If Nancy Pelosi is Denied Communion, Why Not William Barr?

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone announced Friday (May 20) that he has barred House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion in his archdiocese because of her support for abortion rights. Let's put aside for a minute the fact that single-issue policing of the altar is pastoral malpractice and that denying the speaker the Eucharist will only further divide Catholic parishes and squander church leaders' already gravely diminished credibility. Playing Communion politics, furthermore, reveals the hypocritical partisanship among some vocal segments of the Catholic right. When former Attorney General William Barr, a Catholic who served in the Trump administration, played a key role in reviving the federal death penalty in 2019, there were no calls to deny him Communion. The Catholic Church teaches that executions are always morally unacceptable, with the Catechism referring to the death penalty as "an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person."