In a simmering controversy that won't die, the finger pointing begins in earnest:
Washington - Cardinal Theodore McCarrick blamed the media and partisan activists for unjustly attacking U.S. Roman Catholic bishops who spoke out this election year on whether dissenting Catholic politicians should receive Communion. He accused them of spreading internal dissension among church leaders...
In a speech delivered behind closed doors and released Wednesday, McCarrick pleaded for unity among his colleagues.
"The media or partisan forces sometimes tried to pit one bishop against another. I look around the room and see bishops who have been unfairly attacked as partisan, others who have been called cowards," he said during a private session of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "That is not who we are. We are united in our defense of life and the dignity of the human person."
The bishops wound up at the center of a national debate over religion and politics after St. Louis
Archbishop Raymond Burke, former bishop in La Crosse, Wis., said he would deny the Eucharist to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic who has said he personally opposes abortion but supports a woman's right to choose.
Anti-abortion advocates pressured more bishops to follow Burke's lead. Other Catholics lobbied the prelates to highlight a broader range of moral issues in the election, such as war and poverty.
See Also
Catholic bulletin: Pursuing Social Justice which covers bishops asking for key issues: Jobs, equal pay, hunger, rights to organize, affordable housing, welfare reform, health care, and social security.
Kerry supporters joined the fight, accusing Catholic leaders of trying to help re-elect President bush, a Methodist whose position on abortion is more in line with Catholic teaching. Bush won the Catholic vote.
McCarrick, head of a bishops' task force on Catholics in public life, became a target of critics himself after saying he opposed using Communion as a sanction. The American Life League, a group of abortion opponents, took out ads denouncing his stance.
The cardinal said it had been a difficult year. Bishops were accused of being "single issue" if they spoke out on abortion, and if they didn't, they were derided as indifferent to the "destruction of unborn human life," he said.
"We do not believe that our commitment to human life and dignity and our pursuit of justice and peace are competing causes," he said. "While we do not believe that all issues have equal moral claims, we will work to protect those whose lives are destroyed by abortion and those who are dying of hunger. We will strive to protect human life from the moment of conception until the moment God calls us home and we will strive to pursue peace...This is who we are and what we believe."
In an interview, McCarrick said that the bishops' position on Communion had been widely misunderstood.
Only a few of the more than 250 American bishops said that dissenting lawmakers should be denied Communion. A dozen or so other prelates said the politicians should voluntarily abstain from the sacrament but would not be denied if they sought it.
Most bishops took the same positions as McCarrick.
(Source: by Rachel Zoll, Associated Press and published in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Thursday, November 18, 2004)
Will this communion debate end for good now because the election is past? Or is it sitting idle until another Catholic candidate decides to run for public office?
When the new alliance, called Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A., is set to begin next year (joining Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, blacks and other minority churches), how will this play out? All this remains to be seen and should make for interesting reading.