Church’s laws regarding who should and shouldn’t be admitted to the reception of Communion, it leaves it there. So next week’s debate will offer nothing new on that score.

Here what is at stake: it’s not the nature of the Eucharist, but the Church’s law concerning its reception that has been the subject of controversy for years. If debate on that pivotal point doesn’t happen next week, with real consequences, the “draft document” was just an exercise in window dressing.

Two Canons, Two Cardinals, Two Views

The law of the Catholic Church is contained in the Code of Canon Law. Canon 915 of that Code reads: “Those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

Canon 916 reads: “A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.”

Do these two Canons complement one another, or contradict one another? This question lies at the foundation of the debate that has roiled the USCCB for years.

Abortion, says Pope Francis, is “murder,” and politicians who publicly advocate it are by definition endorsing a “manifest grave sin” – and thus, Canon 915 clearly applies.

Or so one would think. But new winds are blowing in Rome, and they have brought new thinking to the Vatican’s view of the lay of the land.

When Pope Francis was elevated to the throne of Peter in March 2013, he took his time in reviewing the membership of the Vatican’s various governing departments, known as “congregations.”

Finally, in December 2013, he appointed Donald Cardinal Wuerl, then-Archbishop of Washington, to replace Raymond Cardinal Burke as the only American on the congregation that recommends new bishops to Pope Francis.

The change is not insignificant. In particular, the two cardinals differ profoundly on the application of Canon Law in the case of American public figures.

Cardinal Wuerl has long maintained what he calls a “pastoral approach” regarding the many prominent Catholic politicians in Washington who publicly advocate abortion.

The cardinal articulated this view during a speech to the John Carroll Society at the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland, on March 11, 2012.

Asked to explain when Communion should be denied under Canon 915, “he repeated his earlier position that only in extremely rare cases after an individual has been publicly excommunicated” should it be denied, according to the National Catholic Register.

Cardinal Wuerl’s “earlier position” on Canon 915 had been on the record since he was Bishop of Pittsburgh.

In a 2004 speech that was later published by the USCCB, he said, “Given the long-standing practice of not making a public judgment about the state of the soul of those who presents themselves for Holy Communion, it does not seem that it is sufficiently clear that in the matter of voting for legislation that supports abortion such a judgment necessarily follows. The pastoral tradition of the church places the responsibility of such a judgment first on those presenting themselves for Holy Communion.”

In other words, Canon 916 alone should be the ruling principle governing the reception of Communion.

Three years later, Cardinal Wuerl’s statement caught the attention of Archbishop Raymond Burke, the future Cardinal Prefect – the “Chief Judge” – of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court.

In 2007, a year before Pope Benedict appointed him prefect, Archbishop Burke published “The Discipline Regarding the Denial of Holy Communion to Those Obstinately Persevering in Manifest Grave Sin,” a lengthy exposition on Canon 915.

There he delivered what can only be called a scathing critique of the view that Cardinal Wuerl had endorsed thirteen years before.

Relying on a Declaration issued by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts on June 24, 2000, Burke charged that Wuerl’s 2004 view, “effectively, in the language of the Declaration, would make it impossible to apply can. 915. It confuses the norm of can. 916 with the norm of can. 915 in a way which makes can. 915 superfluous.”

While Canon 915 applies to the minister of the Eucharist, Canon 916 applies to the recipient. It requires that a Catholic who is conscious of mortal sin may not receive the Holy Eucharist without prior sacramental confession when this is possible (and it usually is possible). Canon 916 applies to the person’s own sense of the state of his soul.

That’s why Cardinal Wuerl is mistaken, Burke insists: applying Canon 915 “is not a judgment on the subjective state of the soul of the person approaching to receive Holy Communion, but a judgment regarding the objective condition of serious sin in a person who, after due admonition from his pastor, persists in cooperating formally with intrinsically evil acts like procured abortion.”

Burke’s article appeared in Periodica De Re Canonica, a prestigious journal published by Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University. It is required reading for canon lawyers and prelates around the world.

Cardinal Wuerl undoubtedly took note.

And Cardinal Burke undoubtedly took some heat.

In fact, he admitted as much when EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo asked him about it in an interview that aired on December 11, 2013.

“I’ve received very severe criticism,” he said. “But … it’s a consistent discipline from the time of St. Paul from the very first years of the Church and it makes perfect sense.”

Ironically, five days after the EWTN interview aired, the pope’s decision to replace Cardinal Burke with Cardinal Wuerl on the Congregation for Bishops was made public by the Vatican. Pope Francis also removed Cardinal Burke from the Signatura.

Will America’s Catholic bishops dare to publicly criticize Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and some 100 pro-abortion Catholics on Capitol Hill, invoking Canon 915 to bar them from the Communion rail?

The prospect would likely prompt a generous dose of “severe criticism” indeed. A confrontation with such a powerful political faction to would require a fearless exercise of fortitude. And that cardinal virtue has not been a prominent feature of the bishops’deliberations in recent years.

That’s why Cardinal Wuerl’s view, and not Cardinal Burke’s, is likely to prevail in Baltimore next week.

After all, when it comes to earthly power, “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” (Luke 16:8).

And our bishops know it.

Never miss an update!

Get our Weekly Briefing! We send out a well-researched, in-depth article on a variety of topics once a week, to large and growing English-speaking and Spanish-speaking audiences.

Subscribe to our Weekly Briefing!

Receive expert analysis every Tuesday morning.
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.