Overdosing on the Medicine of Mercy

In a remarkable article published last spring, James Hitchcock argued that an unrealistic spirit of “compulsory optimism” has pervaded the Church since the Second Vatican Council and that the effects of this compulsory optimism have been to cause the faithful to ignore the devastating internal crisis afflicting the Church and to disable the hierarchy from taking any action effectively to address that crisis or the scandals associated with it [“The End of Gaudium et Spes?” Cath. World Rpt. (May 2003)]. The debilitating spirit of optimism identified by Hitchcock has been at least as present in canon law as in any other aspect of the Church’s life. The most striking example of this phenomenon in the legal realm has been the near abandonment of the Church’s penal or criminal law in the decades since Vatican II. The post-conciliar decline in penal law is not only a symptom of the problem described by Hitchcock, but it is also a major cause of a host of other problems, especially the sexual abuse crisis in America.

The post-conciliar aversion to the use of penal processes has become almost an aversion to correction itself, regardless of the form...This aversion to correction extends even to actions in other contexts that only resemble penal action. Thus, when Archbishop Raymond Burke notified unrepentant pro-abortion politicians that they would be denied communion, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Cardinal Roger Mahony criticized his action. McCarrick referred to Burke’s action as a “sanction” and Mahony stated that such a step was improper unless the politicians had been found guilty of a crime. However, the cardinals were wrong to assume that Burke’s action was a penal sanction or that it had anything at all to do with penal law.

Rather, as Archbishop Burke already had explained, the question is one of sacramental discipline. The law of the Church states that persons who “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion” (can. 915). Note that the canon states not that such persons may be denied communion, but rather that they are not to be admitted. Despite the obligatory nature of this canon, however, few bishops have attempted to correct the proabortion Catholic politicians in their dioceses or even have spoken out against the phenomenon of public promoters of abortion continuing to receive communion in Catholic churches week after week and year after year.

Complete Article here.