Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, the state's senior Catholic official, has again urged Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to refrain from receiving communion in the Roman Catholic Church until she takes the "necessary steps for amendment of her life."

Although the archbishop's comments are not an official excommunication, he did use the traditional prescription for reconciling excommunicants to the church. Naumann urged the governor, a Roman Catholic, to recant her support for abortion, apologize publicly for her pro-abortion actions and participate in the sacrament of confession.

Naumann's comments, which appeared in a column published Friday in The Leaven, the diocesan newsletter, followed Sebelius' latest veto of a bill that would have prohibited coerced abortions, clarified the legal rights available to women and families and made more information available to women considering late-term abortions. The bill had been passed by large majorities in both houses of the Kansas Legislature.

It's not the first time Sebelius has been urged to follow the teachings of her church. In 1992, when she was a state representative leading the demand for greater access to abortion, Archbishop Ignatius Strecker used The Leaven to condemn Sebelius' actions.

"Rep. Kathleen Sebelius of Topeka led the death-march of the unborn to the abortion clinics in the House of Representatives," he wrote. "She was attempting to make the 'death-marches' to the abortion clinics as legal as the death-marches to the gas chambers of the World War II Holocaust ... How could we Kansans have elected such 'negative to life' persons to such responsible positions in our state government?"

More recently, Sebelius has been given personal counseling in an effort to make her aware of church teaching. Naumann, for example, said he has met with Sebelius "several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences" of her actions. Last August, in consultation with the other Catholic bishops in Kansas, Naumann wrote Sebelius and directly requested her to not present herself for communion.

Sebelius apparently disregarded the letter, and recently received communion at a Catholic church in Topeka. Her spokeswoman told the Associated Press that "receiving communion has not been a problem in the past for her."

Naumann said Sebelius' recent veto of the abortion reform bill starkly contrasted with the message delivered to American Catholics by the visiting Pope Benedict XVI.

"On the day of my return (Monday, April 21) from the exhilarating experience of participating in Pope Benedict's pastoral visit to the United States," the archbishop wrote, "I learned that Governor Kathleen Sebelius had vetoed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act (HS SB 389), which had been passed by significant majorities in both chambers of the Kansas Legislature. Last week, an attempt to override the governor's veto failed in the Senate by two votes.

"Governor Sebelius in her veto message claimed: 'For years, the people of Kansas have asked their elected officials to move beyond legislative debates on issues like abortion.'  From her veto message, I received the impression the governor considered it a waste of the Legislature's time to pass a statute that attempts to protect some women by making certain they have the opportunity to be well-informed: 1) about the development of their unborn child; and 2) about abortion alternatives available to them. Evidently, the governor does not approve of legislators devoting energy to protecting children and women by making it possible to enforce existing Kansas laws regulating late-term abortions."

The veto message, he added, "demonstrated a lack of respect to the members of the Kansas General Assembly who had carefully crafted and resoundingly passed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, as well as to the many Kansans who find it more than an embarrassment, in no small part due to several previous vetoes by Governor Sebelius of earlier legislative efforts to regulate abortion clinics, that Kansas has become infamous for being the late-term abortion center for the Midwest."

The archbishop also criticized the growing influence of George Tiller, the politically influential operator of a large, late-term abortion clinic in Wichita. "What makes the governor's rhetoric and actions even more troubling has been her acceptance of campaign contributions from Wichita's Dr. George Tiller, perhaps the most notorious late-term abortionist in the nation. In addition to Dr. Tiller's direct donations to her campaign, the governor has benefited from the Political Action Committees funded by Dr. Tiller to support pro-abortion candidates in Kansas."

Tiller and another abortion provider, Planned Parenthood Inc., have been the object of scrutiny by a grand jury and by critics who point out that the clinics have made it impossible for state officials to monitor their compliance with state laws. Sebelius and her attorney general, Steven Six, have sided with the clinics. Tiller has donated significant amounts of money to PACs and other organizations that have supported Sebelius.

The archbishop's comments regarding reconciliation are consistent with Roman Catholic dogmatic theology as it applies to remedies for some forms of excommunication, but no public excommunication was made in Naumann's column.

However, Naumann did single out her role in cooperating "in the procurement of abortions performed in Kansas" as a factor making her unprepared to participate in the Eucharist.

He added that he hoped "this pastoral action on my part will help alert other Catholics to the moral gravity of participating in and/or cooperating with the performance of abortions."

• Automatic excommunication? Although Naumann didn't raise the point explicitly, the Roman Catholic church holds that any Catholic who has procured an abortion or conspired to help others obtain one has automatically excommunicated himself or herself from the church. ( Canons 1398, 1329.)
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