Theocrat at work

Charles,

He said going to a white council meeting would be a matter for confession and that they would not be able to receive communion if he caught them there.

Nothing in there to revoke tax-exempt status. Quite frankly, he did the right thing.

they would not be able to receive communion if he caught them there.

So he's going to go there to check if his parishioners are there?

The trouble with all these crack downs is enforcement. Unless one knows the offenders by sight, and in a large urban parish with many people handing out communion that is impossible, these pronouncements of exclusion for one thing or another are pointless. Maybe they are justifiable and maybe not, but unless they can be enforced and someone will take the risk to enforce them, it would be better to be still.

Best yet to preach and preach and to shame those whom the shoe fits into wearing it.

I'm all for it. As long as we can move beyond genital issues, it seems like a great idea;

- support deporting impoverished illegal immigrants = no communion
- support the death penalty = no communion
- support unjust war = no communion
- drive a gas-guzzling car = no communion
- encourage hatred against other religions, minorities, your neigbors = no communion

Priests are free individuals, and in representing the Church's interests in a free society they should be allowed to loudly preach Church teachings on any number of issues. Many of these, like abortion, will have political implications. They have every right to loudly call out people who are attending church while actively working against the Church's interests. They have every right to decry the hypocrits in their midst (ie. people who are publicly pro-life, but still sneak their pregnant daughters across state lines to get abortions).

What they don't have a right to do, while representing the Church AND claiming tax exempt status from the state, is to campaign for specific politicians or political parties. Period. If they are willing to give up that tax exempt status, then they can do whatever they please. Some may feel that this puts an onerous restriction on priests or other clergy's freedom. I think it protects parishioners. After all, it may well be in the Church's best interest to have filled coffers and in a politician's best interest to pay for an endorsement. That situation would not be in the flock's best interests, though.

Much as I detest racism, it strikes me that Daniel's sarcasm is right -- you can't single parishioners out for every single political sin they might commit.

The title of the head priest at a Catholic parish is PASTOR -- shepherd of the flock. IMHO, it's his job (would that I could say "his or her" job, but that's a whole other argument) to tend to the sheep he believes are lost as well as those who are on the straight and narrow. And punishment, if merited, can be delivered privately in the confessional rather than publicly in the Communion line.

I found the shunning of John Kerry by the American bishops particularly galling, because it could be argued they were guilty of nearly as much of a political sin as Kerry was for being pro-choice. And that's acknowledging what a terrible sin countenancing abortion is considered in Catholicism.

But the bishops helped countenance the continued presidency of George W. Bush (Catholics according to exit polls, incredibly, voted AGAINST the Catholic Kerry, whereas they voted overwhelmingly for Al Smith and the first JFK) -- a man who not only did not obey just war doctrine in Iraq, not only is pro-death penalty, not only favors the rich over the poor in his economic policies, but also a man whose Religious Right supporters (many of them, anyway) would if they had the power destroy the Vatican and all it stands for.

Furthermore, the bishops helped ensure the opposite impression of that Kennedy advocated in his famous Houston ministers' address in 1960 -- their theocratic meddling likely reinforced instead of breaking through, as Kennedy did, the stereotypes of the Vatican held by rank and file evangelicals and fundamentalists.

(PS -- Also spoken as someone whose mother has received said punishment for the last 25 years for the "crime" and "mortal sin" of divorcing my abusive, alcoholic father ... and people bother to wonder why I'm a LAPSED Catholic ...)

{singing}

It's a marvelous night for a moonbat...

No communion for driving a gas guzzler? Sheesh. Is Algore the Pope now?

I'm sure this will do no good whatsoever, but here's the text of Canon 915, the Church law upon which the duty to deny communion to certain people is based:

"Can. 915 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."

This forbidding of certain people to receive communion is no different than the Church's stance that non-Catholics can't receive communion, and flows from the same idea: that only those who are "in communion" so to speak can "receive communion."

The controversy about the application of Canon 915 to those Catholics who use the power of elected office openly to promote and support abortion hinges on whether or not this support can be considered "manifest grave sin." My take is that it can, provided that a) the ordinary has determined that the politician in question understands, but rejects, the Church's teaching on abortion, b) that all attempts to meet privately to discuss the issue have failed to achieve a better understanding or acceptance of the Church's teachings on the part of the politician, and c) that polite requests that the politician avoid presenting him/herself to receive communion while the situation of public support for abortion continues have been ignored.

