A leading Catholic advocacy organization is calling for Democrat Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey to be excommunicated for signing a law this week legalizing abortion up until birth.
Healey, a self-proclaimed Catholic, signed “An Act Prioritizing Patient Access to Care” or H.5595, which eliminates the state’s 24-week limit and allows unborn babies to be killed in abortions throughout pregnancy. The governor was surrounded by a gaggle of grinning women who applauded ecstatically as she signed the radical bill.
Healey’s stamp of approval aligned Massachusetts with Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington, DC, in allowing unborn babies to be aborted up to the moment of birth.
In response, CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt sent a letter on Wednesday to the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts calling for Healey to be excommunicated and asking for the Church to provide clarification and guidance to people of faith.
Reinhardt pointed to church canon, which states that anyone who procures a complete abortion or is an accomplice to an abortion is automatically excommunicated.
“The question before you is whether Governor Healey qualifies as an essential accomplice under this canon. We believe the answer is yes, but most importantly, we believe that such a conclusion can only be asserted beyond doubt by your authority,” Reinhardt wrote.
She continued:
A governor who signs legislation into law is not a bystander: she is the necessary final act of a legislative process that cannot take legal effect without her. Without her signature the abortions that H. 5595 enables would not occur. She is not merely complicit in a general cultural sense, but in the precise canonical meaning of the term.
Reinhardt also pointed out that the celebratory signing amounts to a “public scandal,” which the Catholic church also has a right to punish publicly.
“What was communicated to Catholics in Massachusetts and to all of us watching across the country by that ceremony? That a Catholic in good standing can sign legislation permitting abortion until birth and be celebrated for it,” she wrote.
“Therefore, this was not a private sin. It was a horrendous lesson taught by a Catholic governor to Catholic citizens, with all the authority of her office and all the symbolism of that applause,” she continued. “The Church has always understood that some acts require a public response precisely because they have done public harm. The festive ceremony of August 10 is such an act.”
Reinhardt said excommunicating Healey would not be for the sake of “punishment,” but to enact the Catholic church’s concept of “medicinal penalties.”
“The logic of medicinal punishment is ancient and coherent and teaches that you do not withhold medicine from a sick person to protect their feelings. You administer it because you love them and because you take their illness seriously,” she wrote.
“Governor Healey is a Catholic in a state of grave sin. She has publicly and now legislatively cooperated in the destruction of innocent human life. The Church’s law offers her a mechanism, an opportunity of being told,” she added, “by those whose authority she herself acknowledges through her claim to Catholic identity, that she has gone somewhere she cannot remain without consequence. The purpose is to bring back her soul.”
Reinhardt pleaded with the Bishops of Massachusetts not to stay silent on the issue, as unborn babies cannot speak for themselves.
“When a Catholic governor signs legislation permitting abortion until birth, celebrates that signing publicly, and receives no response from her bishops beyond a press statement, the lesson absorbed by the faithful is not subtle,” she wrote. “It is this: this is tolerable and within the range of what a Catholic may do. The line is somewhere further along, and we do not yet know where it is.”
“That lesson is wrong. And it is being taught every day that it goes uncorrected,” she added. “The integrity of Catholic witness in public life and the credibility of the claim that Catholic faith is a moral architecture that shapes how one exercises power, depends on the willingness of shepherds to act as shepherds when it matters most.”
The Governor’s Office, the Archdiocese of Boston, and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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