Caught in a time warp: Priest's petty gesture to refuse communion to politician
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Every now and again the past can pop up in public life, sometimes in the form of nostalgia, others as a salutary lesson.
This week, it arrived in the guise of farce when junior minister Colm Burke was refused Holy Communion. Mr Burke was attending the funeral in Whitechurch outside Cork City of a friend and long-time party activist in Fine Gael.
When the politician approached to receive communion at the requiem mass, the celebrant, Fr Gabriel Burke, put his hand over the chalice and refused to serve the junior minister for health. The Mass was being live streamed and, presumably, Fr Burke was aware of this.
Fr Burke told the junior minister that he was refusing him the sacrament because Mr Burke had voted for abortion in 2018 when legislation was enacted to give force to the referendum on repealing the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
In the livestream, Minister Burke appears to remonstrate with Fr Burke over the matter. Immediately after the ceremony, the minister contacted the office of the Diocese of Cloyne to complain about the matter.
The first issue that arises is the authority on which Fr Burke decided to refuse the sacrament.
For this, he drew on comments from Bishop Eamon Martin in 2013 who suggested that any politician who voted for abortion against the known teachings of the church cannot receive communion.
Supporting legislation for abortion, the priest explained to the politician, according to Sean O’Riordan’s report in the Irish Examiner, amounted to “co-operating with evil” and anybody guilty of such conduct should not present for communion.
In quoting Bishop Eamon Martin, the priest was being selective. Prior to a vote in 2013 on legislation to allow abortion in the event of a mother’s life being in danger, the bishop did make his suggestion about politicians being excluded from communion.
Months later, after the vote, the bishop, who was about to become Primate of All Ireland, said that politicians who had passed the legislation would not be ex-communicated or denied communion.
He also said he had never refused communion to anybody. As such, the priest is being very selective about the authority on which he draws to publicly refuse communion to the politician.
Beyond that, other questions arise.
Why if the priest felt so strongly on the issue did he not publicly state that he would not allow communion for any politician whom he believes supported abortion legislation?
Has he indicated to his congregation that he would ask anybody who voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to desist from attending mass or communion?
Or was the public snub to a junior minister just an instance of Fr Burke deciding he would like to make a political point by embarrassing a politician attending the funeral of a friend?
The issue of abortion still touches primal instincts. For some, it is a matter of a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. For others, it concerns the plight of what they perceive to be human life.
A minority of people in this country are passionately opposed to abortion. They have every right to their views and every right to campaign for changes in the law or to attempt to move society to a point where there will not be the same requirement for abortions.
It is healthy in a democracy that such differences are aired and debated.
The role of the Church in this public issue is greatly diminished these days.
We no longer live in a state or society where the writ of the Church hierarchy runs. That writ was largely based on fear of ostracization, a fear that was realized in some instances along the way.
Sexual mores and related matters, such as abortion, always were at the centre of this power dynamic exercised by the Church. Today, the Catholic Church contributes to the debate just like other interested parties and that is good and proper.
What happened last weekend, however, is of a different order.
There, it would appear, one of the church’s priests decided that he would use a small lever of power at his disposal to make a point about his, and his institution’s, opposition to the procedure.
Surely the day has long passed for such a petty gesture to be used in attempting to make a political point.
A proper gesture now might be for the Bishop of Cloyne to make an apology to Colm Burke and perhaps have a quiet word in the ear of a priest who appears in some ways to be caught in a time warp.