Flashback: Pope Benedict XVI Said Pro-Abortion Politicians Must Be Denied Communion

Life News ^ | June 22, 2021 | Mary Margaret Olohan

[Marchmain]

Former Pope Benedict XVI warned in a 2004 memo that high profile politicians who persist in their public support for abortion should be denied Communion.

Benedict wrote the memo when he was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and when former presidential candidate John Kerry, a pro-abortion Catholic, was running for president. Ratzinger warned that “not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia” and said that though Catholics may have diversity of opinion on some topics, there is no “legitimate diversity of opinion” when it comes to abortion and euthanasia.

Ratzinger’s comments are particularly relevant now as Catholic bishops discuss denying President Joe Biden communion for his public support for abortion. Pope Francis has notably not commented on whether Biden should be denied communion, but the pope has repeatedly condemned abortion as evil and the killing of innocent life.

“The minister of Holy Communion may find himself in the situation where he must refuse to distribute Holy Communion to someone, such as in cases of a declared excommunication, a declared interdict, or an obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin,” Ratzinger wrote.

“Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist,” the former cardinal continued.

If the “person in question” obstinately persists in presenting himself to receive communion even after all this, Ratzinger wrote, the minister “must refuse to distribute it.”

[Marchmain]

"McCarrick downplayed the letter to U.S. bishops in July 2004, according to The Washington Times, paraphrasing the statement to suggest that the Vatican said that it was up to bishops to decide on communion for pro-abortion politicians. He was later accused of deliberately misinterpreting Ratzinger’s words."

[LIConFem]

And there was the Vatican equivalent of a palace coup shortly thereafter. Followed by the installation of Pope Commie I.

[Ann Archy]

The GOOD Pope.

[Gay State Conservative]

Next time we have a Catholic Pope certain US politicians will be denied Communion. I can easily imagine Bella Pelosi announcing that she's become a Unitarian/Universalist after being told she won't be given Communion.

[ZULU]

Bergoglio is a Marxist globalist.

[ebb tide]

Flashback: When Popes were Catholic and the Cardinals respected their popes.

Resisting Peter: Cardinal Bergoglio Knows Exactly How That Works

Alexander Baverstock writes in The Telegraph that when the Islamic world reacted with typical extreme violence to Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Lecture, then Cardinal Bergoglio took the opportunity to declare his opposition to Benedict having quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos to the effect that whatever was new in Mohammedan teaching was bad and inhumane, such as forced conversion.

Baverstock writes: 'Reacting within days to the statements, speaking through a spokesman in Newsweek Argentina, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio declared his 'unhappiness' with the statements made at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and encouraged many of his subordinates with the Church to do the same" (my emphasis).

Cardinal Bergoglio, in immediate defense of rioting Moslems, not merely undermined Pope Benedict, but encouraged other churchmen to do likewise. 

That surely was the moment when the most liberal faction of Cardinals and other churchmen - such as the 'St. Gallen mafia' - decided that Bergoglio was probably their man. 

[ebb tide]

Bergoglio's Cardinal Wilton Gregory also downplayed the letter; and here he is today declaring he will not deny Biden Holy Communion.

What goes around, comes around: from McCarrick to Bergoglio and now back to Gregory: the Lavendar Mafia is entrenched.

[captain_dave]

The Real Pope

[Ann Archy]

AMEN!