It should be noted that the Church teaches that any Catholic who is conscious of grave sin should not receive communion without first confessing that sin via the sacrament of penance, so this is not a case where only certain people are being singled out. The difference is that someone whose sin is private may privately compound that grave sin with the additional grave sin of sacrilege, without requiring the person distributing communion to attempt to judge whether that is the case; in fact, even if the person distributing communion knows of his own certain knowledge that the person receiving has privately committed such a sin he may not deny communion of his own accord. For communion to be denied the sin must be public, unrepented, and serious, which is the case when a person calling him or herself Catholic is so blind to what that means as to funnel large amounts of political and financial support into the abortion industry.

"None of these positions warrant excommunication in the Catholic view, so a priest, or even a pope or a bishop, has no right to withhold communion on any of these issues..." M_David

"For communion to be denied the sin must be public, unrepented, and serious, which is the case when a person calling him or herself Catholic is so blind to what that means as to funnel large amounts of political and financial support into the abortion industry."
Erin Manning

Finally! Voices of reason and knowledge speak out. In, short, Rod, if this alleged threat to withhold Communion ever happened (which I doubt), the priest should have been reprimanded. You are 100% wrong in thinking that the priest did the right thing, theologically. It's not even a gray area.

What a priest should do in such circumstances is give the concept of racism a full blast of holy wrath, including a warning to the congregation that it's a sin God will judge harshly, and one requiring confession before receiving Communion.

If the White Citizen's Council was a front of the KKK, then the priest did the right thing. I'd like to point out that the priest didn't threaten to hold communion from anyone who might support the White Citizen's Council by not trying to prevent their Anglican neighbors from attending or not trying to make the White Citizen's Council an illegal organization in this country. The Catholic had to GO to the meetings.

Which, like always, brings us back to the abortion issue. If Catholic politicians are encouraging women to have abortions or, actually, having abortions, then I can understand why a priest might not provide communion to that politician. However, that's not the case. Catholic politicians are saying that they don't think that their religious beliefs should be the law of the land for those outside of the Catholic religion. In the case of abortion, they don't think that there should be civil penalties for crimes that relate to grave sin.

I have to agree. I know of a person who married a Jew outside of the Catholic church in a civil ceremony. She attends a Latin mass every week but can't receive communion. This sounds to me like she must have committed one of those grave and mortal sins.

Didn't the Pope say that the Iraq war didn't meet the criteria for a just war? How is a Catholic supporting that war different from a Catholic supporting the rights of women to make their own decisions when it comes to maintaining or terminating a pregnancy?

encourage hatred against other religions, minorities, your neigbors = no communion

That sounds like it should be a grave or mortal sin. I mean, you aren't simply standing by while others are doing it, but you're encouraging hatred? I'm sorry. If I were a priest, I'd have to have a serious talk with someone who was encouraging hatred, and if that didn't do any good, I'd not give communion if they continued to encourage hatred.

In this example a liberal crusader for the rights of blacks in Arkansas, like a Daniel, who attended the meeting to document and expose its racist agenda would have received no communion as well, no?

Unfortunately, it seems the temptations to recruit our gods to wage our political battles and to recruit the state to wage our religious ones will always be with us.

the temptations to recruit our gods to wage our political battles and to recruit the state to wage our religious ones will always be with us.

This line of argument is tiresome.

I personally think there are good prudential reasons why bishops should NOT deny communion to politicians who support segregation or abortion or other evils.

But the reason some bishops do deny communion in those circumstances isn't some far-fetched belief that it might cause the politician to change his position or otherwise help the Church in some "political battle." Everyone understands that even the lamest politician is more media savvy than than the best of bishops. So unless the issue at hand is something on which the media overwhelmingly agrees with the Church position (segregation), denial of communion will always be portrayed as something like: "Meddling, Power-Hungry Church Tries to Crush Independent Thought of Catholic Statesman Who Is Following His Conscience."

The argument for denying communion to a politician in the face of all that is purely theological. To Catholics, Holy Communion is the closest a human being can ever come to God, literally Heaven on earth. It is also the sign of the Church's unity, and an affirmation by the individual communicant that he or she believes all that the Church believes. If you believe, as John Kerry does, that it's sometimes or often morally acceptable to kill a child in its mother's womb (setting aside politicians who say abortion is wrong but unfortunately there's nothing we can do legally to prevent it -- which is not Kerry's position), then your reception of Holy Communion in the Catholic Church is both a lie and a sacrilege.

