Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, has decried the evil of abortion while asserting the need to challenge Catholic politicians like President Joe Biden who are pro-abortion.
“We pray for those leaders who pursue government policies and laws which seek to further entrench abortion rights and other assaults on innocent human life,” Hying said, as Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported Wednesday.
“As a young priest, I encountered many people, men and women both, who were profoundly wounded by abortion,” the bishop said. “Their painful experiences led me to get involved in the pro-life movement, as I came to realize in a deeper way the personal and societal effects of abortion.”
“Almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade, 66 million lives have been snuffed out at the very beginning of their existence and countless individuals have been spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically damaged by this profound violence,” Hying noted, and “we still have legal abortion in the United States, with many of our national leaders embracing a pro-abortion position, including self-professed Catholics.”
In his statement, the bishop expressed support and gratitude for a May 1 pastoral letter by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in which he stated that in the case of public figures who profess to be Catholic and yet promote abortion, “we are not dealing with a sin committed in human weakness or a moral lapse: this is a matter of persistent, obdurate, and public rejection of Catholic teaching.”
“This must be stated with clarity: anyone who actively works to promote abortion shares some of the guilt for the abortions performed because of their actions,” Cordileone wrote.
Such a state of affairs has two consequences, he noted, first that a Catholic in this situation should voluntarily not present himself to receive Communion, and second, that if this is not the case, the Church’s pastors should make sure he does not receive Communion.
“Because we are dealing with public figures and public examples of cooperation in moral evil, this correction can also take the public form of exclusion from the reception of Holy Communion,” Cordileone declared.
In his own statement, Bishop Hying said that Cordileone’s letter offered a “timely reflection on the moral evil of abortion, the need to challenge political leaders who are pro-abortion — especially those who profess Catholicism — and the linkage between the Eucharist and communion with the Church in her doctrinal and moral teaching.”
Citing Saint John Paul II, Hying wrote: “A nation that kills its own children has no future.”
“May we all have a deep conversion to the love and practice of the universal moral law which God has written upon the human heart,” he concluded. “The flourishing of the common good, the spiritual health of our society and our very future as a country depend on it.”
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