For several years, Raymond Cardinal Burke, now Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, and I have been among the chief exponents of the view that Catholic sacramental and canonical discipline supports, and in some cases demands, that Catholic ministers withhold Holy Communion from certain Catholics in response to their public conduct. In particular, serious questions have arisen about the eligibility of some prominent political figures to receive Communion. Almost invariably, these questions focus on their personal, albeit public, conduct, rather than their beliefs, and are being decided, or conspicuously not decided, case by case.
While some earlier disputes about participation in Communion focused on the receiver’s private conduct, recent disputes concern conduct that is particularly public, indeed often formally political or, at any rate, packed with societal consequences. These modern debates emerged first in regard to Eucharistic participation by the millions of Catholics who civilly divorced and remarried, followed by arguments about Catholic politicians such as Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Kathleen Sebelius, Andrew Cuomo, and Rudy Giuliani, and most recently Catholics participating in various forms of pro-homosexual activism.
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