Dear Nancy Pelosi: Renounce Catholicism

By now, I imagine most of my readers have seen the story of archbishop Salvatore Cordileone saying that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is not allowed to receive communion because of her opinions on abortion. Although the official ban was only announced on 5/20/2022, Cordileone contacted Pelosi on 4/7/2022 and told her the following:

Should you not publicly repudiate your advocacy for abortion “rights” or else refrain from referring to your Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion, I would have no choice but to make a declaration, in keeping with Canon 915, that you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

Canon 915 is a section of canonical law, the law that governs both the Catholic Church and those of the Catholic faith, which reads the following:

Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.

This part of the canonical law has been used in the past to deny communion to politicians who are pro-choice. In 2004, an archbishop named Raymond Leo Burke said he would not give John Kerry, then the Presidential nomination from the Democratic party, communion because of his pro-choice political views. In 2008, Bishop Joseph Francis Martino…