Why I am quitting the Catholic Church

With the archbishop of San Francisco’s announcement Friday that he was unilaterally banning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion, I made a decision that had been building for a long time.

I no longer consider myself a member of the Catholic Church.

Those are painful words for me to write. I spent much of my youth as an altar boy who was deeply influenced by the priests and nuns I encountered. I seriously contemplated becoming a priest at one point, was married in the church, saw my children baptized and looked on in pride when they received their first Holy Communion. I have attended more Masses and listened to more inspiring homilies over the past 40-plus years than I can begin to count.

But if you’re Catholic, you know how deeply important the sacrament of Holy Communion is to all of us who consider ourselves sinners. It represents the climax of the Catholic Mass as the consecrated body and blood of Christ. To deny a Catholic this sacrament is to deny them the right to unite with Christ.

The idea that a leader of the church would weaponize something so precious is not only wrong; it’s abhorrent. It betrays the teachings of Pope Francis and the principles the church has operated under for more than a half century in respecting our rights to follow our conscience on issues of morality. One of the defining statements that came out of the Catholic Church’s revolutionary Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 was the declaration of religious freedom and decree that “no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs.”

While Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone routinely takes to Twitter to denounce Pelosi and her fellow Catholic, President Biden, over their abortion stances, he rarely targets politicians over other grave moral issues. I did not see a word from him in the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre about the political factors that have enabled a plague of racism, hate and gun violence in our society. I also never see him call for political action to address the plague of inadequate health care and safety net services that results in our country having some of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the advanced world.

He apparently had no idea about this nation’s shameful record on maternal mortality until I called it to his attention on Maternal Health Awareness Day. His brief acknowledgment on Twitter came without any call for action to address it by the same legislators he wants to see ban the right to abortion.

Many of us hoped that leaders like Cordileone would have had the humility to focus on their own institution’s moral failings in the aftermath of the child sex abuse crisis. But in his role as bishop in both San Francisco and previously in Oakland, Cordileone has routinely come under fire for his lack of transparency and accountability in addressing this horrific church failure that devastated the lives of untold children across the Bay Area. Just last month, he joined other California bishops in challenging a California law that gives victims of childhood sex abuse additional time to sue.

I am tired of the hypocrisy of bishops who denounce prochoice politicians for failing to legally protect fertilized embryos while saying nothing about those Catholic politicians such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who flout church doctrine regarding the death penalty, are backed by the extremist National Rifle Association and do nothing to protect Black grocery shoppers from being slaughtered by guns, or the shooting of schoolchildren, as happened yet again in Texas on Tuesday.

While some individual priests have shamefully withheld Holy Communion from pro-choice politicians for many years, Cordileone crossed a red line by issuing a blanket ban against Pelosi receiving the sacrament in her home diocese, after making similar threats against Biden.

It’s time to say enough is enough to church leaders who attempt to bully Catholic public officials who refuse to do their theological bidding and refuse to place church doctrine ahead of the views of the constituents they are elected to represent.

I do not agree with Pelosi or her party on every issue, but she is devout Catholic mother of five who spearheaded one of the greatest expansions of health care rights (the Affordable Care Act) in U.S. history, a law that has saved countless lives and pregnancies. If she is not worthy of Holy Communion, I have no interest in continuing to receive it from this church.

My belief in Christ’s message of love and tolerance is as strong as ever. But I am a Catholic no more.