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Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion. General Principles

by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

Issued June 2004

1. Presenting oneself to receive Holy Communion should be a conscious decision, based on a reasoned judgement regarding one’s worthiness to do so, according to the Church’s objective criteria, asking such questions as: "Am I in full communion with the Catholic Church? Am I guilty of grave sin? Have I incurred a penalty (e.g. excommunication, interdict) that forbids me to receive Holy Communion? Have I prepared myself by fasting for at least an hour?" The practice of indiscriminately presenting oneself to receive Holy Communion, merely as a consequence of being present at Mass, is an abuse that must be corrected (cf. Instruction "Redemptionis Sacramentum," nos. 81, 83).

2. The Church teaches that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin. The Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, with reference to judicial decisions or civil laws that authorise or promote abortion or euthanasia, states that there is a "grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. [...] In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propoganda campaign in favour of such a law or vote for it’" (no. 73). Christians have a "grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. [...] This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it" (no. 74).

3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

4. Apart from an individuals’s judgement about his worthiness to present himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, 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 (cf. can. 915).

5. 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.

6. When "these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible," and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, "the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it" (cf. Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts Declaration "Holy Communion and Divorced, Civilly Remarried Catholics" [2002], nos. 3-4). This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty. Nor is the minister of Holy Communion passing judgement on the person’s subjective guilt, but rather is reacting to the person’s public unworthiness to receive Holy Communion due to an objective situation of sin.

[N.B. A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.]

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What Kind of Man is Pope Benedict XVI?

ROME, April 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The mainstream North American and European media has never been friendly toward either the Catholic Church or to the man they hold up as the archetypal defender of Catholic conservatism. Joseph Ratzinger was the favourite target of dissident Catholics, liberal theologians, feminist 'nuns,' leftist media sources and anyone with a grudge against the Catholic Church. In his 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith "rigid archconservative" was the least of the insults heaped on the new Pope. In the weeks leading up to the conclave, with the odds-makers predicting an early Ratzinger win, media managed to sink to previously unimagined lows with laboured implications that he had been a Nazi, or at least a sympathizer with the Hitler Youth.

Even as the election was being announced, the reaction from 'expert' commentators manning television and radio stations ranged from reserved to near-hysterical wailing. His simple adherence to Catholic doctrine has been enough to elicit warnings of 'division' and even 'coming civil war' within the Catholic Church at his election. None of this is of any concern to the people of his hometown in Bavaria, however, where an Octoberfest-style celebration was put on by the town fathers.

Students at St. Michael's seminary in Traunstein where the Pope studied as a teenager cheered him when he appeared on the balcony at the Vatican. In Traunstein the media-generated opinion is less important than the warmth of the man whom they know personally. Pope Benedict is a frequent visitor to this small Bavarian town and stays in the seminary with his brother, who is also a priest.

"Only someone who knows tradition is able to shape the future," said the Rev. Thomas Frauenlob, who heads the seminary in Traunstein.

Pope Benedict's personal generosity is well remembered at St. Michael's. In 2003, the seminary was unable to have a bishop available for confirmations, one of Catholicism's two initiation rites. Though, according to some US news magazines, he was at the time one of the most powerful and famous men in the world, the seminary knew they could count on their friend. He arrived in time to confirm 14 boys, then stayed to speak personally to each one after the ceremony.

Frauenlob said the insults and accusations pained him. "I find it hurtful to see him described as a hard-liner," he said. "People are too quick to say that, it's not an accurate reflection of his personality."

When he stays with the students he loves to play the grand piano. The Pope told journalist Peter Seewald in 1996 that music was a large part of his life. Growing up near Salzburg, the home of Mozart, he said, "You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me deeply because it is so luminous and yet at the same time, so deep."

Music runs in the family. His elder brother Georg is the former director of the renowned Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir. The Pope said of Mozart, "His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence."

Born on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday in the Catholic calendar, April 16, 1927, Joseph was brother to Georg and Maria and son of Maria and Joseph. His home was in a part of Germany known for its Catholicism and for what would now be called 'social conservatism.' Then-Cardinal Ratzinger said of his birth on the vigil of Easter, "on the threshold of Easter, but not yet through the door."

After the rise of the Nazi's, the senior Joseph Ratzinger, a police commissioner, risked much as a public opponent of Nazi ideology which was wholly opposed to his traditional Catholicism.

As a child, Joseph Ratzinger developed a desire to teach at an early age, though he was also once impressed with the work of a local housepainter. He loved to write including poetry, "about things of everyday life, Christmas poems, nature poetry…whenever I learned something I wanted to pass it on too."

While attending the seminary, young Joseph avoided the Hitler Youth as long as possible. But later he was obliged when he reached an age at which membership became compulsory. Pope Benedict told Seewald that a sympathetic professor, himself a member of the party, arranged to have him exempted. It was difficult for him since his family was not wealthy and the government offered tuition assistance to members of the Hitler youth.

