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Denver Newsroom, Apr 23, 2020 / 12:24 am (CNA).- While a New Jersey state senator has launched a petition seeking the “thoughtful” resumption of religious services with “reasonable precautions,” the Archdiocese of Newark has stressed the wisdom of statewide restrictions on gatherings given the prevalence of the novel coronavirus in the region.

“As the New Jersey region unfortunately has the highest number of reported Covid-19 cases in the nation, with increasing reported deaths, it is prudent to continue compliance with statewide mandates for social distancing protocols at this time,” Maria Margiotta, director of communications and public relations for the archdiocese, told CNA April 22.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s executive orders ban gatherings of any size as the state battles the novel coronavirus. Businesses deemed non-essential have shut down in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. While symptoms of infection are nonexistent, mild or moderate for most people, a significant minority require hospitalization. Infection can be fatal in a small percentage of cases, especially where the person is elderly or otherwise has health vulnerabilities.

In New Jersey, the executive order’s limits drew objection from State Sen. Mike Doherty, a Republican from the state’s rural northwest.

“We’re asking Governor Murphy to allow religious services to resume in New Jersey in a thoughtful fashion. It’s the right thing to do, both constitutionally and morally,” Doherty said April 19. In his view, “it’s possible for religious services to resume if reasonable precautions are put in place.”

New Jersey has suffered over 5,000 coronavirus-related deaths as of Wednesday, with over 95,000 known cases statewide. It neighbors New York state, where 250,000 confirmed coronavirus cases include over 15,000 deaths, with New York City the worst-hit urban area in the United States.

Doherty emphasized the benefits of religious gatherings in a time of crisis.

“When many of us could be at Sunday services today replenishing a much needed sense of hope in these uncertain times, we instead remain separated in our homes from the communities of faith that sustain us in good times and bad,” he said.

Doherty has launched an online petition for New Jersey residents who wish to share with the governor “their belief that religion is an essential service and constitutionally protected right that should be allowed to resume immediately.” By 7 p.m. local time Wednesday, the petition had more than 1,700 signatures.

Margiotta, the Newark archdiocese spokeswoman, did not address the petition directly. However, she said Catholic churches would reopen only with the decision of the local bishop.

“The process of how and when to reopen churches will be determined by the ordinary and his diocesan staff,” she said. “The well-being and safety of our clergy, staff, and parishioners remain a priority, and the archdiocese will continue to review guidance from federal and state officials as plans to reopen are considered. Although church buildings remain closed, our prayers and celebration of Mass continue via livestream so that we may remain united as one Church and one people amid this ongoing pandemic.”

Last week, Gov. Murphy cited a Harvard University study published in the journal Science as saying social distancing measures might need to last through 2022. Any sports or entertainment gatherings, and possibly high school and college graduations, might need to be held virtually without anyone in the audience.

“I don’t see a normal, even if it were to take place, a normal gathering in the foreseeable future. I just don’t see it,” he said April 15, according to New Jersey 101.5. “I’ll be the happiest guy on the planet if I’m wrong.”

“This is a war. It is the fight of our lives. Wars are not won by one person or one small group. They’re won when millions of people come together in a common cause,” he said. “Our cause right now is totally flattening the curve and then seeing it drop down the other side. Then we can begin the process responsibly along with our neighbors of reopening our state and beginning to live life in our new normal.”

“This is no time to let up. We have got to keep at it,” he said, stressing the need for cases of coronavirus to fall to “a manageable reality” where experts can reconsider social distancing measures. Murphy emphasized “a responsible re-opening” with health care infrastructure and protocols that “frankly, we don’t have at the moment.”

Such protocols include fast and accurate coronavirus testing and the ability to trace the contacts of infected people to prevent contagion from spreading. Citing discussions with experts, Murphy said he thought a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus was unlikely earlier than a year or a year and a half from now.

Doherty’s petition, hosted at the website of the New Jersey Senate Republicans, said people have been denied the opportunity to attend religious services that “could provide hope, solace, and a sense of community during this time of social distancing and isolation due to the coronavirus.”

According to the petition, “it is possible for churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues to operate safely through reasonable precautions, including outdoor services, social distancing, and limitations on the size of gatherings.”

The petition cited the constitutional right to practice religion that “should not be impeded through overly restrictive executive orders.”

“Governor Murphy should recognize that religious services are no less essential to people’s needs than retail services, such as lottery and liquor sales, that have been allowed to continue,” it said.

CNA sought comment from Senator Doherty but did not receive a response by deadline.

The senator is a strong advocate of lifting New Jersey limitations on small businesses, saying “the state needs to reopen sooner rather than later.”

“The cure is becoming much worse than the disease. The idea that churches will be shut down until July is unacceptable,” he said April 15, according to Insider NJ.

He objected to the governor’s refusal to allow churches to conduct “outdoor, open air services with proper spacing” while “allowing the essential service of selling more booze to desperate citizens, and allowing customers to pull up to fast food take out windows where the spacing between the customer and the server is zero inches.”

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Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix celebrates Mass with members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Region XIII at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on Feb. 12, 2020, during their ad limina visit / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Denver, Colo., May 7, 2021 / 12:10 pm (CNA).

The bishop of Phoenix this week supported a recent letter from the archbishop of San Francisco stating that Catholics cooperating with abortion should not present themselves for Communion.

