San Franciso Archbishop: Dissenters and Those Living in Mortal Sin Must Repent and Confess Before Taking Communion

The Church’s teaching on worthiness to receive communion goes all the way back to St Paul. 

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco

“Anyone who would violate this by dissenting from divine Church teaching or who are living in a way that violates the moral teachings of the Church in a serious way — what we would call mortal sin — are not properly disposed to receive Holy Communion,” Archbishop Cordileone tells us in the video below.

“The Eucharist is not simply a way of welcoming people, or affirming people … the Holy Eucharist is our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ,” he said.

This is Catholicism 101.

Everybody who knows anything about the Church knows this.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone performed an important service by reiterating it clearly and concisely.

People who demand that they be allowed to take communion in the Catholic Church while they flaunt their dissent and immoral lifestyles are rife. They often seem to have reporters at their elbows, ready to write scalding stories about the Church’s “discrimination” the minute they don’t get what they demand.

I don’t think that this behavior has anything at all to do with genuine faith in Christ and a desire for the graces of the Holy Eucharist. I believe it is a coarse and aggressive political action which is made in a deliberate attempt to force the Church to change 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

Our world is so completely upside down with its messaging that we are constantly bombarded with cultural “teachings” that evil actions are good and good actions are evil.

Make no mistake about it: A Church, bishops and priests who will stand against this tide of excoriation to tell people that their sins are, in fact, sins, are doing great good.

People need to hear this, no matter how much it outrages them. They need to hear it because, without repentance and conversion, they are doomed to hell.

We — all of us, no matter what our sins happen to be — must approach the cross on our knees.

A broken and contrite heart, You will not refuse, King David prayed after his sins of adultery, murder and lying were exposed.  Against You and You only have I sinned. 

That is the essence of it. The Way to heaven is the way of conversion, and conversion means laying down your own understanding and accepting the leadership of God. The easiest way to do this is simply to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Lean not on your own understanding, the Scriptures tell us.

You will not get to heaven by defaming God and demanding that His Church affirm you in your sins. If you deliberately take communion with mortal sin on your soul, you are essentially thumbing your nose at Jesus as He hangs on the cross. You are joining in with the jeering mobs who mocked Him as He suffered.

In this video, Bishop Cordileone outlines Church teaching about worthiness to receive communion in a clear statement.