ARTICLES

What’s a Bishop To Do?

Archbishop Levada’s Interesting Theology

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

Who says the U.S. bishops waver in their resolve? Their meeting in Denver, Colorado in June belies this calumny. Its conclusion showed them standing pat on the status quo — at least on the question whether or not to refuse communion to pro-abortion politicians.

After setting up a special Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians, after consultations with the Holy See, after lobbying by groups on both sides of the issue, the bishops offered no recommendations, suggested no policies on the communion question. Instead, they said, “given the wide range of circumstances involved in arriving at a prudential judgment on a matter of this seriousness, we recognize that such decisions rest with the individual bishop in accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles. Bishops can legitimately make different judgments on the most prudent course of pastoral action.” In other words, things will go on as before.

San Francisco’s archbishop, William Levada, played an important part in this decision. As chair of the doctrine committee for the Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians, Archbishop Levada presented a talk at the June bishops meeting, “Reflections on Catholics in Political Life and the Reception of Holy Communion.” The archbishop’s “Reflections” drew, it seems, on a memorandum sent by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C. The memorandum, “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles,” was not meant for publication, but the Italian journal L’Espresso obtained and printed a copy of it. According to the July 16 National Catholic Reporter, CardinalMcCarrick, the chairman of the task force, did not deny the accuracy of the memorandum in the July 3 L’Espresso, but said (cryptically enough) that it “may represent an incomplete and partial leak of a private communication from Cardinal Ratzinger and it may not accurately reflect the full message I received.” A subsequent Catholic News Service report indicated that L’Espresso did not reproduce a cover letter that may have accompanied the original memorandum.

Archbishop Levada opened his “Reflections” by quoting a May 28 New York Times opinion piece that asked the question, “whether Catholic politicians... can claim to be Catholics in good standing, and therefore worthy of the Eucharist, while vigorously pursuing a policy of ‘choice’ that is tantamount to unrestricted abortion.” Levada also quoted a letter written to Cardinal McCarrick by 48 Democratic members of Congress, whose answer to this question was a resounding yes. The letter’s authors, Levada said, “present themselves as faithful Catholics whose lives of public service are dedicated to the promotion of human dignity in many sectors, although they may disagree among themselves about abortion. They say it ‘is deeply hurtful ‘ to them to be ‘singled out by the refusal of communion or other public criticism’ for doing their civic duty.”

Archbishop Levada, in noting that the letter’s politicians request dialogue, suggested that the American bishops have been negligent in communicating the Church’s teaching to the public at large. “For many Catholic bishops and Catholics active in the pro-life movement, it may seem naïve to think that such a dialogue is at a ‘beginning,’” said Levada. Yet, he continued, “there are several signs, not least in the letter itself, but also in our general Catholic and political culture in America, that while bishops have long been engaged in teaching and internal Church ‘dialogue,’ that dialogue has not been effectively engaged for many Catholics in political life and in American culture at large.”

The politicians’ letter, said Levada, suggests “two principal issues that are open to misunderstanding.” The first is that “as Catholics, we do not believe it is our role to legislate the teachings of the Catholic Church.” The second is “the suggestion that abortion is the ‘single issue’ on which the sanctions are based, whereas Church teaching is much broader.”

Levada carefully noted that the Church does not want to impose her religion on the people of the United States. But, “there is another intersection of religion and politics that is not proscribed,” he said, which addresses the “area of morality and ethics.” Morality and ethics are not “in themselves ‘confessional’ values’” he said. “These common ethical or moral values are often the subject of legislative activity, since the good order of society often depends on their being codified into law.” Among these moral “values,” the sanctity of life is paramount. The Catholic tradition, while enunciating the moral principles, is not as clear on their application in political life. This makes applying them “at times a complex and difficult task.”