From 1943 all the seminarians were conscripted. Ratzinger did various jobs for the military until he came of age to be drafted at 18. He was stationed at first near the Austro-Hungarian border but an officer, whom he describes as "obviously anti-Nazi" arranged to send him to serve near his home. It was to Traunstein that the 18 year-old Joseph Ratzinger returned to his family in May 1945 risking death by deserting from the German army. He wrote in his memoirs that he was terrified of being caught by the SS who shot or hanged deserters on the spot.

When the war was over he spent a short time in a US POW camp after which he returned home, hitchhiking on the back of a milk truck. After the war he resumed his studies for the priesthood.

Joseph and his brother were ordained on the same day in 1951 in Freising where he spent several years as a lecturer in dogmatic and fundamental theology. In the 1960's he became dismayed by the Marxist tone of much of the conversation at the Catholic universities in which he taught.

He attended the Second Vatican Council as a peritus, or theological advisor, to Joseph Cardinal Frings of Cologne. His dedication to traditional Catholicism was confirmed in 1966, when he took the chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Tubingen where he taught with Hans Kung.

In 1977 he was appointed the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich. He was appointed the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by John Paul II in 1981 which office he resigned on April 2, 2005, the day after Pope John Paul's death.

Ratzinger has said he would like to retire to a Bavarian village and dedicate himself to writing books, but more recently, he told friends he was ready to "accept any charge God placed on him."

This morning pro-life Catholics around the world were cheering when Pope Benedict XVI blessed the world. As Cardinal Ratzinger, his steadfast defence of Catholic ethics and moral doctrine has proved an incomparable boon to pro-life work around the world. 

His brother Georg once said of the future Pope, "He is not aggressive at all, but when it's necessary to fight, he does his part as a matter of conscience."

Benedict replied via Seewald, "I try to be. I'm not bold enough to claim that I am. But it does seem to me very important not to put seeking approval or accommodating the feelings of the group above the truth."

The text of his address was published in the French Catholic newspaper La Croix.

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Cardinal Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI on Life, Faith, Family and Freedom

VATICAN, April 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) -  The newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, unlike his predecessor John Paul II prior to his election, comes to lead the Catholic Church after spending the last 24 years in the public eye as the head of the most important office in the Church - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  As such, his teachings on the most pressing issues facing the Church today have been readily available.  In his writings he has touched on the so-called controversial issues, noting pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be denied Holy Communion, and that Catholic legislators may never vote in favour of laws allowing homosexual civil unions - let alone same-sex 'marriage'.

In a 2003 CDF Doctrinal Note, then Cardinal Ratzinger spelled out formally that Catholic politicians have a "grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that attacks human life," and that "For (Catholic politicians), as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them."  (see that full document here http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/jan/030116a.html )  The current pope also entered into the debate among US bishops regarding pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving communion. 

While Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the head of the US Bishops' task force looking into the question, was personally opposed to denying communion to unrepentant pro-abortion Catholic politicians, Cardinal Ratzinger's suggested otherwise.  Ratzinger intervention titled "Worthiness to Receive Communion" was intended as a private message to the US bishops but after being leaked to the media, Cardinal Ratzinger confirmed the document was his. 

In the letter, Cardinal Ratzinger cited established church teaching leading to the inevitable conclusion that pro-abortion politicians, who will not alter their stand or abstain from communion after being instructed by church leaders, "must" be refused communion.  (see the document here:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/050419a.html )

The current controversy over same-sex marriage was also addressed recently by the newly elected Pontiff, not only in formal CDF documents but also in personal interviews.  Formally, the 2003 CDF document on "Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons" states: "When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral." (see that document here: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/jul/030731a.html )

In an interview in an Italian newspaper last year, the then-Cardinal explained why the Catholic Church opposes not only homosexual 'marriage' but any kind of legal recognition of homosexual spouses. Speaking of recognition of spousal agreements between homosexuals, the Cardinal said, "But to institutionalize an agreement of this type - whether the lawmaker wants it or not - would necessarily appear in public opinion like another type of marriage that would inevitably assume a relative value." Concluding the point, Cardinal Ratzinger said, "Let us not forget that with these choices, to which Europe tends today - shall we say - in decline, we make a break from all the great cultures of humanity that have always recognized the very meaning of sexuality: that is, that men and the women were created to be jointly the guarantee of the future of the humanity. Not only a physical guarantee but also a moral one." (see LifeSiteNews.com coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/nov/04111902.html )

As the head of the doctrinal arm of the Church, the current Pope was also called on to comment on human cloning and experimentation with human embryos and unborn children.  Unapologetically and emphatically, Cardinal Ratzinger accepted the challenge putting the Church's teaching in terms readily understood by the common man.  During an address in 2001 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, he noted that the burgeoning industry of experimentation with the human fetus leads to hell.  "When, as today, there is a market in human organs, when fetuses are produced to make spare organs available, or to make progress in research and preventive medicine, many regard the human content of these practices as implicit. But the contempt for man that underlies it, when man is used and abused, leads -- like it or not -- to a descent into hell," he said.

