Catholic politicians who defend abortion in the public sphere should not receive Communion "until they have reformed their lives", a leading Vatican official has said.
In an interview with the magazine Radici Christiane, the prefect of the Apostolic Signature, Archbishop Raymond Burke, said there was often a lack of reverence at Mass when receiving Communion.
"Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ unworthily is a sacrilege," he warned. "If it is done deliberately in mortal sin it is a sacrilege."
To illustrate his point, Archbishop Burke referred to "public officials who, with knowledge and consent, uphold actions that are against the Divine and Eternal moral law. For example, if they support abortion, which entails the taking of innocent and defenceless human lives."
The archbishop said that "a person who commits sin in this way should be publicly admonished in such a way as to not receive Communion until he or she has reformed his life."
He added: "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 OK to do away with an innocent life in the mother's womb," he warned.
Archbishop Burke also noted that when a bishop or a Church leader prevents an abortion supporter from receiving Communion it was "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 said it was "simply ridiculous and wrong" to try to silence priests, "accusing them of interfering in politics so that he cannot do good to the soul of a member of his flock," he said.
The archbishop said it was also "simply wrong" to think that faith must be reduced to the private sphere and eliminated from public life. He encouraged Catholics "to bear witness to our faith not only in private in our homes but also in our public lives with others in order to bear strong witness to Christ".
