Communion wars: doctrine, politics and eternal judgment | Terry Mattingly
Terry Mattingly
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Archbishop Joseph Cordileone leads the Archdiocese of San Francisco, a symbolic city in debates about modern American culture.
But what matters the most, as tensions rise among Catholic leaders, is that Cordileone is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hometown bishop. Thus, it's hard for politicos to avoid blunt passages in his new pastoral letter, "Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You."
Citing centuries of church doctrine, the archbishop argued that Catholics who "reject the teaching of the Church on the sanctity of human life and those who do not seek to live in accordance with that teaching should not receive the Eucharist. It is fundamentally a question of integrity: To receive the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic liturgy is to espouse publicly the faith and moral teachings of the Catholic Church, and to desire to live accordingly."