This Should Make Nancy Pelosi Very Happy...

The Perfect Bishop for San Francisco (with prayers for the good Catholics who live there)

SAN FRANCISCO, July 6, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The newly-appointed auxiliary bishop of San Francisco (Msgr. Robert McElroy) has in the past criticized Catholic Church policy disallowing politicians who promote abortion from receiving Holy Communion, saying that such a move would make the Church appear too "partisan," "Republican" and "coercive."

[...]"It does not matter that Eucharistic sanctions would be fully within the legitimate moral and civil rights of the church to adopt, and that those who have attacked them as a violation of the separation of church and state are totally in error in their understanding of the constitutional tradition of the United States," wrote McElroy. "What does matter enormously is that Americans will in general recoil from the use of the Eucharist as a political weapon, and will reassess their overall opinion of the church’s role in the political order."   read the rest of this load of clap-trap

Meantime, from Phoenix:

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, one of the most outspokenly pro-life bishops in the U.S., wrote last month that failing to call pro-abortion Catholic politicians to account when they profess to reconcile their views on abortion with their Catholic faith "inevitably leads to more evil acts in the future."

While the bishop did not mention communion in his latest column, in the past Olmsted has made clear that pro-abort Catholics should not receive, and should even be denied communion.  In a booklet released in 2006, the bishop wrote that such politicians “cannot receive Holy Communion without previously making a good confession.”

In 2005 the Phoenix bishop made himself even clearer, telling IgnatiusInsight: "So anyone who has had an abortion, or has participated in one, or euthanasia, or who would be promoting those things, or have failed to protect human life while in a position where they could protect it – such as a politician or a judge – they should not be receiving Communion. If they persisted in it after [Church teaching] was presented to them, then I think the priest or deacon should not give them Communion in that case."

"Evil acts, in themselves, are the greatest source of scandal," wrote the bishop in last month’s column on scandal. "When the perpetrators are not called to account, then they are emboldened to do even worse deeds."