In dealing with the second issue, whether abortion is a single issue for Catholics, Levada seemed to follow Ratzinger’s memorandum. Not all the elements of Catholic teaching have the same “rank” in placing obligations “upon the Catholic conscience,” Levada said. Among the issues addressed by the social teaching, “the teaching on abortion holds a unique place. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.” Quoting Ratzinger almost verbatim, Levada gave this example: “if a Catholic were to disagree with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.” The reason is that “it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.” While there may be a “legitimate diversity of opinion” on these matters, said Levada, there is none with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

Thus, to be “in full communion with the faith of the Church,” said Archbishop Levada, one “must accept this teaching about the evil of abortion and euthanasia.” Levada cited Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which states that there is “a grave and clear obligation to oppose” laws promoting abortion or euthanasia “by conscientious objection.” Also, “in the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of it, or vote for it.”

This would seem to place the pro-abortion politician in a precarious place; for in promoting and/or voting for legislation favoring abortion, he is participating in a gravely illicit action. In his memorandum, Ratzinger, citing Evangelium Vitae, says “Christians have a ‘grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. [...] This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it’ (no. 74).”

The key word in the above citation is “formally.” Ratzinger does not speak of any sort of participation but of formal cooperation in a sinful act. Levada, too, speaks of a politician’s formal cooperation in evil and draws on Evangelium Vitae for a definition of it. Formal cooperation in evil occurs, said the pope, “when an action, either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an act against innocent life or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it.”

The pope’s somewhat elliptical definition can be further explicated by understanding some traditional distinctions in regards to formal cooperation. In 1999, the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston issued a “Statement on Cooperation, An Examination of the Fundamental Principles,” which addresses what are called the “traditional ‘fonts’ of morality” in defining formal cooperation. According to the “Statement,” in determining the moral liceity of an act, one must not only consider the act being done (the “moral object”) but also the intention behind the act and the circumstances in which the act is performed. Formal cooperation is the “intending or concurring in any one or more of the immoral components of the principal agent’s act, either as an end in itself or as a means.” Thus, one may formally cooperate in the sin of abortion because he or she wills the death of the unborn child; but he or she also may will the death of the child, not for its own sake, but to escape some perceived evil that may arise from it — such as shame, or loss of some opportunity, or even fear of death — and this, too, would be formal cooperation.

Formal cooperation is divided into two kinds — explicit and implicit. In explicit cooperation, the actual agent of the act and the one who cooperates in it have the same intention in performing the act. Implicit formal cooperation is, says the “Statement,” the: “intending any one or more of the immoral components of the principal agent’s act but as a means to something other than the principal agent’s act.” In such cooperation, the cooperator does not, say, agree with abortion but provides for the apparatus by which abortions are performed; or, as with a politician, one supports an abortion bill, not because he thinks abortion is a good thing but because he wants to avoid an evil — such as back alley abortions — or attain political favor with a constituency or serve the will of the majority, etc.

But for Archbishop Levada, formal cooperation is a very narrow category, it seems. “Can a politician be guilty of formal cooperation in evil?” Levada asked, to which he responded, yes, if he “intends to promote the killing of innocent life.” [Emphasis in original.] Even a voter, Levada said, could be guilty of formal cooperation in evil if he has such an intention. Thus, it appears, for Levada, if a politician supports an abortion bill or a voter an abortion candidate for any reason except “to promote the killing of innocent life,” he is not guilty of formal cooperation in evil. Hence the archbishop’s conclusion that such formal cooperation on the part of voters “seems unlikely as a general rule;” and his answer, “I hope not,” to the question, whether “a Catholic politician who has voted for a law favoring abortion be judged to have this intention.”

So it is that a bishop, said Levada, must “inquire of his fellow Catholics about their intentions, about their understanding of their faith obligations, about their concept of their role in living out their faith in political life, about how they recognize their duty to uphold the ‘law of nature and of nature’s God’ through the legislation of just laws, and the avoidance of unjust ones.”

In his memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger nowhere defines formal cooperation as does Levada. Ratzinger agrees that a pastor “should meet with those guilty of formal cooperation in abortion or euthanasia (as a Catholic politician ‘consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws’),” but with the intention of “instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.”

But what if the politician persists in his support for abortion? Citing a 2002 Vatican ruling on divorced and remarried Catholics, Ratzinger writes: “when ‘these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible,’ and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, ‘the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it’.... This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty. Nor is the minister of Holy Communion passing judgement on the person’s subjective guilt, but rather is reacting to the person’s public unworthiness to receive Holy Communion due to an objective situation of sin.” [Emphasis added.]