"a man who not only did not obey just war doctrine in Iraq, not only is pro-death penalty, not only favors the rich over the poor in his economic policies"

Kerry voted in favor of the 2002 legislation authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 2002. Kerry is on record as being in favor of the use of capital punishment, albeit in fewer situations than Bush (limiting it to use against terrorists). Kerry voted in favor of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Kerry voted in favor of NAFTA and against the Kyoto greenhouse gas treaty. OTOH, Bush signed into law the largest anti-poverty program since the Great Society (Medicare prescription coverage).

In other words, Kerry was far from the "obvious choice" that progressive Catholics in the social justice offices claimed he was.

Simon's point is the main reason why Cardinal McCarrick was right not to take the bait by publicly denying Communion to Kerry and other pro-choice pols in the midst of a highly-charged election year. While McCarrick's detractors were (I think) more correct about the principle of denying Communion to pro-abortion pols than he, they were very wrong about the application of the principle in an election year, just as they sometimes were in their ugly public screaming, e.g., the American Life League's obnoxious Moveon.org-like newspaper ads trashing McCarrick. If a bishop is going to reintroduce the practice of denying communion to pro-abortion pols, it should be done in a non-election year and (perhaps) follow the practice of the retired Bishop of Corpus Christi Rene Gracida who privately did this several years ago to an unnamed politician.

"That's right, Brad, religious people are all such low-IQ literalists that the priest wouldn't care about the motivation of someone who attended such a meeting. Really, that is the lamest strawman I've ever read in a combox -- which is saying a lot."

Thank you for your Christian charity, ScurvyOaks. ;-)

This is how I read the article, that attendance itself was absolutely prohibited upon penalty. It seems, according to you, though, if any sense is to be made of what you are claiming, that it was only selectively prohibited, and since I don't know the internal rules governing these church applications referred to, I'll happily concede to you. I only had the article to go by.

Incidentally, how many of you really know what a "straw man argument" actually is, and how many, like ScurvyOaks, simply think it sounds like a cool and sophisticated put-down and so parrot the term mindlessly as, again, ScurvyOaks has done? I hear the term used quite loosely around here, often incorrectly.

To instruct you properly, ScurvyOaks: a straw man argument would have been one where I raised an issue unrelated to, or only obliquely related to the argument at hand, and more particularly one such easy to demolish, and then proceeded to knock it down (hence a "straw man", easy to knock down--get it?) while asserting I was demolishing the original argument at hand.

Contrary to raising any straw man at all, I was hypothesizing how the priests actions as narrated could just as easily result in exactly the opposite of the moral result he was seeking, thus raising the legitimate question whether the priests actions as narrated were the best course in pursuit of the moral results he desired.

I hardly alone in this thread in raising that question.

"the temptations to recruit our gods to wage our political battles and to recruit the state to wage our religious ones will always be with us.

This line of argument is tiresome."

Since it was hardly an argument at all, merely an elaboration of the obvious, I can see why you've become exhausted trying to understand it as an argument (give up and rest yourself, Simon, it never will be an argument). ;-)

"If you seriously believe that U.S. Catholic bishops are personally sympathetic to Republicans in general and want to hurt Democrats, I'd have to suggest that your acquaintance with their partisan preferences is exceptionally limited."

The ones who were the most vocal about denying communion are all to the far-right of the U.S. bishop ranks and darlings of the conservative elite. They were definitely in the First Things/Neuhaus camp, not Commonweal.

Brad, you're right about my loose and incorrect use of the term strawman. I do know better.

I confess my lack of charity, as well.

I'll stop with that. Do not take silence for assent. Take it for me deciding not to show you what I'm like when I really feel uncharitable.

Can 915 would apply currently but not at the time of the desegregation. The present code was promulgated in 1983. M David was imprecise. Those who attended would not have been excommunicated. They would have simply been denied communion which is a form of discipline available to pastors. Excommunication is reserved to the bishop or a person he delegates. In the cases of automatic excommunications, like for example procuring an abortion, pastors in most if not all dioceses in the US have been delegated by the bishop to remove excommunications arising from certain acts.

The purpose of excommunication and other acts is not punishment per se but reform of the individual. In cases where it is likely to cause division, pastors often won't do direct discipline. In the case in Arkansas, the pastor apparently had a good handle on his parish and believed his threat would preserve souls from harm. In so much as it did, we can say that he acted prudently and rightly.

In regards to the current abortion wars, I won't repeat what Erin said because it is sound. I will only add that when higher offices are involved, the pastor should act with the consent of his bishop. Can 1184 on Christian Burial largely mirros Can 915, but adds "§2. If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted, and his judgment must be followed." I need not bring up the practical side of being dispatched to help the souls in Siberia if one goes against one's bishop.

The ones who were the most vocal about denying communion are all to the far-right of the U.S. bishop ranks and darlings of the conservative elite. They were definitely in the First Things/Neuhaus camp, not Commonweal.

Thankfully, the days of bishops who were in the "Commonweal camp" are largely behind us.

It's a mistake (characteristic of the ideological politicization of nearly everything nowadays) to characterize bishops as "left" or "far-right." In any case, the bishops in question are hardly partisan Republicans in their political leanings.

Jim,
Limbo is a theological theory and not the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Regarding salvation, the church maintains its teaching that all who are saved are saved through Christ. Your understanding of baptism by desire does not fall outside the realm of what it is possible for a good Catholic to believe. After all, Julian of Norwich thought all would be saved.

On the other hand Jim, "true for me" doesn't seem to make sense in the context of Christianity, any more than it does in the context of the Roman Empire. Either Jesus lived, suffered, died, and rose again, or he didn't. Either Tiberius was emperor, or he wasn't. Truth is one thing, and salvation is another, and it can be dangerous to confuse them. If you deny the real truth of Christ's divinity and resurrection, than I don't see how communion matters to you anyway as more than just a get-together on Sundays with (hopefully) pretty music and incense.

Part of the issue of abortion and communion is willful defiance of something that is a Church teaching when you know it is a church teaching. Another part is that in moral issues, the natural law applies and the church teaching is not necessary for undertaking the proper moral action. John Kerry doesn't need the Catholic Church to tell him that it is wrong to pay for women to have abortions, or that one of the fundamental points of the law is to protect people, and opposing laws that do so in the name of a right to kill is wrong.

Zak: Excellent post. Thanks!

Simon,

The denial of communion is not dependent upon the evil being intrinsic. Depending on how the objection manifested itself, a communicant could and possibly should be denied communion for support of the death penalty. I would also caution against a moral triumphalism. There are plenty of examples where pastors turned a blind eye to evil and allowed evil to continue.

Jim, Limbo has never been doctrine, so you're okay not to give it the full assent of faith as you would have to do if a matter of doctrine were involved.

Also, at Mass when the fourth Eucharistic prayer is used, the priest prays "Remember those who take part in this offering, those here present and all your people, and all who seek you with a sincere heart." I believe that God offers salvation to whom He will and how He will. This doesn't mean that I'm a practitioner of religious indifferentism, but that, like you, I commend all the dead to the mercy of God, Who is slow to anger and rich in compassion, and Who alone knows how sincerely each person sought to serve the true God, however erroneous their concept of Him might have been.

ds0490, I'd like to respond to your complaint about the penalties of canon 915 being applied selectively. The problem with applying this canon is that it must be done only in cases where the sin is public (or manifest) and grave (or mortal). This may be a bit nuanced for the non-Catholics reading this, but abortion has always been considered to be a sin of extreme gravity; in fact, until the relatively recent past a woman who had an abortion, and any accomplice to her abortion (doctor, boyfriend, etc.) could only receive absolution and be reunited to the Church by confessing this sin to a bishop, not a priest.

So if it can be determined that a particular politician is giving either formal or material (immediate or even, possibly, mediate) cooperation to the act of abortion by his/her public support for it, and that further this cooperation is so manifest that the public is fully aware of it, then the provisions of 915 apply.

In order for 915 to apply to the other issues you raised, the same conditions would have to apply: the act or issue would have to be gravely sinful, and the formal or material cooperation in it would have to be manifest or public.

You *might* be able to make a case that support for the Iraq War would qualify, but only if it were self-evident that a) the war is gravely immoral, and b) support for it constitutes formal or material cooperation in it; and, further, you'd have to establish that the legislator in question had never publicly repented of that support. Unfortunately in order to establish moral culpability you'd have to determine that not only was the Iraq War gravely immoral but that the legislator in question *knew* that it was when he supported it, something which, given the anger after 9/11, the talk of Iraq's support of terrorism, and the constant whispers of WMDs at the time would be extremely difficult to establish. As far as continuing support, you'd have to determine that the legislator was still supporting an immoral war, and not merely providing the basic necessities for survival to the troops until a withdrawal can occur.

