---- Posted on 08/05/2011 9:28:09 AM PDT by NYer
----
ROME, August 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Top officials at the Vatican are throwing their support behind pro-life Catholic leaders campaigning against dioceses allowing pro-abortion politicians receive Holy Communion, says one such leader.
American Life League President Judie Brown spoke with LifeSiteNews yesterday about her recent trip to Rome, where she spoke with Vatican officials about Communion for pro-abortion politicians and the changing pro-life landscape in America.
Cardinal Raymond Burke told Brown to be “persistent” in her campaign to have Canon 915 enforced, she said.
Canon 915 states: “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to holy communion.”
Brown also noted that Burke encouraged her to make use of the numerous articles he himself has written on the subject.
“He encouraged us to be persistent, to use his articles and not to back down from our position which is the same as his,” she said. “It’s not arbitrary it’s a matter of the law of the church which needs to be enforced.”
Cardinal Burke, she noted, spoke of applying the sanction called for in canon 915 as “therapeutic” in terms of helping people come back in line with the church.
The fact that many bishops are “not comfortable” about it, said Brown, doesn’t matter.
Brown also addressed at the meeting how intentional distortions of official Church statements have confused Catholics on the abortion issue.
“In America, conception is defined as implantation, so when the Church makes a statement - Dignitas Personae is the most recent example - our enemies turn around and say even the Church doesn’t believe there’s life before implantation,” Brown explained to Zenit news.
“Church officials must be clear that when the word conception is used, it means the ‘biological beginning of a person.’”
While in Rome, Brown covered a wide range of topics including America’s growing pro-life youth movement, ad hominem attacks on pro-life Catholics, and the ramifications of a “culture-of-death president.”
“Cardinal Burke is the primary example of being targeted by the media,” she told LifeSiteNews.com. “The reason for that is that he won’t back down. He tells Catholics all the time, including me, to continue to persist in the faith, and he does it.”
“We have every reason to be optimistic. But, all Catholics must stand up and be Catholic even when it’s uncomfortable,” she concluded.
“...there is a difference between an example and a specimen.
Yep. Specimens are instructive, too.
Kind of like Nancy Pelosi.
It has been. It just hasn’t been enforce publicly.
Actually the pro-abort politicians self-excommunicate themselves by supporting abortion.
This comes from the pro-life movement here in America.
In the beginning, Catholic Democrats were opposed to abortion.
But, we have seen them sell their souls to gain power.
It is those of us in the pews, the laity, who are calling for our bishops to stand as strong for life as we are and call to account those who support abortion, even if they believe they do so indirectly or unintentionally.
I am all for denying politicians, any Catholic, communion if it is publicly known that they support abortion.
I hope it happens. Sadly, there are many in my own church who would be denied.
Paul warns us that we bring judgement upon ourselves if we eat and drink unworthily.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Okay.
You have posted this quote in numerous threads as though you believe it absurd or an indictment of Archbishop Chaput and the Church. It only illustrates how completely out of touch you are with the general concept of personal responsibility and the Church's doctrines of service and personal accountability.
Really, Alex, give it a rest. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In your 10+ years of repetitious Church bashing on Free Republic you haven't moved one Catholic one inch away from the Church or yourself one inch closer to God. Even some of your more vitriolic anti-Catholic cohorts have seen the folly of this and ceased or greatly reduced their attacks.
Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, the Kennedys, yadda yadda
Tell me what do you see, Natural Law?
In your 10+ years of repetitious Church bashing on Free Republic you haven't moved one Catholic one inch away from the Church or yourself one inch closer to God.
Engaging in a little weekend pareidolia?
It would take a proper scatologist to decipher your posts.
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