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Bishops vote to approve statement on faith and politics

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2221495,00.html

By Eric Gorski

Denver Post Staff Writer

U.S. Roman Catholic bishops on Friday approved a statement that attempts to strike a balanced tone on the difficult question of how to deal with dissenting Catholic politicians who present themselves for Communion, the Denver Post has learned.

The statement strongly reiterates the church’s core teaching against abortion while making clear that individual bishops ultimately decide how to deal with Catholics’ standing to receive the sacrament at the center of Catholic life, said Bishop Richard Hanifen, who retired as bishop of the Colorado Springs diocese last year.

“There’s a balance,” Hanifen said shortly after the vote on Friday, which was said to be strongly in favor of the statement. “There’s an obvious renewal of the clear commitment we have to life from the beginning of life to the end."

“There’s never going to be wavering on that," he said. "But the individual circumstances each bishop faces in his own dioceses have a lot to do with how each bishop responds.”

The statement, approved by bishops meeting privately outside Denver for a six-day prayer retreat, strikes a middle ground between positions staked out in recent months by U.S. bishops on the thorny Communion and politics question.

In January, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke caused a stir by stating that he would deny Communion to Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry because Kerry supports abortion rights in conflict with the church’s teachings. Burke, a canon lawyer, issued similar edicts when he was a bishop in Wisconsin.

On the other side of the spectrum was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., who has stressed the individual consciences of Catholics – like all bishops have - and said he is not comfortable refusing Communion to anyone.

The statement approved by bishops on Friday falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum but does make clear that consequences are potentially grave for Catholic candidates who take a stand in favor of laws affirming abortion rights.

As to whether the statement provides a definitive answer on denying Communion to a pro-choice candidate, Hanifen said, “I think you’ll see in there there’s not a directive one way or another.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not immediately release the results of Friday’s vote.

A handful of bishops, including Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, have said that pro-choice Catholics should voluntarily refrain from receiving the sacrament.

Most bishops, however, have remained silent on the issue. For that reason, several advocated issuing a statement out of the Denver meeting, even though a task force of bishops studying the issue is not scheduled to release its findings until after the November election.