My two cents: Tobin should have known what he was in for. When you're a Catholic bishop and a producer from MSNBC calls your office and asks if you'd like to be on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, this is what happens.
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Abortion is a human rights issue, not solely a Catholic issue, and it can be opposed in a secular arena as well as in a religious one. It just so happens that the Catholic Church has a history of championning human rights, and abortion is (inconveniently) the latest. Matthews' agressiveness was deployed to distract from the heart of the issue - an old tactic favored by cowards.
I recommend the book "ProLife Answers to ProChoice Questions", by Randy Alcorn, to anyone interested in a coherent study of how to take this issue from where it is today, to where we really would like to see it go. It will require not only legislation but an entire social support construct to complement it. It can be done - look how the "green" lifestyle has become the coolest ideology to be mandated in our public schools and media. Somehow - by God's grace, to be sure - seeing innocent life as more precious than our own comfort needs to become part of our cultural ideology.
The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creatot with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Since we are created by a higher power and not man I think that abortion is unconstitutional.
Deacon Greg,
Please help. Just what does it mean to be "Catholic" in the Patrick Kennedy case? If the bishop doesn't think Kennedy should be going to communion, that's fine, but it doesn't make Kennedy a non-Catholic. So on Kennedy's political biography, he could still call himself a Catholic, unless he is excommunicated. And don't even those folks still have the mark of baptism on them?
I've noticed a recent shift the hierarchy's descriptions of communion in which those accepting communion are in full agreement with everything the Church teaches or pronounces, and I have to say I don't remember it that way from my long-ago religion classes.
BobStL...
You are correct. For better or worse, Patrick Kennedy is still "Catholic."
So, for that matter, is Rudy Giulliani -- whose situation is canonically much more complex and who, in the eyes of the Church, is living in a state of grave sin.
Dcn. G.
Just to be very clear, in Bp. Tobin's letter to Kennedy, published in his diocesan newspaper, he never says that Kennedy is not Catholic. Rather, Tobin delineates the requirements and expectations of what it means to be Catholic and lets Kennedy discern for himself whether he meets those requirements and expectations. Toward the end of the letter, Tobin refers to himself as "your bishop and brother in Christ." So, it's pretty clear that the bishop considers Kennedy to be a Catholic.
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