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A Letter To My Bishop

                                                                                                   
 May 6, 2021

Your Excellency Bishop Robert McElroy,                                  

From the beginning let’s be clear where I am coming from. I was born and raised Catholic. I went to Catholic grade school and Catholic high school. Furthermore I attended a Jesuit Catholic college and a Jesuit Catholic post-graduate school. I married a Catholic woman, and all four of our children attended both a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school. Three went to a Jesuit Catholic college. For over seventy years I have attended Catholic mass regularly, and have always proudly proclaimed my Catholicism . . . until today when I was embarrassed to read your comments in which you decried calls to deny Communion to abortion promoters in an essay at the Jesuit publication America. “The proposal to exclude pro-choice Catholic political leaders from the Eucharist is the wrong step,” you, the Bishop of San Diego wrote. “It will bring tremendously destructive consequences.”

Wait, I am confused, Bishop McElroy. “Tremendously destructive consequences!” Have you ever witnessed a tremendously destructive abortion? . . . I think not.

Either abortion is morally wrong, or it isn’t.  Either abortion is evil or it isn’t. And either those who promote abortion . . . and I emphasize the word “promote,” are in essence promoting something that is morally wrong and evil, or they’re not. Granted there are many evils in our world. Murder is evil. Rape is evil. Thievery is evil. Etc. But I do not see or hear of any truly Catholic person promoting any of these evil things, and if someone were involved in encouraging or promoting a murder or a rape, for instance, would it not be reasonable to withhold Holy Communion from that person?

Politicians often vote for abortion measures, and simultaneously claim to be reverent Catholics. I consider this to be hypocrisy, but then who I am I to judge. Someone well above my pay-grade will ultimately be their judge. However, I would not want to posthumously try to defend the dichotomy of my pro-abortion votes and my Catholic religion to anybody, much less to the Big Guy, upstairs.

On a more personal level after reading your short essay praising President Biden, which was distributed to my parish  back in January, 2021, I have personally sent you multiple emails asking you to comment on President Biden’s pro-abortion stances and policies. You have not answered a single one, and after reading the summary of your recent essay in America, I am not surprised as it would take courage to respond. In this article instead of addressing the question at hand, you tried to shift the focus from pro-abortion politicians to racism. As many are aware this is a favorite tactic of politicians . . . namely using a straw-man and then trying to then argue for or against the straw-man instead of the real issue.

However, Bishop McElroy, the last I heard you were not a politician. Your lack of comments on the real issue (the rightness or the intrinsic wrongness of giving Catholic Communion to those who promote abortion) is indeed embarrassing to me, a lifelong Catholic, and should likewise be embarrassing to all Catholics . . . including yourself!

Sincerely,

P.S. While I sent you a copy of this letter days ago, you have again chosen the route of silence – I guess it’s that courage thing.

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