October 30, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Pro-homosexual Jesuit Fr. James Martin called it a “bad idea” that politicians should be denied Holy Communion because of their support for abortion.
Hours after the news broke that a South Carolina priest, Fr. Robert Morey, denied Holy Communion to Joe Biden, former U.S. Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate, because of his public support for abortion, Martin tweeted:
Besides, a priest has no idea what the state of a person's soul is when the person presents himself or herself in the Communion line. As we were taught in theology studies, the person may have repented of any sins and gone to confession immediately before Mass. You have no idea.
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) October 29, 2019
According to Canon 915 of the Catholic Code of Canon Law, those who are “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
“Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church,” said Fr. Morey when defending his decision to the Florence Morning News. “Our actions should reflect that. … Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”
Martin, a consultor with the Vatican Dicastery on Communications, appears to regard supporting the intrinsic evil of abortion — the direct taking of an innocent human life — as the moral equivalent of disagreeing with the pope’s encyclical on the environment.
Pope Benedict XVI, as then-Cardinal Ratizinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, directly refuted this point in his 2004 memorandum: “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles.”
“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia,” Ratzinger wrote.
“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.”
Ideally the pastor should meet with a Catholic who is publicly persisting in manifest grave sin — “understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” — to instruct and warn him, Ratzinger wrote.
But even if such measures have not been taken when the individual presents himself for Holy Communion, “the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it,” Ratzinger wrote.
“This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty,” he added.
“Nor is the minister of Holy Communion passing judgment 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.”
Fr. Martin is regarded as one of the most vocal advocates for the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church. The celebrity priest and editor-at-large for Jesuit America Magazine consistently omits mention that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2357, 2358) teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and “under no circumstances can they be approved,” and that that same-sex inclination itself is an “objective disorder.”
In an August 2017 talk at Villanova University, Martin declared a Catholic attending a same-sex “wedding” is as acceptable as a Catholic attending a Jewish wedding, opined that nearly everyone who opposes same-sex “marriage” is “homophobic” and repeated his mantra that his critics are just secretly “gay”.
Martin also suggested that opposing same-sex “marriage” is like opposing interracial marriage and that African Catholics are one of the biggest obstacles to Church acceptance of homosexuality.
Moreover, his LGBTQ advocacy has become more brazen as the Francis pontificate continues, with Martin tweeting in September that in private meeting with the Holy Father, he “shared with (the pope) the joys and hopes, and the griefs and anxieties, of LGBT Catholics and LGBT people worldwide.”
More recently, Martin questioned the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality, which earned him a rebuke from a U.S. bishop and a cardinal, and mused that the recently canonized Cardinal John Henry Newman was “gay.”
He also defended the annual retreat for “gay” priests held by New Ways Ministry, a dissident group long condemned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, then accused LifeSiteNews of “homophobia at its most malign” for publishing an article describing the retreat as “a portal of hell.”