CatholicVote president urges Massachusetts bishops to consider excommunication of Gov. Healey for signing late-term abortion law

CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt is calling on Massachusetts' Catholic bishops to publicly state that Gov. Maura Healey incurred automatic excommunication by signing legislation that expands legal protections for abortion until the moment of birth, arguing that the Church must respond more forcefully to what the bishops have described as a radical expansion of late-term abortion access.

In an Aug. 12 statement, Reinhardt expressed gratitude for the bishops’ unambiguous description of the consequences of Healey, a professed Catholic, signing H. 5595 into law. The bishops have been clear that the “Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act” allows for the abortion of unborn children until the moment of birth, and Reinhardt added, “We are grateful for that clarity.”

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“We are writing to ask you to follow that clarity to its logical and canonical conclusion,” Reinhardt continued. 

Reinhardt emphasized that H. 5595 is antithetical to natural law and Christian revelation by allowing the direct killing of defenseless human life.

“The direct killing of an innocent human being is not a policy preference. It is, in the language of Evangelium Vitae, ‘a grave moral disorder,’ one that ‘no circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make... licit,’” Reinhardt said. “Governor Healey did not merely permit this. She signed it into law.”

Continuing, Reinhardt emphasized to the bishops that they are not without resources to respond to the situation, adding, “The Church has, in fact, already spoken through law.”

She appealed to Canon 1397 of the Code of Canon Law, which imposes an automatic excommunication (or latae sententiae excommunication), “incurred by the very commission of the act, upon anyone who procures a completed abortion.” Canon 1329 also imposes an automatic excommunication on accomplices, she noted. 

“Accomplices who are not named in a law or precept incur a latae sententiae penalty attached to an offense if without their assistance the offense would not have been committed, and the penalty is of such a nature that it can affect them,” Reinhardt quoted from the code. 

The bishops must now consider and determine whether Healey qualifies as an essential accomplice, she continued. 

“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. “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.” 

“The Church's law was written to account for exactly this kind of cooperation,” she added. 

Along with concerns about canonical violations, Reinhardt raised the risk of public scandal, noting that the Church takes this issue seriously as well. She noted that Healey’s signing ceremony celebrated the new law expanding abortion access, effectively communicating to faithful in the state that a Catholic in good standing can sign such legislation “and be celebrated for it.” 

Reinhardt noted that the Catechism “defines scandal as ‘an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil.’ It describes grave scandal as one of the most serious categories of moral offense, because it corrupts the moral imagination of an entire community.”

Healey’s signing of the pro-abortion law, in a significantly “festive” manner, “was not a private sin,” Reinhardt wrote. “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.”

The public harm brought by such an act requires a public response, as the Church has always held, Reinhardt continued, ahead of outlining why excommunication — a public response from Church authorities — would perhaps be the appropriate measure. 

“We anticipate the objection that excommunication is a drastic step that may be misunderstood and will provoke political backlash,” Reinhardt wrote. “But excommunication is not, in the first instance, a punishment. It is classified in the Code of Canon Law as a medicinal penalty; that is, a censure whose explicit purpose is not retribution but conversion.” 

Reinhardt emphasized that such a penalty is given out of charity and concern for a person’s spiritual well-being. 

She noted that the Code of Canon Law distinguishes the Church’s medicinal penalties from expiatory penalties and that “a censure cannot even be imposed validly unless the offender has first been warned and given the opportunity to repent.”

“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,” Reinhardt wrote. 

Reinhardt emphasized that Healey’s spiritual life is at risk, saying that the governor “is a Catholic in a state of grave sin. She has publicly and now legislatively cooperated in the destruction of innocent human life.” 

Healey herself has acknowledged the authority of the Church through her Catholic identity, and those in this authority can tell her, through the Church’s law and in the interest of saving her soul, that she now faces concerning consequences, according to Reinhardt. 

She urged the bishops not to stay silent, warning that such inaction communicates a concerning message. 

“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. It is: 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,” Reinhardt wrote. “That lesson is wrong. And it is being taught every day that it goes uncorrected.” 

Concluding, she outlined a respectful and formal request of the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts to take several steps in light of the grave public scandal, Healey’s spiritual health, and the innocent lives at stake. 

The first requested step is that the bishops, in their canonical judgment, publicly clarify whether Healey has already incurred the latae sententiae excommunication provided for under the cited canons through her signing of the pro-abortion law, and if so, that they “formally declare that excommunication,” Reinhardt wrote. 

The second requested step is that the bishops “address, with pastoral seriousness, the public scandal of the signing ceremony of Aug. 10, not merely with the statement of opposition to the law, but with a clear account of what public Catholic identity requires and what publicly abandoning it entails.”

The third request is that this address is not given as a political commentary but in a pastoral capacity addressing a member of the faithful who has publicly and gravely strayed, according to Reinhardt. 

“We make this in profound respect, in grief and in hope,” Reinhardt wrote. “The children who will be killed under the authority of H. 5595 cannot speak. The faithful Catholics of Massachusetts, confused and scandalized by what they witnessed on August 10, deserve shepherds who will.

“We are with you in this. We have always believed that the most credible voice for the dignity of human life in America is not a political party or an advocacy organization: it is the Church, speaking with the full weight of her authority and the full coherence of her teaching. Speak, Your Excellencies. The moment requires it.”