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To: WilliamReading
"So this leads me to believe that the Pope and the Vatican is taking a “hands off” position ...

(Please allow me a seven-syllable sigh.......) Not exactly.

The question would be, what kind of enforcement is necessary and possible? The Church is obviously a voluntary organization. It has no secular enforcement arm; and even where penalties are incurred, the penalties are spiritual or ecclesiastical, not such things as fines, imprisonment, being put in the stocks for public derision (though some of that strikes me as being increasingly appropriate...)

In the organizational sense, every bishop is supposed to take care of his own diocese. He can't be voted out, nor can the Pope just "fire" him.

I would love to see some full-fledged, dramatic, public, Bell, Book and Candle excommunications. (Of course, I'm one who considers the penitent Emperor Henry IV falling to his knees before Gregory VII in the snow of Canossa (1077) as one of the high points of European history.)

But I'm afaid it would just strike most of the general public as "too medieval" and garner for the offenders an undeserved glory as "Noble Rebels Against Popish Oppression."

Know what I mean?

Nevertheless, with good-guy Raymond Burke heading the canonical court in Rome, and good-guy Benedict approving, you will see more and stronger action in coming months, I'm sure. It's up to us Christifideles Laici --- Christ's Faithful People ---to keep on prayin' ...and keep on pushin'...

34 posted on 08/27/2008 10:29:12 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("In Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." Romans 12:5)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

In the organizational sense, every bishop is supposed to take care of his own diocese. He can’t be voted out, nor can the Pope just “fire” him.

A bishop can’t be fired? And are not Priests “employees” of the Catholic Church?


35 posted on 08/27/2008 11:31:24 AM PDT by WilliamReading
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