How is that even relevant as an answer to the fact that Rome treats even proabortion/sodomite/Muslim public figures (such Ted Kennedy Caths) as members in life and in death?
. It's a scandalous matter of pastoral malpractice that unrepentant manifest sinners are not disciplined on the basis of Canon 915, which states that unrepentant manifest grave sinners are not to be admitted to
At least you admit it, but RCs promote a church, and this is their church.
Former top canonical judge Cardinal Raymond Burke --- whose ruling still stands--
No, he is not the pope, and the pope effectively demoted U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke by removing him as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the final court of appeal for any ecclesiastical judgement to a largely ceremonial role at a Rome-based Catholic charity. And which was after Burke was replaced by the liberal Cardinal Donald Wuerl on the Congregation for Bishops, the church body that selects new bishops. All of which hardly seems confirmatory of his judgment.
Are the prelates who violate Canon 915 by admitting these pols to Communion, thereby objectively committing grave sin themselves?
Not according to the leadership you are supposes to look to, and follow as a docile sheep, but instead you are more like a Protestant who rejects the validity of pastoral teaching and actions based upon your judgment of what historical documents say. But which also teach your one duty is to follow the pastors as a docile sheep.
As for the pro-aborts and pro-sodomy malefactors, they do not represent the Church: they exemplify the violation of Catholic faith and morals. They are, if you see it clearly, the anti-Church.
It is a sin crying out to Heaven for vengeance, that they are not being disciplined, but nobody, ever, believed or said the Church here on earth is sinless. It's always been rife with sinners. Jesus said it would be. (Dragnet pulls in all kinds of dreck; weeds grow with the wheat.) Only a fool would deny this.
And only a person unfamiliar with Scripture, the Prophets of Israel, and the Lives of the Saints, would be surprised.
Fix your eyes on Christ on the Cross. He had twelve hand-picked men, eleven of whom weren't there with Him when He was dying, because of their betrayal, their denial, and their cowardice.
So don't be surprised. Saddened, yes. Sickened, yes. Morally indignant, yes. But not surprised.
This paragraph shows a problem: non-Catholics (and too often Catholics as well) are ignorant of two facts:
So what you've got here is clergy whose legitimate powers pertain only to matters of faith and morals (not authority over temporal matters), and laity who can speak out, to their pastors and to each other, according to their convictions for the good of the Church.
We do have from Our Lord the image of "shepherd and sheep," but we also have the principle of clerical shepherds whose sphere of competence and authority is limited to established Catholic truth (a "Hermeneutic of Continuity"), and sheep who can speak out and organize.
You said, "You are more like a Protestant who rejects the validity of pastoral teaching and actions based upon your judgment of what historical documents say. But which also teach your one duty is to follow the pastors as a docile sheep."
Well, yes and no. (There! I've made myself clear!)
Yes, in that we, the Christifideles laici, can and do appeal to the "mind of the Church" which includes authoritative teachings which go back to Christ and to the Apostles and all their successors. Yes, that is something that involves "your judgment of what historical documents say."
And we do have a duty to follow our pastors --- which means "no mutiny" --- the Church in this sense is like Noah's Ark, and even if it's knee deep in animal poop, we're to stay on the ship and not launch a flotilla of rubber rafts instead.
But you can't say our "one" duty is to follow our pastors with docility (emphasis on the word "one") --- because obviously the one thing needful is to "seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
Those English Catholics who followed their Catholic pastors with docility in the matter of King Henry's "great cause" (the cause of getting another woman, and lording over the Church), followed their "pastors" right into Protestantism.
(That's with the single exception of Bishop John Fisher, who remained faithful and as beheaded for it.)
It was a serious mistake. They should not have been so docile to cowardly, vacillating, worldly men, even if those cowardly worldly men were Cardinals and Bishops. The term to keep in mind here is not "docile sheep" but "Christifideles laici" --- the laity faithful to Christ.