Posted on 10/08/2004 1:54:12 PM PDT by Diago
JOHN KERRY'S RELIGION September 28, 2004
by Joe Sobran
In his convention acceptance speech, John Kerry made a brief, vague reference to his "faith" and skipped over the subject even more quickly than he did his political career. A few months ago, it appeared that Kerry might have trouble with some Catholic bishops if he tried to take Communion, because of his consistent advocacy of abortion.
But Kerry and his defenders insisted that he was a Catholic in good standing, and the issue faded away. Still, there were unanswered questions about how seriously Kerry took his Catholicism. Had he gotten his first marriage annulled before marrying Teresa Heinz? Why did he attend Protestant services instead of Catholic Mass, even taking communion in the Protestant rites -- things Catholics have always been forbidden to do?
A long profile of Mrs. Kerry in THE NEW YORKER casually answers some of these questions. Judith Thurman writes, "After a brief courtship, a short period of cohabitation, and the signing of a prenuptial agreement, the Kerrys were married in a civil ceremony on Nantucket in 1995."
There is a world of meaning here for Catholics, and for anyone who takes Kerry's professions of faith seriously. He and his wife, both baptized Catholics, are living together in defiance of Catholic teaching. In the eyes of the Church, their marriage is invalid: Catholics may not marry outside the Church. The issue of abortion aside, the Kerrys are both ineligible to receive Communion.
Catholic rules on this are ancient and firm. They are no longer firmly enforced, since the Second Vatican Council has created (or been used to spread) the false impression that the "old rules" have somehow lapsed. In fact, annulments are now scandalously easy to obtain. It's become common for long-married couples with several children to get rulings that their marriage never existed. Annulments, once rare, have become the Catholic answer to no-fault divorce.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that Kerry didn't bother to wait for an annulment (which he claims to have belatedly applied for recently) before marrying the widowed Teresa Heinz. This confirms the suspicion that Kerry is, in fact, a thoroughly secularized man, whose regard for Catholicism is minimal.
And if Kerry takes Communion in Catholic churches, he is, in Catholic eyes, committing the grave sin of sacrilege -- receiving the Body of Christ unworthily, as St. Paul puts it. This would also make him a hypocrite.
Some Catholic moral theologians argue that a prenuptial agreement makes a marriage invalid as well, since it shows that the parties are already contemplating divorce. They are supposed to be committing themselves to an indissoluble union. Nor may they cohabit before marrying.
To Catholics, all this is far more significant than the details of Kerry's war record. He has tried to represent himself as a faithful Catholic, when he simply is not, and he knows it. His long record of promoting abortion is only part of the picture.
Kerry has belatedly scrambled to say he disapproves of abortion, but nothing in his record gives the slightest hint of moral reservations about killing the unborn. This is simply the pro forma "personally opposed" gesture of nominally Catholic liberal politicians, as familiar as it is empty. Kerry in fact has favored even grisly late-term abortions, which the late Senator Patrick Moynihan, otherwise another pro-abortion Catholic, bluntly called "infanticide." The crushing of an infant's skull in the birth canal, with the extraction of its brain, isn't something to which you should merely be "personally opposed"; it's something that should make you sick.
But what else should we expect of a liberal Massachusetts Democrat who has always idolized the Kennedys? In 1960, when John Kennedy became the first Catholic to be elected president of the United States, some people worried that he would act as a tool of the Vatican. Nobody need have the least worry that President John Kerry would let his Catholicism slow him down. Neither did President Kennedy, but we would learn that only much later.
Kerry's religious ambiguity is one large reason he seems so hard to pin down. What does he really believe, and what difference does it make? He hasn't been pressed on his religious views as he has been on his Vietnam days, but he has featured his religion too as a key part of his makeup. It would be no intrusion on his privacy to ask him, politely, how his voting record would be different if he were non-Catholic -- or, for that matter, anti-Catholic.
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Read this column on-line at "http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040928.shtml".
Since Kerry has not recanted or repented and continues to persist in promoting obvious grave evil, he should be denied Communion.
