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 ...
He may be, to the extent that he works to get other Democrats who are not pro-life elected.
And, BTW, it's really bad form for these bozos to threaten the Church.
At its best, as ever it is true that the Roman Catholic Church says what it means and means what it says.
Let us separate the wheat from the chaff.
I believe you.
She would make a perfect Unitarian. Unitarians welcome atheists, agnostics, Wiccans, druids, animists, you name it, into their "churches".
The bishops seem to be including opposition to the death penalty in their pro-life stance. There is a big difference between the taking of innocent life and just punishment of criminals.
To liberals, politics is their religion. The rest is just pandering and window dressing to be used as required.
I wonder if the babies who are about to be torn limb from limb think "the altar rail with the Sacred Body of the Lord Jesus" would be an appropriate place for a confrontation. I wonder if they would "welcome such a conflict."
I'm not sure it is. The American Catholic Bishops do not have a reservoir of goodwill to draw from, given their sorry record on clerical abuse. Even Deal Hudson is concerned that the one-upmanship exhibited by bishops like Sheridan will cause a severe backlash.
I think he's right.
"Politicians threatening religious leaders"
Yeah, but the religious leaders threatened first - they started it. Keep this up and I'll tell my mommy.
Nick Lampson (TX congressman quoted in the article) is one of the Dems who is on the verge of losing his seat due to Texas redistricting. Over time, he has expressed some of the weirdest and convoluted reasoning to justify his support of abortion. The latest poll released last week shows him losing to pro-life Republican Ted Poe by a margin of 62-38. I can't wait!
Why do they need a reservoir of goodwill? They speak the Truth. Is that not enough?
John Paul II does.
Abortion and capital punishment are certainly not morally equivalent, but it's easy to see how a governor or two could draw the wrath of a socially-progressive bishop.
LIARS
Either you are a true Catholic or a fake one. I suggest, respectfully of course that it's time to draw the line and decide whether your religion's strong beliefs about taking the lives of innocent babies is valid for you or not. There are times when I wonder at the lack of wisdom of RATs in Congress, but most of the time I think they are simply maroons and their letter to the bishops proves it again.
This is a good illustration of why the left JUST DOESN'T GET IT. JP II and a lot of U.S. bishops are speaking on their own. Their personal opinions have nothing to do with the actual TEACHINGS of the Church. The sooner people begin to make this distinction between personal opinion and doctrine, the better.
The Church must teach.
The political effects cannot be allowed to stop that teaching.
For too long, much like the abuse scandal, this situation was allowed to fester. There will be some pain in resolving it.
No, it's not. As Fr. Wilson said in a recent column, for the bishops to all-of-a-sudden start hammering Catholic politicians (and even Catholics themselves) for the votes they cast is hypocrisy of the highest order, when the same bishops have stood by for 30 years and given a wink and a nod to the same politicians, casting the same votes.
To choose an election year to take a stand risks putting the very people in office they're railing against.
Can you not see that?
This is a big deal. The showdown between church and state is coming. Eventually the Catholic Church, or some other evangelical/Protestant church, is going to get sued by a pro-abortion politician or a homosexual couple for refusing to allow them to "practice their religion."
DUH! You know the answer to this one as well as the rest of us.
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