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Chicago Cardinal's Remarks on Communion For Pro-Abort Politicians Disappoint Pro-Life Catholics

By Hilary White
 
CHICAGO, March 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Answering questions about priests who do not sufficiently support the Church’s doctrine on the right to life, Chicago’s archbishop, Francis Cardinal George, called the attitude of some pro-life advocates “judgemental.”
 
Speaking at a crowded pro-life conference sponsored by the Archdiocese, Cardinal George said on the issue of pro-abortion politicians receiving Communion, “Maybe you should talk to Pope Benedict XVI, who gives communion to the pro-choice Prime Minister of Italy. You have to look at a lot of things. It's not all that simple.”
 
The diocesan newspaper, Catholic New World, quotes the Cardinal saying, “You may win your battle but you'll lose the war when it appears to be just another sectarian movement that punishes anyone who doesn't agree with them.”
 
Cardinal George also criticized advocates for life when they “berate” politicians for claiming to uphold social justice while supporting abortion. On this issue, he said, they are “saying this is conservative and this is liberal, and never the twain shall meet. Well, that may be where we are now, but that's not where we should be.”
 
Father J. Patrick Serna, a priest of the diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas, responded that the Cardinal’s remarks were regrettable and likely to start a “firestorm” of new arguments in favour of allowing abortion-activist politicians to continue to receive Holy Communion.
 
Writing on the website of Catholic journalist, Matt Abbot, Fr. Serna said it was even more regrettable, considering the Cardinal’s previously “rather good” record upholding Catholic doctrine.
 
“It is my hope and prayer that the cardinal spoke these words glibly and off the cuff, without premeditation, without fully realizing the damage which can and probably will transpire from them,” Fr. Serna wrote.
 
Attempting to control the potential damage, Serna said it was possible Cardinal George in his off-the-cuff remarks was “innocently ignorant.” While the former Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, supports the so-called “gay rights” movement, Serna said his sources in Rome had confirmed that he is not a promoter of the abortion movement.
 
Serna also said that the Cardinal’s first assumption had been mistaken and that the Pope never gave Holy Communion to Prodi.
 
Serna praised Cardinal George for his previous “courage and dutiful respect for Jesus in the Holy Communion” when he refused to allow homosexual activists to receive Communion in 2004.
 
But Serna vigorously defended the Pope from the implication of hypocrisy. Given his leadership on the vexed question of Communion for American political abortion campaigners, “for him to then give…Communion to a pro- abortion politician is a hypocrisy which our current Holy Father is incapable of. Could he have given communion to a pro-abortion politician unwittingly? … Knowingly? Definitely not!”
 
It was while still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and during the last US presidential election campaign, that Pope Benedict instructed US bishops to refuse Communion to such politicians as former presidential hopeful John Kerry who is an avowed abortion promoter.
 
Chicago’s media office did not issue a statement from the Cardinal before LifeSiteNews.com’s deadline.

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