June 27, 2004

This past week the Church celebrated the martyrdoms of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. They died in 1535 to defend the papal primacy and the indissolubility of marriage. Thomas More, as a lawyer, knew all the devices of lawyers, which can promote justice or, in craven hands, can thwart it. Amongst all the terrified and compromised bishops of England, Fisher was the only one to defend the truth with his own life.

Neither was impractical in their stratagems nor did they intemperately seek persecution. They paid the price of honesty rather than await the awful price that a soul eventually pays for compromising the truth. Our nation confronts a graver challenge today. The Church and Marriage were the issues then. The issue now is the natural law of life itself.

The Archbishop of St. Louis, the Most Revered Raymond L. Burke, is both a bishop and a lawyer, and has a legal competence that charitably shreds emotional equivocation about abortion. In an article in the journal “America” (June 21-28,2004) he recalls that the bishops of the United States six years ago recognized the difficulties in legislating moral good, but also said that “no appeal to policy, procedure, majority will or pluralism ever excuses a public official from defending life to the greatest extent possible.” A correctly formed conscience cannot be “set in opposition to the moral law or the magisterium of the church” (Catechism, No.2039).”A politician’s failure to protect the life of the unborn betrays the public trust.

Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law stipulates that those who “obstinately” persevere “in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” This is not a sanction of excommunication arbitrarily imposed by a bishop, as some people describe it. The exclusion is inherent in the nature of the Sacrament itself. In other words, culpable individuals have, by their own public defiance of the moral good, excommunicated themselves. A bishop only declares the fact, and that is done when the contempt for the truth has become a public scandal. Unlike other moral matters which may involve prudential interpretation, abortion is a definitive moral evil, and supporting legislation that protects it constitutes formal cooperation in a gravely sinful act. This blatantly obtains in the case of Catholic politicians who support organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League.

As in the days of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, some fear that opposing “political correctness” might make the situation worse. Reminiscent of Fisher’s speech to the Legates of England and More’s essay on the “Sorrows of Christ” written in prison, Archbishop Burke writes, “What would be profoundly more sorrowful would be the failure of a bishop to call a soul to conversion, the failure to protect the flock from scandal and the failure to safeguard the worthy reception of Communion.”

Fr. George W. Rutler