The only excuse or plausible explanation for allowing his sacrilege nad public disobedience to continue is that it might energize liberals and make Kerry a martyr for the Left if his bishops took direct action against him. That provides for an interesting debate in morality, theology, and canon law, but Kerry should be "Exommunicated" along with all other Catholics who support abortion as part of a public campaign to promote the liberal views on the culture of death.
No genuine Catholic could ever (in good conscience) vote for John Kerry or for the policies he promotes.
One can only conclude that Kerry places a higher value on some odd liberal notion of public opinion (among other elite liberals) than on his Catholic faith. He chooses genocide over Christ. He will face the consequences of such a tragic error.
We should all oppose Kerry very vocally. And we should encourage other Catholics to oppose him as well.
A must, MUST read. Thanks!
And I AGREE WITH YOU!
KERRY IS NO...Catholic - Christian...NO WAY.
KERRY The LIAR and the Misus...TaRazor Tongue worship the "New Age" UN PAGAN diety...Gaia.
They both Do the Ancient Roman hand signal for Loyalty to Caesar and they both do some kind of Tibetian Monk homage thing by putting their hands together in front of them and bowing.
DISGUSTING...PAGANISM run amouck.
ON THE GREAT DAY OF THE LORD...THEY BOTH WILL GO DIRECTLY TO: HELL Where They Belong!
It is a wrong assumption. Bigamy is entering a second civil marriage without dissolving the first through divorce -- nothing to do with the Church.
Since the church does not recognize divorce, however, a divorced Catholic must get an annulment from the Church to be free to marry again in the Church. There is no hard public evidence that Kerry ever got an annulment of his first marriage, and there seems to be no public evidence that he and Teresa were ever married in the Church.
Therefore, it would seem that -- although their marriage is apparently legal -- it is not a marriage in the eyes of the Church: in the quaint, old-fashioned phrase, to the Church, they are "living in sin." While sin, of course, can be forgiven, forgiveness requires a firm intention not to sin again -- obviously not possible to someone who apparently has every intention of continuing on his merry way.
I see. Thank you for the teaching
JOHN KERRY'S RELIGION?
See The Face of "Choice" WARNING VERY GRAPHIC
http://www.cpforlife.org/id122.htm
John kerry is NOT a catholic.
Hearing him tonight at the debate claim that he is Catholic just made my blood boil! I pity him, yet at the same time, want to strangle him. I have issues. I know, how very Catholic of me!
I agree, Ronnie. John Kerry's belief system is either AWOL or insufficient.
A coyote would be worth at least one fisher,IMO. ;-)
Murder is never pretty!
Some folks will have it rough on judgement day.
"This confirms the suspicion that Kerry is, in fact, a thoroughly secularized man, whose regard for Catholicism is minimal." And if his regard for Catholicism is so secularized, just imagine how little regard he has for the teachings of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! ... To Kerry, Jesus is an inconvenience AT whom he turns for lip service when it suits his political rhetoric.
The God in SKERRY'S religion is best seen observing him before his mirror as he
worships his trinity:
"ME, MYSELF, AND I!"
In many respects,
I think this is the most damning thing I've read about
the TRAITOROUS, VAIN, ARROGANT, HAUGHTY, COMMUNIST-PUPPET-MASTER STOOGE in all these months.
IF
a man plays loose and slippery with his so called beliefs about God,
who on earth can trust him about anything in any context?
Any idiot that trusts such a person deserves to be taken to the cleaners and flushed down the slippery slide to hell with such a brainless shell of a person!
The Democrat Party is reaching strongly for the handle, Quix. we may be living in the beginning of the end to this Republic, what with such a deluded self-serving block of voter that the DNC counts upon to put them back into power. Lies are all the rage this season, haven't you noticed? Dumbed-down voters love to be lied to, love to believe the lies, and enjoy their seathing hatred of our current administration. Reality is far from their consciousness as proven in their denial of Gore's failed effort to steal the 200 election, placing all fault on the man and his people who behaved ethically for the outcome.
At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior. "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:
Population of counties won by:
Gore=127 million
Bush=143 million
Square miles of land won by:
Gore=580,000
Bush=22,427,000
States won by:
Gore=19
Bush=29
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore=13.2
Bush=2.1
Professor Olson adds:
"In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."
Olson believes The U.S. is now somewhere between the "complacency and "apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
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