Catholic Priest Ignites Debate By Denying Communion To Reagan Official Who Endorsed Obama, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 04 Jun 2008 - 7:00 PDT

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An unidentified Roman Catholic priest who recently denied Holy Communion to a former Reagan administration official because he endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president has fired the "opening shot" in a debate about whether priests should deny Communion to Catholic voters who support candidates favoring abortion rights, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne writes in an opinion piece.

According to Dionne, Douglas Kmiec, who headed the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel in the late 1980s, was denied Communion during an April Mass because the priest believed his endorsement of Obama made Kmiec a "willing participant in a grave moral evil." Kmiec -- currently a law professor at Pepperdine University and former dean of the Catholic University Columbus School of Law -- is a "long-standing critic" of Roe v. Wade, according to Dionne. In an interview, Kmiec said he endorsed Obama despite his position on abortion rights because Catholics should consider the "broad social teaching of the church" and whether a "legal prohibition of abortion" is the "only way to promote a culture of life."

Even though some U.S. Catholic bishops have asked Catholic politicians who support abortion rights not to receive Communion, the priest's decision is "almost certainly out of line" with U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy, according to Dionne. A November 2007 USCCB statement says that Catholics "cannot vote" for candidates who "tak[e] a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion ... if the voter's intent is to support that position," according to Dionne. According to the statement, Catholics "can support pro-choice candidates" if their vote is "not to promote abortion," Dionne adds.

Denying Communion to a "private citizen" who has a "long history of embracing Catholic teaching on abortion" for "political reasons may spark an even greater outcry inside the church" than when bishops have suggested Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be denied the sacrament, Dionne writes (Dionne, Washington Post, 6/3).

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