Posted on 07/27/2016 6:45:38 AM PDT by ebb tide
EDITORIAL
Last week, Bishop Francis DiLorenzo, the Virginia bishop for Hillary Clinton’s pro-abortion Catholic running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, put out a press release announcing his decision not to enforce Canon 915, saying that for “Catholics in public office,” “worthiness to receive the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist” is a matter for each person “to decide through an upright and informed conscience.” In other words, Bishop DiLorenzo has gone out of his way to make clear that, the ongoing scandal of Kaine’s weekly public reception of Holy Communion while supporting pre-born child killing on the campaign trail will continue indefinitely in his diocese.
Canon 915 is the Church law which states that those “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” In his letter to U.S. bishops on the subject, the future Pope Benedict XVI unambiguously confirmed that Holy Communion should be denied “in the case of a Catholic politician… consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws.” Far from politicizing the Eucharist, denying communion to Catholic politicians like Tim Kaine, protects the Holy Eucharist from being used to rubber stamp publicly an objectively and publicly scandalous politician like Kaine, who flaunts his supposedly devout Catholicism at every turn.
Bishops like DiLorenzo who refuse to defend the Eucharist and claim conscience must reign supreme, in fact, are bolstering the very foundation of the pro-abortion argument. When bishops and pastors leave sacrilege of the Eucharist by a publicly pro-abortion Catholic politician to his “individual conscience,” they should not be surprised when these lawmakers apply the same principle to abortion policy, and also leave the abortion decision to “individual consciences.” To say that a notorious and outspoken pro-abortion politician like Tim Kaine can receive communion sacrilegiously if his conscience tells him so is hardly different from the argument that the abortion decision should be left between a woman and her doctor.
Urge VP candidate Tim Kaine to repent and affirm Catholic moral teaching. Sign the open letter!
Defenders of Bishop DiLorenzo might point out that his statement affirms the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life---but as Cardinal Burke, once the Vatican’s highest authority in canon law, rightly observed: “No matter how often a Bishop or priest repeats the teaching of the Church regarding procured abortion, if he stands by and does nothing to discipline a Catholic who publicly supports legislation permitting the gravest of injustices and, at the same time, presents himself to receive Holy Communion, then his teaching rings hollow. To remain silent is to permit serious confusion regarding a fundamental truth of the moral law.”
Peter Kreeft once astutely observed that “Abortion is the Antichrist’s demonic parody of the Eucharist. That is why it uses the same holy words, ‘This is my body,’ with the blasphemously opposite meaning.” One can see in the refusal of our bishops and priests to enforce Canon 915 to defend the body of Christ from pro-abortion sacrilege, a similar demonic twist is at work—for which “Christ's body, my choice” may prove the more accurate slogan.
No, no. See, the media clearly explained that Kaine is personally against abortion, but believes in laws supporting it in the public sphere. Just like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, Democrats can believe two impossible things every morning.
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