Levada, too, holds out denial of communion as a possible recourse in the case of a politician who refuses to submit to Church teaching; but, again, only under a narrow category. “Only the fear that saying nothing in the face of a long-term public refusal to adhere to the teachings of Christ proclaimed by his Church,” said Levada, “would convince a bishop that, in order to avoid scandal — positions of Catholic politicians that might lead members of his flock into similar patterns of sinful behavior — he must publicly reprove the person who persists in such behavior by imposing a penalty such as the prohibition to receive Holy Communion. Canon 915 says that those ‘who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.’” But first, Levada said, “bishops must dialogue with leaders and assist them in looking for ways “to exercise their public responsibilities in ways that are compatible with Catholic faith and life.”

But Levada makes an interesting distinction between those persons who “knowingly reject a divinely revealed truth of faith (e.g. the Trinity or the Eucharist...)” and are thus “in heresy” and those “who do not accept some teaching of the faith that has been definitively (infallibly) taught [as] necessarily connected with divine Revelation, but not expressly and categorically set forth as divinely revealed.” The latter rejection (and Levada here cites “the evil of abortion” as an example) “would affect and diminish” “full communion with the faith and life of the Church. In such cases,” Levada said, “the practice of the Church does not per se exclude such persons from the reception of the sacraments.”

So, it seems, according to Levada, unless scandal is involved, pro-abortion politicians (even, presumably, those who categorically affirm, against Church teaching, a right to abortion) are not in heresy but only in a state of diminished communion.

But though the Church does distinguish between the deposit of revelation and the truths that follow necessarily from it, she does not say that the latter deserve a lesser adherence of faith. Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium says that the infallible teachings of the Church, whether delivered by all the bishops of the world or through the pope alone, are to be held “definitively and absolutely.” In defining a doctrine, says Lumen Gentium, the Church makes its “definition in conformity with revelation itself, to which all are bound to adhere and to which they are obliged to submit.” Indeed, to deny any infallible teaching of the Church is not merely to question the doctrine itself, but the very authority of the Church. In his memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger says that abortion and euthanasia do not allow any “diversity of opinion among Catholics.”

Since Levada does not think Catholic politicians who deny the Church’s teaching on abortion are in heresy, it is not surprising that he does not recommend denying them communion. Rather, he said, “the Church invites such persons to a fuller understanding of the truth and a conversion of mind and heart to embrace the fullness of Christ’s teaching.”

Levada called for a united policy from the bishops. “The application of restrictive practices regarding the reception of Holy Communion in one diocese necessarily has implications for all,” he said. “In this matter, we bishops owe it to our people to achieve a reasonable consensus among ourselves on issues affecting the common status of Catholics in American culture and political life.”

Levada does not say what that “reasonable consensus” might be. But, in his closing remarks to the bishops, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick does. McCarrick does insist that Catholics who disagree with the Church on abortion “must study Catholic teaching, recognize their grave responsibility to protect human life from conception to natural death, and adopt positions consistent with these principles.” But, says McCarrick, “in our view, the battles for human life and dignity and for the weak and the vulnerable should be fought not at the Communion rail, but in the public square, in hearts and minds, in our pulpits and public advocacy, in our consciences and communities.”

Levada said that any minister who denies communion might unnecessarily jeopardize the “good reputation of the person” denied. He says nothing about the danger to the soul of that person, who may be receiving a sacrilegious communion. He says nothing about the Church’s duty to guard against sacrilege itself. But, perhaps, this is scarcely surprising. For, according to the San Francisco archbishop, bishops “are primarily concerned” — not for the eternal good of souls, not for safeguarding the worship of God — but “for the good order of the Church.” The “scandalous behavior” of elected officials might mislead other Catholics, he says; but where? Into heresy? Into grave sin? He does not say. But scandal will at least have this effect, according to Levada; it will make bishops less “persuasive for the rights of our brothers and sisters from conception to the grave.”

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