(Corpus Christi 2022 (C): This homily was given on June 19, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:1-4; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 6:51-58.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Corpus Christi 2022]
Why was the Archbishop right?
In late May, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco
sent a letter to the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, in which he said the
following:
A Catholic legislator who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others. Therefore, universal Church law provides that such persons “are not to be admitted to Holy Communion” (Code of Canon Law, can. 915). …
Then, a little later in the letter, the Archbishop said this:
In striving to follow this direction, I am grateful to you for the time you have given me in the past to speak about these matters. Unfortunately, I have not received such an accommodation to my many requests to speak with you again since you vowed to codify the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in federal law following upon passage of Texas Senate Bill 8 last September. That is why I communicated my concerns to you via letter on April 7, 2022, and informed you there that, should you not publicly repudiate your advocacy for abortion “rights” or else refrain from referring to your Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion, I would have no choice but to make a declaration, in keeping with canon 915, that you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.
As you have not publicly repudiated your position on abortion, and continue to refer to your Catholic faith in justifying your position and to receive Holy Communion, that time has now come. Therefore, in light of my responsibility as the Archbishop of San Francisco to be “concerned for all the Christian faithful entrusted to [my] care” (Code of Canon Law, can. 383, §1), by means of this communication I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.
People
in the woke, liberal, secular media, of course, became apoplectic when they
found this out and read the Archbishop’s letter—to which I respond (in all
charity) that it’s none of their business!
These are the same people who talk about the “separation of Church and
state” every time a group of Christians takes a position on a moral matter that
they don’t like. Well, it works both
ways, Mr. Journalist! The Church
shouldn’t try to run the state, true enough; but neither should the state try
to run the Church! This is an internal
Church matter, and—if you really believe in the separation of Church and state
like you say you do, Mr. Journalist—then you have nothing to say about it! Your opinion on a matter like this is totally
and completely irrelevant.
Which
brings me back to the question I posed at the beginning: Why was the Archbishop
right? Why was he right, first of all,
in trying to reach out to Mrs. Pelosi in the past to encourage her to see
abortion for what it really is, and to act accordingly in her public life? (He makes reference to those efforts, by the
way, in his letter when he says, “I
am grateful to you for the time you have given me in the past to speak about
these matters.”) Why was he right in
warning her that there would be consequences if she persisted in her radical
pro-abortion position, while at the same time claiming to be a “devout Catholic”? And why was he right to finally take that
action and bar her from receiving Holy Communion at Mass?
Those questions actually
have a very simple answer: Archbishop
Cordileone was right BECAUSE HE’S A FATHER, AND THAT’S WHAT FATHERS—GOOD
FATHERS, CARING FATHERS, LOVING FATHERS—DO!
Good fathers instruct their children and teach them the
truth.
Good fathers admonish their children whenever they do wrong.
Good fathers are patient with their children.
Good fathers teach their children to be honest. They don’t teach their children to say
they’re Catholic, for example, if those children really don’t believe the core
teachings of the Church!
Good fathers make their children accountable for their words
and for their actions.
Good fathers punish their children when they deem it appropriate.
But good fathers are also always ready to forgive their
children, and to receive them back with open arms when they repent of whatever
wrong they’ve done.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is a good father—a good spiritual
father. He’s a good spiritual father to
Nancy Pelosi (although at the moment she might not think he is) and to the many
other people of his diocese. They’re
blessed to have him as their spiritual leader.
We need many more leaders like him in the Church today—just
as our society needs more biological fathers who are good in these ways. On
this Fathers’ Day it’s important for us to remember that in America right now
we’re experiencing what can be rightly called a “crisis of fatherhood”. Many bishops and priests have failed their
spiritual children, just as many biological fathers have failed their natural
children. And we’re seeing the tragic consequences
of these failures all around us—especially in acts of violence at schools and
other public places. In one of his
books, former Providence College professor Anthony Esolen wrote these
foreboding words:
What is the single condition of a boy’s life that correlates most strongly with whether he will turn criminal? Not income, not by a long shot. It is whether he grew up in the same home with his father. Our prisons are full to bursting with fatherless boys who never became the men and fathers that God meant them to be.
As I said in an editorial I
wrote this week for our diocesan newspaper:
Fathers matter! They matter a lot! Their love matters; their encouragement matters; their presence matters; their discipline matters; their forgiveness matters—and their example in every other dimension of life (including the spiritual dimension) matters!
My prayer on this Fathers’
Day is that every father, spiritual and biological, will understand these
things—and live his life accordingly.