In 2004, debate flared up among the U.S. bishops over the question of refusing Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians, after Sen. John Kerry — a Catholic and longtime advocate of abortion — announced his bid for presidency. The question was if politicians like Kerry should be denied Holy Communion, as mandated by canon 915 of the Catholic Code of Canon Law.

A number of bishops, including Cdl. Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., said no, while Cdl. Raymond Burke argued forcefully for the application of canon 915. Burke laid it out plainly:

[F]or the Catholic politician to receive Communion when he or she has publicly violated the moral law in a grave matter like procured abortion risks leading others into thinking that they can accept procured abortion with a right conscience. … [T]he Church Herself must refuse the sacrament, in order to safeguard the worthy reception of the sacrament and to prevent a serious scandal among the faithful.

He went on to lament the “general failure in the Church to teach effectively the truth about the Holy Eucharist and what is required to approach the sacrament worthily.”

The matter was put to a vote at the annual U.S. Bishops’ meeting in June 2004, just a few months before the election. The result? The majority — contrary to the clear language of canon 915 — voted to leave the question open and up to the discretion of each bishop in his diocese.

A minority, including Cdl. Burke and a handful of others, had voted for a universal and mandatory application of canon 915: Communion must be denied to any public figures who support grave sin.

Burke’s position was supported by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose head at the time, Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), had written a memo making clear canon 915’s language referred to mandatory, not optional, denial of Holy Communion to public impenitents. That memo was originally sent to then-USCCB president Abp. Wilton Gregory and Washington, D.C. cardinal Theodore McCarrick, head of the USCCB Task Force committee, charged with transmitting the memo’s message to his brother bishops to serve as a guide before their June vote.

McCarrick not only hid the memo, however — he lied about it.

After the vote took place in June, the Ratzinger letter was leaked to the press and published in the Italian weekly L’Espresso. It was only then that McCarrick was caught in his deceit, and fellow bishops discovered that he had suppressed the memo and mischaracterized its contents: In his interim report to the bishops, he had summarized Ratzinger’s words to mean the opposite of what he’d said.

American media criticized the cardinal for his duplicity, and Vaticanista Sandro Magister said McCarrick’s report represented “a clear divergence” from the Ratzinger memo.

Cardinal Burke also expressed dismay.

[The memo] certainly was not made known to me and I do not believe it was given to the other bishops. Cardinal McCarrick referred to the memorandum. We were told that, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, the application of the Canon 915 was up to the prudent judgment of each bishop. The text of the memorandum would have been very helpful at the meeting in Denver. Knowing now about the memo, I am disappointed it was not given to us at the meeting of the Bishops’ Conference.

If the Ratzinger memo had been transmitted to the U.S. bishops before their vote on canon 915, it may very well have changed the course of events. But in the face of Cdl. McCarrick’s manipulation, the Church will never know.