On the other issues, while the Church tends to be against the death penalty in practice it is not opposed in principle; that is, the Church doesn't see the death penalty as intrinsically morally evil, as it does abortion. As far as racism goes, if a politician were an avowed racist who was openly using the power of his office to codify unjust discrimination it would definitely be appropriate for Canon 915 to apply (bearing in mind that this canon has only been in force since 1983, as M.Z. Forrest pointed out above). However, merely suspecting that the legislator is a racist isn't justification for this action.

"Didn't the Pope say that the Iraq war didn't meet the criteria for a just war?" watsy

No, my friend. He opposed the war (and WW II as well, of course), but he was not a pacifist and he didn't say the war was unjust in the Catholic sense. But it's difficult to blame folks for thinking so with all the hate speech against the Church and the Administration, especially by those who try to drive a wedge between those two allies. People like ds0490 should have Zak's words tattooed on their foreheads, viz:
"...the Catholic Church does not have any teaching (and, being a Church, is not competent to have a teaching) on the morality of the Iraq War. Neither does the Catholic Church teach that the death penalty is always and everywhere immoral. So it would be rather unjust, wouldn't you say, for bishops or priests to deny someone communion for disagreeing with them on some point that isn't actually a Church doctrine?"

2ND TRY AT THIS POST:

"Didn't the Pope say that the Iraq war didn't meet the criteria for a just war?" watsy
No, my friend, he opposed the war (and WW II as well, of course), but he didn't say the war was unjust in the Catholic sense. But it's difficult to blame folks for thinking so with all the hate speech against the Church and the Administration, especially by those who try to drive a wedge between those two allies. People like ds0490 should have Zak's words tattooed on their foreheads, viz:
"...the Catholic Church does not have any teaching (and, being a Church, is not competent to have a teaching) on the morality of the Iraq War. Neither does the Catholic Church teach that the death penalty is always and everywhere immoral. So it would be rather unjust, wouldn't you say, for bishops or priests to deny someone communion for disagreeing with them on some point that isn't actually a Church doctrine?"

Joe, my long comment from earlier this afternoon seems to have disappeared into Beliefnet's filter; but there is a significant difference between support for the death penalty and support for abortion. Politicians may talk about supporting the death penalty, but unless they are somehow complicit in the abuse of it we may not be able to establish either formal or material (immediate or mediate, not remote) cooperation in the unjust use of the death penalty, which would have to be established before they could be seen to be in a state of manifest grave sin. Merely holding or appearing to hold an erroneous and possibly sinful opinion doesn't reach the level of persisting in manifest grave sin, the criteria on which the denial of communion is based.

The difference with abortion is that politicians who by their actions and votes increase the availability, funding, and accessibility to abortion are being considered to be giving either material or, in some cases, formal cooperation in abortion, which is always seen as a grave sin.

Interesting take, M.Z. Forrest, but wouldn't this raise the problem of the "personally opposed" politician? Can. 1369 requires the speech itself to be "gravely injur(ing) good morals," does it not? So if someone says he hates abortion, thinks it's rotten, thinks it's murder, etc., but after all we live in a pluralistic society which is why he can't impose his religious beliefs on others etc....then would 1369 apply?

That's the reason for looking at formal and/or material cooperation, to me; even if 1369 can't apply to the politician's speech, if he votes in such a way that the effect of his vote is to increase access, funding, and availability of abortion then Canon 915 can still be used, because the "persist in manifest grave sin" aspect would refer to the results of his actions, no matter what he *says* he's doing.

I thought that they had a Just War doctrine. If they don't have any teachings on the morality of war, maybe it's time that they came up with one and applied that teaching to the Iraq War and all future wars.
It's really hard for me to understand how the Catholic church can be so clear on the teachings regarding abortion and so wishy-washy about other means of killing.

The Catholic Church teaches the moral criteria for evaluating the justice or injustice of a war. Application of the criteria to a particular case is between the layperson and his conscience (which each person has an obligation to form correctly). There are many people who, in good faith, believed that the Iraq War was morally justified. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI made clear their strong disagreement with that position, but at the end of the day that's a difference of prudential judgment. If, on the other hand, Catholics were publicly applying false moral criteria (for example, advocating extermination of some ethnic group) to justify the war, they would be dissenting from Church teaching.

With abortion, the criteria is clear: Direct, intentional abortion is gravely sinful. If a politician publicly agreed that abortion was evil but said regretfully that he cannot do anything legally to prevent abortion, he would not dissenting from Church teaching (assuming good faith). But a politician who zealously advocates legalized abortion (and perhaps encourages it with public funds) is in direct opposition to what the Church teaches. And public reception of Communion by that politician is a serious scandal.