Specifying the Church's teaching on the myriad of issues around such experimentation, the CDF published, already in 1987, the "Instruction On Respect For Human Life In Its Origin And On The Dignity Of Procreation Replies To Certain Questions Of The Day." (available here: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_d... )

The new Pope is also not afraid to take on the aggressive worldview that seeks to relegate Christianity to the back of the bus in public discourse.  In an interview published last year in the Italian newspaper "La Reppublica" and re-distributed world-wide via the Vatican Information Service, Ratzinger, issued a serious warning to Christians to defend against, "an aggressive secular ideology."

He recalled, "In Sweden, a Protestant pastor who had preached about homosexuality, based on a line from Scriptures, went to jail for one month." He noted that the state should "not impose religion," but "allows these religions to be factors in building up society". However some states are now giving way to "an ideology which is imposed through politics and which does not give public space to the Catholic or Christian vision."

Urging Christians to fight the dangerous trend, he said: "In this sense, a struggle exists and we must defend religious freedom against the imposition of an ideology which is presented as if it were the only voice of rationality, when it is only the expression of a 'certain' rationalism."

Ratzinger did not shy away from fighting such trends even when they were promoted by great powers such as the United Nations.  Writing in the Italian newspaper Avvenire in 2000, he denounced the UN vision of a "new world order." Ratzinger noted that "at the base of this New World Order" is the ideology of "women's empowerment," which erroneously sees "the principal obstacles to [a woman's] fulfillment [as] the family and maternity." The cardinal advised that "at this stage of the development of the new image of the new world, Christians - and not just them, but in any case they even more than others - have the duty to protest." (see the LifeSiteNews.com coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2000/sep/00091801.html )

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Cardinal Ratzinger Elected as 265th Pope of the Catholic Church - Pope Benedict XVI

VATICAN, April 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - To the cheers of hundreds of thousands in St. Peter's square and millions around the world German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who served the Church as the guardian of doctrine for 24 years under Pope John Paul II has been elected as the 265th pope of the Catholic Church.  He has chosen the name Pope Benedict XVI.

In his first public address as Pope, Benedict XVI said: "The cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard. I am comforted by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act. Most of all I rely on your prayers. In the joy of the resurrected Lord, he is going to help us and Mary will be on our side. Thank you."

The formal announcement of the Pope came at.6:43 p.m. (Rome Time) from the external loggia of the Hall of Blessings of the Vatican Basilica following the white smoke which occurred at 5:50 p.m.

The conclave that led to the election of Benedict XVI began on Monday, April 18, 2005 in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, with the "extra omnes" pronounced at 5:25 p.m. by Archbishop Piero Marini, master of the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, following the taking of the oath by the 115 cardinal electors.

Two previous ballots for during the conclave failed to reach a two-thirds majority, and black smoke was emitted to show there was not yet a Pope elected.  The first black smoke took place at 8:04 p.m. Monday. On Tuesday, April 19, there was black smoke at 11:52 a.m.

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CBC Radio Guest Disses New and Former Pope during Announcement of Benedict XVI

TORONTO, April 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Michael Enright, radio host for the radically liberal, taxpayer-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, hosted anti-Catholic “Catholic” New Times editor Ted Schmidt during a feature announcing the new leader of the world’s Catholics – Pope Benedict XVI.

Schmidt spent several minutes abusing the leadership of the former Holy Father, John Paul II, as the “Superstar papacy” that “sucked the energy and oxygen out of . . . local dioceses’.” Before the announcement of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, Schmidt prophesied, “I don’t think [the next Pope will be] Ratzinger . . . the micromanaging from Rome is over with . . . [the] great defect of [John Paul II’s] papacy.”

Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, “is not good enough . . . he’s not the right man!” Schmidt bewailed after the announcement.

Sister Kay MacDonald joined her views to Schmidt’s, as another voice of dissent – chosen by the CBC – against the choice of the new Pope. “I expected more,” she said, “perhaps someone with more experience in social justice.”

Pope Benedict XVI’s first words: “Dear brothers and sisters, after the Great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard. I am comforted by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and act even with insufficient instruments. And above all, I entrust myself to your prayers. With the joy of the risen Lord and confidence in his constant help, we will go forward. The Lord will help us and Mary, his most holy mother, will be alongside us. Thank you.”

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Ontario Bishop Expels Dissident "Catholic New Times" Paper from Diocese
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05041107.html
Anti-Catholic Paper Allowed in 70% of London, Ontario Parishes Opposes Bishop's Same-Sex Marriage Fight
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05022201.html
Analysis Finds Canadian 'Catholic New Times' Newspaper Anything But 'Catholic'
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05031503.html

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Supreme Court Decides Fate of Swing Clubs

OTTAWA, April 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canada’s top court will rule on whether swing clubs in the nation will remain open.

The case results from the decisions of two separate Quebec courts – one that ruled that a swing club there was the equivalent of a brothel, and a second decision that ruled the swing club was legal and could remain open.

Normand Labelle, lawyer for the Crown, argued swing clubs are “trivializing sexuality,” with patrons regarded as “consumer items,” according to a Canada.com report.

Dictionary.com defines a “swinger” as “A member of a couple, especially a married couple, who exchanges sexual partners,” or additionally, “A person who engages freely in promiscuous sex.”

Canada.com reports that five of the 20 swinger clubs in Canada are in Montreal.

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