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The American Papist is in a tizzy because New York's new governor, Andrew Cuomo, received communion at Mass on Sunday. Actually, what has the Papist in a tizzy is the fact that Cuomo was not denied communion. This is a "disaster" and a "scandal." Of course, there are only a handful of bishops in the United States who deny communion based on someone's public policy positions. And, neither Pope Benedict nor Pope John Paul II adopted the practice. The Papist is either too easily scandalized or he fails to understand that the idea of denying communion to politicians is, as a Vatican official put it to me, "horrible theology."
But, the Papist and his ilk are too filled with neo-Jansenistic worries, as were their namesakes, to worry about good theology.