White House promotes abortion funding, ‘reproductive healthcare’ at international gathering on women

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Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2023 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 14, 2023 / 11:04 am (CNA).

Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr on Saturday urged Catholics in the state of Ohio to reject a November ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights under the state’s constitution.

The prelate said in a letter posted to the archdiocesan website that the proposed amendment, titled the “Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety,” would legalize the right to “take the lives of innocent children in the womb while harming women and families in the process.”

The amendment, if passed, would dictate that Ohio “shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” a woman’s attempt to get an abortion.

State law currently prohibits abortion after the point at which an unborn child’s heartbeat is detected, generally around six weeks of pregnancy.  

Under the amendment, lawmakers could prohibit abortion “after fetal viability,” or when a child could survive outside its mother’s uterus, generally at around 24 weeks of pregnancy. The state would be prohibited from doing so, however, in cases where a doctor determined that an abortion was necessary to protect the mother’s “life or health.”

Schnurr in his letter said the proposal is an “extraordinary and dangerous attempt to radically reshape Ohio through a constitutional amendment that does nothing to aid women or promote life.”

“As Catholics, we are morally obliged to uphold the dignity of life of all vulnerable humans — immigrants, the poor, preborn children,” Schnurr wrote. “We cannot remain silent on a direct ballot question like the one in November.”

The archbishop urged Catholics to pray for the amendment’s defeat, to raise awareness of the measure, and to vote against the initiative in the Nov. 7 general election.

“Beyond that, we must continue our commitment to caring for women, children, and families,” Schnurr said, calling also on the intercessions of St. Mary and St. Joseph for the state of Ohio.

The campaign to include the abortion measure on the November ballot was led by the pro-abortion group Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom. The group said last month it was aiming to counteract what it called “draconian reproductive health care policies imposed by extremists.”

Ohioans earlier this month rejected a proposed rules change that, had it been passed, would have made it more difficult to adopt constitutional amendments via citizen-proposed ballot measures. The proposal was voted down by a margin of 57-43%. 

The August measure would have dictated that amendments like the abortion measure secure 60% of the vote to pass. With that proposal’s failure, the abortion amendment will only need the votes of a simple majority of Ohio voters to pass it. 

The August measure was criticized by pro-abortion activists who said the initiative was an effort by conservative and pro-life Ohioans to scuttle the abortion amendment in November. President Joe Biden called the August proposal an “attempt to weaken voters’ voices” and “erode the freedom of women to make their own health care decisions.”

A USA Today poll from July showed nearly 60% of Ohio voters supporting the November abortion amendment.

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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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