“Woe to us bishops if we do not speak clearly about the grave evil of abortion, and the consequences of any Catholic who participates in the act or publicly supports it by word or action,” Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix said in a May 6 statement. 

He responded to a May 1 letter by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco on “the Human Dignity of the Unborn, Holy Communion, and Catholics in Public Life.” Olmsted called it “a powerful defense of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of all human life.”

Referring to bishops who do not clearly denounce the evil of abortion and of Catholics supporting it, Olmsted condemned “a false patience and pastoral concern that, year after year, stays silent or speaks in abstractions while the slaughter continues with the full endorsement of Catholic politicians under our spiritual care as bishops.”

The bishop warned that reluctance to speak out in such cases is a pastoral failure, rather than a charitable politeness.

“Such ‘patience’ is false because it is bereft of love and truth, and thus unmasks rather a deadly apathy towards one who professes the Catholic faith but whose public embrace of abortion puts his or her eternal soul at risk of damnation, and risks dragging untold numbers into hell by their example,” he said. 

Archbishop Cordileone wrote in a May 1 pastoral letter that any Catholic cooperating with the evil of abortion should refrain from receiving the Eucharist. In his letter, he included a section on Catholic public officials who advocate for abortion. 

“You are in a position to do something concrete and decisive to stop the killing,” Cordileone wrote, addressing those politicians. “Please stop the killing.”

“And please stop pretending that advocating for or practicing a grave moral evil – one that snuffs out an innocent human life, one that denies a fundamental human right – is somehow compatible with the Catholic faith. It is not. Please return home to the fullness of your Catholic faith,” he wrote.

The topic of Holy Communion for pro-abortion Catholic politicians has become especially relevant with the election of Joe Biden, the first Catholic U.S. president in six decades.

Biden has publicly advocated for protection of legal abortion, including the codification of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion nationwide. Biden has also supported taxpayer funding of elective abortions, and has taken action as president to allow for taxpayer funding of pro-abortion groups in the United States and abroad.

The bishops of the United States (USCCB) may address the topic of “Eucharistic coherence” at their spring meeting in June. However, if a document is presented on the matter, it will reportedly address the Church’s teaching on general worthiness to receive Communion, and will not be a specific push to deny Biden Communion.

A source close to the USCCB told CNA on April 29 that at the June meeting, the bishops’ doctrine committee might present a “broad document” on general worthiness for reception of Communion; alternatively, the bishops might wait until their fall meeting in November to vote to consider such a document.

In his own apostolic letter from early April, Olmsted wrote that Catholic teaching sees the Eucharist as Christ’s transformative sacrifice on the cross, and that Holy Communion must only be received worthily. The Church teaches that to receive Communion, baptized Catholics must not be conscious of having committed serious sin since their last confession.

This teaching is not “partisan,” Olmsted wrote, adding that it certainly applies to political leaders who back evils such as abortion and euthanasia. 

“Holy Communion is reserved for those, who with God’s grace make a sincere effort to live this union with Christ and His Church by adhering to all that the Catholic Church believes and proclaims to be revealed by God,” Bishop Olmsted wrote, explaining that Church teaching on this has “always been clear and based on Scripture.”

This is why the Church “requires Catholic leaders who have publicly supported gravely immoral laws such as abortion and euthanasia to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until they publicly repent and receive the Sacrament of Penance,” he said.

Olmsted recommended that all Catholics read Cordileone’s letter, as well as “all people of good will who desire to know why the Church cannot and will not change her traditional defense of motherhood and the most vulnerable in the womb.”

The bishop also recommended that the faithful read a recent article on the matter penned by Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila. 

“When the church minimizes the danger of an unworthy reception of the Eucharist, she fails to properly love those who continue to jeopardize their souls,” Archbishop Aquila wrote in his April 14 article published in America magazine. 

“Trading ‘civility’ and ‘engagement’ for eternal life is not a good trade, and it is especially negligent for me, as a bishop, to remain quiet when people I am called to love may be endangering their eternal souls. This is a danger to them and a danger to me,” he wrote.

Individual bishops have spoken and written on the topic of “Eucharistic coherence” in recent months. 

In March, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois told a regional conference of the Canon Law Society of America that Catholics who publicly and obstinately advocate for abortion, including politicians, can and should be denied Communion under canon law.

“I’m talking about their external actions. If they’re living in a way or holding positions that are contrary to church teaching, then the Minister of Communion has to deny them the sacrament,” Paprocki said.

During his homily at the Vigil Mass for Life in January, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas taught that Catholics should not receive Communion if they are contradicting “fundamental” Church teaching.

However, both Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C. and Bishop William Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware – Biden’s home diocese – have said in the past that they would not deny Communion to a politician who consistently works toward permissive abortion laws or policies. 

Msgr. William Koenig was chosen last month as the new bishop of Wilmington, with his episcopal ordination scheduled for July 13.

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego also said at a February online dialogue that denying Communion to obstinately pro-abortion Catholic politicians would be interpreted as “a weaponization of the Eucharist.” He said that bishops teaching about “Eucharistic coherence” in the Biden presidency was not a “good idea.”

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Washington D.C., Nov 22, 2019 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- A group of pro-life leaders, including the US bishops’ pro-life chair, wrote Thursday to President Donald Trump urging him to tell Congress that an amendment funding overseas abortion providers is … […]