| Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles |
| Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: |
3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
(LifeSiteNews) -- In his lengthy exhortation, Pope Francis chastised those who would see abortion as a more important issue than migration. “Some Catholics consider (immigration) a secondary issue compared to the ‘grave’ bioethical questions,” he said. “That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian.”
The Pope decries the "harmful ideological error" of those who dismiss the importance of the "social engagement of others," such as in immigration or service of the poor.
He criticizes those who "relativize" these issues, "as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend."
“Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate,” he said, but should not supercede the defense of the poor or migrants.
The contrast with Pope Benedict XVI is evident from Benedict’s 2006 remarks to members of the European People’s Party. “As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable,” he said.
He added:
Among these the following emerge clearly today:
- protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;
- recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage - and its defence from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;
- the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Saint John Paul II wrote similarly in his 1988 apostolic exhortation, The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World (Christifideles Laici). "The inviolability of the person, which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination . . . "