The Mind of Francis: Denying Communion

May 1st, 2013
In an earlier posting, I examined his views on optional celibacy.  Here I will look at another controversial practice: denying Communion to Catholics.
In On Heaven and Earth, the book he co-authored with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Cardinal Bergoglio wrote, “One could deny communion to a public sinner who has not repented, but it is very difficult to check such things.”One should note that he said, “could” not “must.” And as an experienced pastor, he stressed the difficulty of checking whether a person is “a public sinner who has not repented.” Many American bishops, like Cardinals Francis George and Donald Wuerl, have taken similar positions.
At the same time, Bergoglio said it would be wrong for someone to receive Communion who “rather than uniting the people to God, warps the lives of many people.” Such a person “cannot receive communion; it would be a complete contradiction.”In the book, the Communion issue came up not in the context of abortion, but of injustice. He referred to those “who have not only killed intellectually or physically, but also have killed indirectly through the poor use of resources by paying unjust wages.” He called them hypocrites because “in public they may form welfare societies, but they do not pay their employees a wage corresponding to their work or they hire them ‘under the table.’ “So if you are paying your employees off the books with no payroll taxes,  Pope Francis would consider you a “pretend” Catholic suffering from spiritual hypocrisy and schizophrenia. He acknowledged that there are many such people “who hide within the Church and do not live according to the justice that God proclaims.” If you are such a person, he would want you to ask yourself whether you are ready for Communion.

Archbishop Bergoglio was especially suspicious of “pretend” Catholics who were public figures looking for a photo op at the Communion rail. In such circumstances, “I do not give communion myself; I stay back and I let the ministers give it because I do not want those people to come to me for the photo op.”