Archbishop Burke: Bishops must admonish pro-abortion politicians -- and ministers of the Eucharist must deny them Communion

The Catholic News Agency today reports that Archbishop Raymond Burke, the new prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, this week told the Italian magazine Radici Cristiane (click on this post's title, although in a quick perusal I didn't see the particular article) that a politician who facilitates aborting babies "should be publicly admonished in such a way as to not receive Communion until he or she has reformed his life."

The archbishop added these bombshells:

"If a person who has been admonished persists in public mortal sin and attempts to receive Communion, the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny it to him. Why? Above all, for the salvation of that person, preventing him from committing a sacrilege.

"We must avoid giving people the impression that one can be in a state of mortal sin and receive the Eucharist. Secondly, there could be another form of scandal, consisting of leading people to think that the public act that this person is doing, which until now everyone believed was a serious sin, is really not that serious - if the Church allows him or her to receive Communion.

"If we have a public figure who is openly and deliberately upholding abortion rights and receiving the Eucharist, what will the average person think? He or she could come to believe that it up to a certain point it is okay to do away with an innocent life in the mother's womb."

Archbishop Burke also said that when a bishop prevents a pro-abort from receiving Communion, "it is not with the intention of interfering in public life but rather in the spiritual state of the politician or public official who, if Catholic, should follow the divine law in the public sphere as well."

The archbishop then made this significant point:

"Therefore, it is simply ridiculous and wrong to try to silence a pastor, accusing him of interfering in politics so that he cannot do good to the soul of a member of his flock."

So the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura says to leave pro-life pastors alone -- to let pro-life pastors be pro-life!

I'm sure that Cardinal Roger Mahony will hop right on this and publicly admonish all the pro-abortion politicians in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and then tell all ministers of the Eucharist to deny Communion to the unrepentant ones. I'm sure he will; aren't you?

I'm sure Archbishop George Niederauer will get busy, too, and publicly admonish Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and all the pro-abortion politicians in San Francisco, too.

And I'm sure all our California bishops quickly will follow their lead and admonish all their pro-aborts, too. Aren't you?