Posted on 07/08/2006 6:52:03 AM PDT by NYer
Who sent the letter?
If one murderer is caught, do we exonerate him because other murderers aren't?
No vow, no Sacrament.
This has no necessary impact on a civil marriage, which may still exist.
I was thinking they should include them all, not leave them out.
God's Word is, always was and ever shall be eternal. Christ wasn't simply giving the power to forgive or not, bound or loose to the apostles for a small period of time only to have it evaporate after their deaths. He was founding and empowering HIS Church.
The apostles immediately spread out and among other things, commenced to ordaining episcopates, which were given the same power/responsibility that Christ had given them.
This unbroken chain of ordination (the power to bind and loose) which continues today can be traced directly to The Messiah.
Matthew 16: 18-19
And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.
Question: "Are they going to excommunicate IVF doctors, nurses and embryologists who routinely put millions of embryos down the sink every year throughout the world?" Answer: YES!
Why don't they excommunicate the priests that molest kids?
The Catholic Church always has taught that only God can judge a person on a subjective level. However, the Church has a moral obligation to expel publicly those who are objectively in a state of serious sin. There is no contradiction here.
Got it.
According to a draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, in compliance with the 2002 "No Child Left Behind" act signed into law by President Bush, between 6 percent and 10 percent of public school children across the country have been sexually abused or harassed by school employees and teachers.
Charol Shakeshaft, the Hofstra University scholar who prepared the report, said the number of abuse cases—which range from unwanted sexual comments to rape—could be much higher.
"So we think the Catholic Church has a problem?" she told industry newspaper Education Week in a March 10 interview.
To support her contention, Shakeshaft compared the priest abuse data with data collected in a national survey for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000. Extrapolating data from the latter, she estimated roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a school employee from a single decade—1991-2000. That compares with about five decades of cases of abusive priests.
Such figures led her to contend "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
The Catholic Church has implemented a program to deal with the small number of priests responsible and prevent future incidents. What has the National Educators Association done? And why aren't those teachers incarcerated?
Have any been excommunicated?
From your SOURCE:
Worse for the church, Americans discovered some of the most abusive priests were protected by upper echelons of the clergy. Repeated abusive offenses by men like Revs. James Porter and John Geoghan were covered up by the church or, when they occasionally were made public, dismissed as rarities or infrequent behavior.
These priests were moved around from diocese to diocese, given positions that limited their contact with children, or moved to administrative duties – but they usually found their way back into a parish, holding Mass and coming in contact with more potential victims.
In the end, the Vatican's credibility, the church itself, and the entire Catholic faith, was damaged to the point where it will take decades to repair; the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a report on the nature and scope of the abuse problems, found almost 11,000 cases of abuse by about 4,000 priests and deacons since 1950.
Many of these priests have been defrocked and may no longer serve as ordained ministers. They commited a sin for which penance is availble. Only the unrepentant are excommunicated.
I see you didn't even read the first paragraph of your link ...
Excommunication (Lat. ex, out of, and communio or communicatio, communion -- exclusion from the communion), the principal and severest censure, is a medicinal, spiritual penalty that deprives the guilty Christian of all participation in the common blessings of ecclesiastical society. Being a penalty, it supposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Church can inflict, it naturally supposes a very grave offence. It is also a medicinal rather than a vindictive penalty, being intended, not so much to punish the culprit, as to correct him and bring him back to the path of righteousness. It necessarily, therefore, contemplates the future, either to prevent the recurrence of certain culpable acts that have grievous external consequences, or, more especially, to induce the delinquent to satisfy the obligations incurred by his offence.
Jesus also said: "As you judge, so shall you be judged.".
from your link:
"It necessarily, therefore, contemplates the future, either to prevent the recurrence of certain culpable acts that have grievous external consequences, or, more especially, to induce the delinquent to satisfy the obligations incurred by his offence."
I say to thee, if a few had been x'ed, there wouldn't have been this crisis in the Church. Besides many went on to future molestations.
Many here think that sexual predators cannot be reformed. Where doth you stand?
-A8
-A8
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