It’s an open question in magisterial circles whether politicians who vote for legal abortion, support public funding for abortion, and/or otherwise help make abortion available, should be considered “accomplices” and hence excommunicated. Johnstone said that most moral theologians believe such votes may be morally wrong, but they do not constitute sufficiently direct involvement in an individual abortion to trigger excommunication.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a frequent Vatican spokesman on bioethics, nevertheless told NCR in a mid-October interview that it is his “personal opinion” that politicians who support permissive abortion laws are subject to the canonical penalties for accomplices.
One exception is identified in Pope John Paul’s 1995 encyclical on bioethics, Evangelium Vitae. When outlawing abortion is politically impossible, the pope held, a politician could vote for a law that permits some abortions, if it’s the most restrictive result feasible and the alternative would be a more liberal standard.
National Catholic Reporter, January 17, 2003
These are essentially excommunication "in private."
Whatever happened to the public announcement, the barring from church property, the defrocking penalties for the local heretical parish priest giving them communion.
"It’s an open question in magisterial circles whether politicians who vote for legal abortion, support public funding for abortion, and/or otherwise help make abortion available, should be considered “accomplices” and hence excommunicated. Johnstone said that most moral theologians believe such votes may be morally wrong, but they do not constitute sufficiently direct involvement in an individual abortion to trigger excommunication.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a frequent Vatican spokesman on bioethics, nevertheless told NCR in a mid-October interview that it is his “personal opinion” that politicians who support permissive abortion laws are subject to the canonical penalties for accomplices."
Perhaps it's a open question in magesterial circles, but it's not an open question in public life. Pelosi, Kennedy and Kerry openly support abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, on-demand divorce, licit non-marital sex, public funding for birth control and fetal stem cell research and, to an extent, euthanasia. They publicly profess Catholicism and publicly take communion. The priests delivering communion to them know who they are, and do not withhold it. They are NOT excommunicated.
Perhaps they SHOULD be excommunicated, in the opinions of some, but in the actual, public practice of the Catholic Church, they are NOT. It is acceptable, therefore, for a Catholic to go on the public record in open support for abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, on-demand divorce, licit non-marital sex, public funding for birth control and fetal stem cell research and euthanasia. It is acceptable, because Catholics do it, the Church knows it, SOME Churchmen grouse, but nobody with any authority in the Church takes any of the steps to exercise any canonical penalties whatever. Ever. It is quite consistent, in fact, that Catholics - at least Catholics in public life - are NEVER disciplined for their stances on these subjects. Never. Rome NEVER acts. Rome will act against PRIESTS who teach this sort of thing, but never (ever) against public figures in the developed world who do. It has become, in fact, a Catholic tradition, of sorts, to have very fierce theoretical laws, but have quasi-universal non-enforcement of them on important people. I suppose a known divorcee in the local parish might be denied communion, but John Kerry, et al, are never denied communion for being divorced. There are multiple tiers to the applicability of canon law, and they depend on the location of the offense and the relative importance of the offender.
The problem with all of this is very simple and very obvious: the Catholic Church talks a good game, but does not have the courage of its convictions. In the end, keeping the the well-connected political authorities in America within the Catholic fold is more important to the hierarchs of the Catholic Church than enforcement of various rules. Some nobody Priest like this Feeny fellow can be disciplined and excommunicated, but Pelosi or Kennedy, Kerry or de la Madrid: these are men of POWER, and the Catholic Church is not going to get on their wrong side.
Some folks like that Bishop Elio Sgreccia you mentioned will give their PERSONAL opinion that these powerful Catholic's open work in opposition to the formal teachings of the Church ought to be subject to penalties, but it's the OFFICIAL position of the Church, from Rome on down, that powerful Catholic political figures in the First World are NEVER punished.
So, the Catholic Church is really of two minds on the subject. Some hold fast to the rules. Others think the rules are wrong and say so. Both positions are perfectly acceptable within the Church, as proven by the fact that the Church's formal rules are openly flouted on a daily basis by all important US and European left-leaning Catholic political figures, and not one is EVER punished.
It is acceptable to be an openly pro-choice Catholic. Pelosi, Kerry, the Kennedies and Chirac all prove it.