Fr Ray Blake raises an interesting question on his blog. He says that he would like to break communion with Cardinal Drew and Archbishop Cupich, but that he cannot since they are in communion with the Pope and so is he. The implication is that he would therefore be going into schism if he refused to give Holy Communion to either of these two prelates, were they to come and spend some time in Brighton.
But is this so? Schism is defined in canon law as “the withdrawal of submission from the supreme pontiff or from communion with members of the Church subject to him” (canon 751; incidentally, I like the fact that this canon uses the term ‘members’ – it is there in the Latin too – as this term has to a large degree vanished from modern ecclesiastical vocabulary, implying as it does that baptised non-Catholics are severed members.) So the question is, is Archbishop Cupich or Cardinal Drew a member of the Church subject to the Roman pontiff? Pius XII made it clear in Mystici Corporis that to be a member of the Church, one must among other things, profess the true faith. Therefore if the archbishop and the cardinal are no longer professing the true faith – and Archbishop Cupich’s latest remarks are totally unCatholic – then they are no longer members of the Church. In that case Fr Blake could, and indeed should refuse to give either man communion. It may be that the Roman pontiff himself continued to give them communion; but that would not cause them to be members of the Church.
Laodicea 
October 17, 2015 at 5:29 pm
The chief function of the Pope is to be in Communion with the Churches i.e. their Bishops, it is the Pope’s role to judge whether these Churches are Catholic, we might have an opinion but the Pope alone can make the judgement.
Perhaps the failure of recent Popes to make this judgement is part of our problem.
October 17, 2015 at 7:08 pm
But surely a priest should refuse communion to bishops who are obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin. Heresy is often manifest grave sin. What would threaten the visibility of the church would be to refuse communion from him or a priest in communion with him.
October 19, 2015 at 11:03 am
I’ve never known of a priest giving communion to a bishop. I thought bishops give themselves communion.
October 19, 2015 at 10:23 pm
Well it depends doesn’t. What if he serves someone else’s Mass? I’m sure liberal bishops do that all the time. They are very humble you know.
October 17, 2015 at 7:30 pm
The Pope alone (or an ecumenical council) can make a judgment in a juridical way that a bishop has fallen into heresy, and proceed to impose suitable penalties, but a priest or lay person can judge e.g. that a bishop who insists that there are 4 persons in God is a heretic. I don’t think one should receive Holy Communion from such a bishop.
October 17, 2015 at 8:34 pm
But the CIC says a bishop loses office as soon as he falls into formal heresy even if the sentence needs to be declared in the way you describe to take effect juridically. Presumably that means there are a lot of bishops from whom we should not receive communion.
October 17, 2015 at 9:16 pm
Maybe, though one must make some allowance for the general confusion of the times. Someone who says something materially heretical that a lot of other people are also saying without being corrected is in a different position from someone at the forefront of starting a new heresy.
October 19, 2015 at 3:59 am
Formal heresy requires prior admonition; this has generally been considered a matter of divine positive law (Titus 3), and thus not optional. I suppose the major difficulty is what counts as admonition enough if the most appropriate authorities are not going around giving formal admonitions about heresy.
October 19, 2015 at 8:31 am
Surely the solemn anathema of an Ecumenical Council is enough to admonish any Catholic bishop.
October 19, 2015 at 1:48 pm
It notes that it is a heresy; it hasn’t usually, as far as I know, been considered sufficient on its own to admonish a person that they themselves are falling into it, unless the ecumenical council was admonishing the bishop or his party explicitly. You can’t be warned that you’re falling into heresy by a general warning not somehow applied to you.