**Assisted Dying: Bishop Aillet Denies Communion to Catholic Deputies Who Vote for the Bill**

Context

We had followed the long French trajectory of the law on dying with dignity. The Senate rejected it for the third time on July 7, the National Assembly should impose the final word on July 15. On July 11, four days before the decisive vote, Mgr Marc Aillet, bishop of Bayonne, Lescar and Oloron, publicly addressed Catholic parliamentarians. LifeSiteNews and Le Salon Beige republished the declaration on July 13: voting for this law makes receiving communion impossible.

The Facts

Mgr Aillet calls Catholic deputies to a examination of conscience. He specifies that those who, aware of the inconsistency between their favorable vote and their faith, choose to support the text, will no longer be able to receive communion. Father Michel Viot announces in parallel that he will personally refuse communion to parliamentarians who have publicly approved the law, and will refuse to preside over their religious funerals. No episcopal conference has collectively endorsed this position. It remains that of a bishop, not of the CEF as a whole.

Doctrinal Analysis

The canonical foundation is canon 915 of the 1983 Code: persons who persist with obstinacy in a grave manifest sin are not to be admitted to holy communion. The instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (Congregation for Divine Worship, 2004) recalls that the safeguarding of the Eucharist obliges ministers not to administer the sacrament to those who publicly refuse to adhere to it. Evangelium Vitae § 73 (John Paul II, 1995) qualifies as gravely unjust any law that authorizes the direct homicide of the innocent, and expressly refuses Catholics formal cooperation in such a vote. The Catechism of the Catholic Church § 2277 classifies euthanasia among morally unacceptable acts. Eucharistic coherence is therefore not a pastoral option: it falls under sacramental discipline.

Stakes for the Church and the Faithful

Mgr Aillet applies in France the line that Cardinal Burke had set in 2004 for John Kerry, and that the American bishops' conference has taken up again in 2021 in its document on eucharistic coherence. Two stakes. Making visible the inconsistency of a pro-euthanasia Catholic vote. Reminding that the sacramental ministry engages the responsibility of the pastor upstream of individual conscience alone. For the faithful, the clarification is clear: supporting legal homicide is not a neutral political choice.

Critical Reading and Blind Spots

The initiative remains isolated. The silence of the major metropolitan sees, in particular of the presidency of the CEF, leaves the gesture to be carried by a single diocese. The application of canon 915 requires pastoral discernment, not an automatism. Finally, there is the question of remote material cooperation: what to think of elected officials who vote constrained by party discipline?

To Ponder and Act

Canon 915 is not a weapon, it is a reminder that the eucharistic table is not dissociated from the truth of the body given. Pray for Catholic deputies at the time of the vote, and for their pastors.