Posted on 05/20/2004 6:19:23 AM PDT by NYer
Edited on 05/20/2004 8:46:00 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Forty-eight Roman Catholic members of Congress have warned in a letter to Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington that U.S. bishops will revive anti-Catholic bigotry and severely harm the church if they deny Communion to politicians who support abortion rights.The letter's signers, all Democrats, include at least three House members with strong antiabortion voting records.
"For many years Catholics were denied public office by voters who feared that they would take direction from the Pope," they wrote. ". . . While that type of paranoid anti-Catholicism seems to be a thing of the past, attempts by Church leaders today to influence votes by the threat of withholding a sacrament will revive latent anti-Catholic prejudice, which so many of us have worked so hard to overcome."
The three-page letter, dated May 10, was sent to McCarrick because he heads a task force of U.S. bishops that is considering whether, and how, the church should take action against Catholic politicians whose public positions are at odds with Catholic doctrine.
McCarrick's spokesman, Susan Gibbs, said he would not comment on the letter. She said the seven-member task force is "listening to many different voices" and will grant the 48 House members' request for a meeting. "They will be heard. It just hasn't been arranged yet," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I'm asking hard questions here because they're the very questions Catholics will be bringing up to their own bishops, priests, and yes, deacons.As I told Romulus privately, I'm not convinced that politicans who vote to support laws that provide access to abortion should be barred from communion. Where the argument falls apart for me is that, strictly speaking, it does not necessarily follow that because a politican supports laws that suffer women to have abortions under certain circumstances that one desires or encourages women to have abortions under those circumstances, or that one believes abortion is either virtuous or morally neutral.
Given that Church teaching recognizes the unborn as fully human, there is no real difference between that and voting to keep abortion legal.
There are way too many cafeteria Catholics. However, to be fair, both liberal and conservative Catholic politicians seem to pick and choose which church teaching to ignore.
The bishops are speaking out because of elections. I'm merely responding to their statements.
Hard as it is to grasp, even politicians have souls. Even politicians that seem to delight in having cameras trained on them in the election season as they take Communion. This is the best 'teachable moment' the Church has had in quite a while.
You know, for all the well deserved criticism over the abuse scandal in the Church, the Bishops can't win. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
A_R
And where are these legions of properly chatecized catholics now? When your faith is based on the absolute truth of the Bible and on nothing else, then you have no room for the "humanism" that seems to be creeping in here. No room for anyone in authority to make it up as he goes, to sell anullments, etc.
Because there's been no groundwork, no background, no explanation why, for 31 years, the bishops turned their heads at the votes of these very same politicians.
Read Rod Dreher's column about the subject, from earlier in the week.
Bishops think Catholics are going to pay attention to them now.
You bet it's coming. It's easy for people to guffaw at the notion of a modern day persecution of Catholics. As we witnessed on 9/11, things can change very quickly. Once churches start getting picketed on Sundays by these groups, it'll get ugly. Short of that, I fully expect Catholic hospitals to get thrown under the bus at some point, as well as the repeal of the Christmas federal holiday and Good Friday observance in the markets...
If the Church is truly the body of Christ, then it goes that the Church will be crucified and rise again... We've been in the scourging stages for about two thousand years now...
A similar argument could be made about the Marriage Amendment.
Many politicians, Catholics included, just don't think amendments to the Constitution are a good idea. That doesn't mean that they promote homosexual marriage.
Abortion is one of the few matters the Church considers "intrinsically evil". Legislators who support a law that upholds evil are in grave error.
It just works out that way.
Do I promote drunkenness because I don't snatch the beer out of my neighbor's hand while he's getting drunk in his back yard?
The Catholic Church is NOT opposed to the death penalty. The pope is strongly against it, but the Church believes that society has a right to protect itself from those who would destroy it, by use of capital punishment under limited circumstances.
The church issued no documents that I am aware of condemning the war in Iraq. They advised ALL parties to seek a peaceful solution. This was not possible since the Iraqis obfuscated to the end.
Congressional Democrats outraged at God!
Demand 10 Commandment Reform!
Please see #214.
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