Should pro-abortion Catholic politicians get communion?
... communion. Arinze, 71, a Nigerian who heads the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, is among the most outspokenly conservative Vatican officials on matters including abortion, contraception and homosexuality. He is constantly rumored as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II. While Arinze's remark does not carry doctrinal force, it gives support to the handful of U.S. bishops who have advocated sacramental sanctions against legislators, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America. "Certainly it will add to the pressure and support bishops like [Archbishop Raymond] Burke" of St. Louis, Reese said. Burke declared that Kerry would not be permitted to receive communion in his archdiocese. But while Kerry's own archbishop, Sean O'Malley of Boston, has urged abortion-rights legislators to refrain from communion, he left the decision in their hands. And that's consistent with church teaching, Gibbs said. "The church has the responsibility to teach, individual Catholics have the responsibility to learn and inform their conscience and make a decision about whether they are worthy to receive communion ... This is not new. Every time I go to Mass I have to make that decision." The document released yesterday reinforced existing rules about communion. One of the most basic is that a Catholic who is knowingly in "grave sin" must confess before receiving communion. Last year, in a "doctrinal note," the Vatican stressed that "those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that attacks human life." The church argues that opposition to abortion is not a matter of sectarian doctrine because it is based on the biological identity of a fetus as a human being. It argues that abortion is the paramount human rights issue because if humans can be killed before birth, all rights they might have been granted at birth become pointless. When Arinze was asked about Kerry, he replied that church teaching was clear. "The Catholic Ch...