For those of you who haven’t already seen this:
“Until they have reformed their lives”
No Communion for pro-abortion Catholics, says Archbishop Burke
California Catholic Daily
Rome, Aug 19, 2008 / (CNA) — Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority of the Holy See, said this week that Catholics who publicly support abortion — especially politicians — should not receive Communion, and that ministers of Communion should be responsibly charitable in denying it to them if they ask for it “until they have reformed their lives.”
[[Burke082108.jpg]]In an interview with the magazine Radici Christiane, Archbishop Burke pointed out that there is often a lack of reverence at Mass when receiving Communion. “Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ unworthily is a sacrilege,” he warned. “If it is done deliberately in mortal sin it is a sacrilege.”
To illustrate his point, he referred to “public officials who, with knowledge and consent, uphold actions that are against the Divine and Eternal moral law. For example, if they support abortion, which entails the taking of innocent and defenseless human lives. A person who commits sin in this way should be publicly admonished in such a way as to not receive Communion until he or she has reformed his life,” the archbishop said.
“If a person who has been admonished persists in public mortal sin and attempts to receive Communion, the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny it to him. Why? Above all, for the salvation of that person, preventing him from committing a sacrilege,” he added.
“We must avoid giving people the impression that one can be in a state of mortal sin and receive the Eucharist,” the archbishop continued. “Secondly, there could be another form of scandal, consisting of leading people to think that the public act that this person is doing, which until now everyone believed was a serious sin, is really not that serious — if the Church allows him or her to receive Communion.”
“If we have a public figure who is openly and deliberately upholding abortion rights and receiving the Eucharist, what will the average person think? He or she could come to believe that it up to a certain point it is okay to do away with an innocent life in the mother’s womb,” he warned.
Archbishop Burke also noted that when a bishop or a Church leader prevents an abortion supporter from receiving Communion, “it is not with the intention of interfering in public life but rather in the spiritual state of the politician or public official who, if Catholic, should follow the divine law in the public sphere as well.
“Therefore, it is simply ridiculous and wrong to try to silence a pastor, accusing him of interferi ng in politics so that he cannot do good to the soul of a member of his flock,” he stated.
http://calcatholic.com/news/newsArticlePrintable.aspx?id=ae7464ca-97de-4e56-88c8-3004d2adf4ba
This is one area that Catholics and Protestants should be able to agree on.
Our disdain for Abortion. No Christians or people of faith who are ardently against abortion should let these liar politicians - and that is exactly what they are - liars, get away with their lies about abortion.
We Catholics should take it upon ourselves to write our local newspapers and call Speaker Pelosi and Obama on their lies about Life and Abortion. She outright falsified the Truth of God and politicians need to be held to account for their barbaric policies on the unborn babies - and the lies they weave to justify it.
Certainly here is something that despite our doctrinal differences, Catholics and Protestants can unite on.
Thank you for posting Archbishop Burke’s statement. This is very clear and I will quote it in my editorial regarding Pelosi to my local newspapers.
“Rome, Aug 19, 2008 / (CNA) — Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority of the Holy See, said this week that Catholics who publicly support abortion — especially politicians — should not receive Communion, and that ministers of Communion should be responsibly charitable in denying it to them if they ask for it “until they have reformed their lives.”