Posted on 05/14/2007 5:19:23 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
A group of House Democrats yesterday publicly repudiated the Pope’s recent suggestion that politicians who support abortion rights should be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
Eighteen House Democrats, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), are responding to Pope Benedict XVI’s statement that indicated he would support Mexican bishops if they were to excommunicate Mexican legislators who voted last month to legalize abortion in Mexico City.
The Pope made his remarks last Wednesday during a news conference aboard a plane before he was to begin a five-day visit to Brazil.
“We are concerned with the Pope’s recent statement warning Catholic elected officials that they risk excommunication and would not receive communion for their pro-choice views,” the lawmakers said in a statement issued yesterday. “Advancing respect for life and for the dignity of every human being is, as our church has taught us, our own life’s mission.”
The Democratic lawmakers said that the suggested penalty “offend[s] the very nature of the American experiment and do[es] a great disservice to the centuries of good work the church has done.”
The Pope’s spokesman later clarified the pontiff’s remarks, saying that, ‘’Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist,’’ and politicians who favor abortion rights should ‘’exclude themselves from communion.’’
Other lawmakers were not as politic as the House Democrats.
“I’ve always thought also that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts and are now being protected by the Vatican should be indicted,” said Catholic Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who spoke to reporters last week.
Over the last several years, a few Catholic bishops have threatened to deny communion and other sacraments to politicians who favor abortion rights because their views are not in-step with Church doctrine. The decision to withhold sacraments is made by individual bishops, said Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The debate over whether pro-choice Catholics should receive communion could intensify in the 2008 race for the White House.
In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the first Catholic Democratic presidential nominee since President John Kennedy ran in 1960, received communion one day after a top Vatican cardinal said politicians who back abortion rights should be denied the Eucharist.
Kerry lost the Catholic vote by 13 points to President Bush, according to DemocracyCorps, a Democratic polling firm. There are four 2008 presidential candidates who are Catholic: Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.), Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. They all support abortion rights.
On the Republican side, Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, and ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani are Catholic. Brownback and Thompson oppose abortion rights while Giuliani favors them.
In February, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) was under pressure to fire two female bloggers who had criticized the Catholic Church before joining the campaign. While Edwards decided not to fire the two women, one subsequently resigned.
Some Catholic organizations have criticized the Pope’s statement.
Jon O’Brien, the executive director of Catholics for a Free Choice, said, “[Pope Benedict] is still putting dogma ahead of the lived reality of the Catholic laity… it will only push Catholic politicians further from the institutional church.”
The House Democrats’ letter mirrors a “statement of principles” that 55 Democrats, encompassing a broad ideological swath of the caucus, signed last year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who is Catholic, signed the letter, as did anti-abortion rights Reps. Bart Stupak (Mich.) and Jim Langevin (R.I.).
In the statement of principles, Democratic lawmakers wrote that they agreed with the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the “undesirability of abortion” and that “each of us is committed to reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and creating an environment with policies that encourage pregnancies to be carried to term.”
Meanwhile, Catholic voters’ attitudes towards abortion are changing, according to an ABC-Washington Post poll released in March. Only 10 percent of those polled believe that abortion should be legal in all cases, a 16 percent drop since 2004. But there has been a corresponding rise in the number who said it should be legal in most cases.
Killing unborn babies terminates their lives and therefore cannot “advance respect for” such lives. I don’t think there’s a handpicked jury in this country who would exonerate a murderer who claimed innocence on the idiotic and inconsistent defense that he “advanced respect for the life” of his dead victim. Life and death are antonyms and hence mutually incompatible. This idiotic self-contradictory statement tells us that the Democrats either lack the intelligence of a carrot, let alone a two-year-old, or that they lack sufficient sanity to distinguish between life and death.
That’s why the Democratic National Committee should bill itself as “the world’s premier mental institute.” C’mon Americans, let’s send these Dems packing their bags for the insane assylum in ‘08.
I think you're wrong.
It could only become a showdown it most of the country was behind the pro-abortion issue. It no longer is.
The Catholic Church is following the people. Frustrating.
They are supposed to be leaders, not followers. Where where they 30 years ago? Hiding under their alters, so no one could find them.
Abortion was condemned way back in the Didache, which was written around AD 80.
There have been arguments back and forth over the years about whether early abortion was morally identical to murder, or was some lesser (but still serious) sin. The position that abortion is a serious sin has been essentially constant teaching since the beginning.
Good God Almighty.
We may think that we've progressed over the past couple of millenia but when one reads the comments of the various Democratic politicos quoted in the article it's obvious that the reaction of secular leaders to public rebuke by religious figures is exactly the same as it was 1,000 years ago when Henry II cried out against Thomas a Beckett, "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?". It's the same as it was 2,000 years ago when Herod and his concubine did not take kindly to the rebuke of John the Baptist who paid for his outspokenness with his head.
The "maximum leaders" do not take kindly to being informed that there is a greater power than they.
That was one of the nicest comments I have read on here. Thank you,your Catholic sister in Christ name,thank you.
But it is more than their prochoice antics it’s their push for the prohomosexual agenda as well.
Their hubris is truly, truly stunning. Hopefully, they’ll get the same come-uppance hubris-filled characters in Greek dramas got...
Huh?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Good, it should be. Let more people see them for what they really are.
The Church has always said that abortion is a “no-no.” The confuse arises from a difference of opinion about the severity of the offense. Some theologians accepted the embryology of Aristotle, which had it that the soul did not enter the body until the “quickening’” This theory was held until the 1840s when the nature of conception was first clearly understood. Until this time, physicians had been accustomed to solve female problem by givng them drugs that “loosened the menses,” But after a Belgien scientist actually observed the union of a rabbit sperm with an ovums and the beginning of the borth process, physicians realized they had actually been producing abortions. Consequently state medical associations began pushing for laws that prevented such treatments. The Texas law struck down by Roe V. Wade was enacted at the instigation of the TMA. The Church’s position was simply a recognition of where the science pointed to, which affirmed the Church’s ancient position that all life was sacred, and that the pagan practices of abortion and infanticide were abominations. Even the Justinian Code, enacted by a Christian emperor, had not banned abortion, but the new science made it clear that avoiding abortion was not just simply a very pious act but the proper basis for law. Incidentally, the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception went hand in hand with this new awareness. If God became man at the moment of the Annunciation, than all humans come into being at the moment of their conception.
My explaination was in the rest of my post.
When it mattered, 20 or 30 years ago, the Catholic Church, along with ALL of the other mainstream churches were absent on the issue of abortion. Oh yes, they said it was wrong, don’t do it, yada, yada, yada.
But on the real issue of the church standing up and saying, as the Catholic Church is saying now, excommunication for those who support and practice it, THEY WERE AWOL.
Until THE PEOPLE led them forward, the Catholic Church, along with ALL of the other mainstream churches hid from the issue.
Now that THE PEOPLE have shown the Church the way, church officials are ONLY NOW standing up, and racing to the front saying “Wait for ME!, I am your leader”.
Anathema sint.
THis agnostic who was raised in the church of Rome agrees. What a bunch of colons.
It still matters Balding_Eagle.I know you know that.The present Pope is known to just say it and your right it’s about time.
We must and shall keep our eyes on God's secularist enemies who seek to bar Him and us from the public square and we shall resist for each other and in His holy Name.
Governments will come and governments will go. The Truth of Jesus Christ is permanent and far more important.
May God bless you and yours.
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