Posted on 11/13/2008 4:43:36 PM PST by upchuck
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.
"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.
"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."
During the 2008 campaign, many bishops spoke out on abortion more boldly than four years earlier, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back. A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.
But bishops differ on whether Catholic lawmakers—and voters—should refrain from receiving Communion if they diverge from church teaching on abortion. Each bishop sets policy in his own diocese. In their annual fall meeting, the nation's Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Thank you for conceding the argument.
Well you did claim to be hearing God talking to you. Your words, not mine.
Nope.
Your words, not mine.
False.
You don't even know what scripture is apart from the teaching of the Catholic Church. Who do you think collected the New Testament books and declared that they were inspired?
"I would not believe in the Gospel were it not for the authority of the Catholic Church" -- Augustine of Hippo.
Well, then I'll respond with precision. That's an opinion, not anything you've derived from facts or logic.
Do you really want to categorize Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and John Paul II as "uninformed" or "superstitious"? Would I be correct in supposing that you're completely unfamiliar with their writings?
Tell me, why do you think men like Louis Pasteur or Robert George or J. Budziszewski or Peter Kreeft embraced this "uniformed" and "superstitious" belief system? Don't know who Robert George, J. Budziszewski, or Peter Kreeft are? Maybe you need to be better informed ...
It would be so much easier having an intelligent discussion with them if they weren’t intellectually challenged when it comes to understanding the Truth of Jesus Christ and His Church.
When all they have is a superficial understanding of Holy Scripture, and often a deep bigotry toward the Catholic Church, it creates a situation where it is easier conversing with a dog than the anti-Catholic bigot....and more pleasing too.
Certainly more rewarding.
And maybe Salt Lake City will excommunicate Reid.
It’s interesting,... no sad, that you always see the same several names spraying their venom all over the Body of Christ.
A good choice on your part. Precision will better serve your purposes.
Now on to the substance of the argument. I believe you were making the point that only an ignorant person would tremble at the malediction of a voodoo shaman or a Catholic priest. But I think this point implies an assumption that is not true: that a Catholic priest has the power to send somebody to hell, or that Catholics believe such.
This is not what the Church teaches or asks us to believe. Nobody can send another person to hell. No priest, no pope, no council, now or in the past or future. That's why the Catholic church does not "demonize." We recognize that God alone judges souls and determines their eternal state of happiness or woe.
Excommunication is not damnation. A priests can wisely and truly say: "You are cooperating with an abominable crime. If you do this knowingly and intentionally, you are in mortal sin. If you are in mortal sin, reception of Holy Communion will plunge you into further sacrilege. For your own good, you must desist and repent."
I am sure you are aware that the warning against receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord unworthily is Scriptural (1 Corinthians 11:27) and any Christian has the obligation to correct a brother who is in error.
If I were cooperating with murder, I hope to God sombody would correct me. And in a way that arrested me and got my attention.
Amen, Petronski. Very well said.
Stronger still, who WROTE the New Testament books?
Fathers of the Cahtolic Church.
All were reasonably intelligent men but limited by the times in which they lived and the circumstances in which they were raised. While many have said how brilliant JP II was, like a good politician, even in his "best" writings, he bloviated. The best I'll say of him he was sufficently articulate but limited in his scope as, indeed, were Newman and Augustine.
Don't know who Robert George, J. Budziszewski, or Peter Kreeft are?
Never heard of them, and at this juncture I've no need nor desire to know of them further.
Only an opinion by a man whom some think "brilliant." Augustine's mind was also beset by the terrors of an empire collapsing around him, and as a member of the Roman aristocracy, he had a need for any order even if it was false.
Augustine cites as proof for our constant need of God's grace the case of a man who had been faithful and pious for his entire life and then left his wife in old for a much younger woman. Augustine felt that the man had fallen from God's grace. A brain scan would probably have revealed that the man was suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy.
A writer's ideas should be interpreted within the times in which he lived and wrote.
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