‘Not a Happy Experience’: Pro-Abortion Sen. Dick Durbin on His 17-Year Communion Ban

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Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, public domain, commons.wikimedia.org

Sen. Durbin complains that his pro-abortion voting record has kept him from receiving Communion in his home diocese, and a Catholic priest and journalist offers a sympathetic ear.

By Joan Frawley Desmond, EWTN News, November 11, 2021

Joan Frawley DesmondA week after President Biden said that Pope Francis told him he was a “good Catholic” and should “keep receiving Communion,” and just days before the U.S. bishops meet to discuss the draft document on Eucharistic coherence, America Media published a strange interview with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

During an Oct. 5 Zoom-facilitated interview with Jesuit Father Jim McDermott, an associate editor at America, Durbin expressed frustration that his pro-abortion voting record has barred him for 17 years from receiving Holy Communion back home in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois.

The situation began in 2004, when Durbin’s pastor, then-Father Kevin Vann (now Bishop of Orange, California) advised him not to present himself for Communion because of his position on abortion. The diocese’s past and present episcopal shepherds endorsed that pastoral guidance.  …

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