His fellow brothers and sisters in the faith have every reason to question him as he's bringing down their faith by not adhering to chuch doctrine

The issue was never questioning him.  It happens in all faiths, and the Catholic Church is no different.  It goes to how the Church is structured into petitioning the priest to ex-communicate him.  There is no law against it, but as many have learned, the Church is not a democracy, and while it may do the petioner's peace of mind good to write said document, it has no bearing on the standing of the member.

The pope has said that he "thinks" that Catholics who support abortion should be separated from the church.  However, he really has no authority to do so, since the separation of the individual from the body is a decision that a person has to make.  The person makes that decision by renouncing (or declaring null) a tenet of the Church.  The Church then can say "you have separated yourself from the Body", but it is the person doing the separation.

And while abortion is a teaching of the Church (a thou shalt not), it is not a Tenet of the Church.  And therefore disagreeing with them on the issue is not a separation of the individual from the Body.

Killing is a tenet of the church.  And that is where the gray comes in.  For if you believe, as the leaders of the Church does, that an unborn child is a person, with all the rights and attributes of a post partum person, then you are going against a tenet of the Church, and are basically excommunicating yourself.

If you believe that it is just a mass of parasitic tissue until birth, then you are stating that you do not believe it is a person, and that excising it is no worse than cutting off a wart.  And you can then still be a part of the body as you have not denied one of the basic tenets.

Reply By: KFC Kickin For ChristPosted: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 I gotta ask why? A good Catholic would not be a very vocal supporter of abortion and Kerry is! What about the letter would possibly disgust you? then why would disgust change into sadness? good questions...I second them. His fellow brothers and sisters in the faith have every reason to question him as he's bringing down their faith by not adhering to chuch doctrine....add to this the many that are doing exactly the same. Cleaning house is NOT a bad thing once in a while. It strengthens the body, not weakens it.

while I appreciate you answering, the questions were for  Abe Cubbage . You just cannot drop that kind of bomb here with no explaination.

Funny, I agreed with Tex's comment, and I'm a catholic -- do I not understand catholicism as well? Maybe you don't mean to be, but you come across as very condescending and judgemental.

 

  

Reply By: Dr GuyPosted: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The issue was never questioning him. It happens in all faiths, and the Catholic Church is no different. It goes to how the Church is structured into petitioning the priest to ex-communicate him. There is no law against it, but as many have learned, the Church is not a democracy, and while it may do the petioners peace of mind good to write said document, it has no bearing on the standing of the member.

Not TRUE DOC, Kalil Gibran the writer of the Prophet and many other works was a Catholic, Lebanese and was Excommunicated for the writing of  "SATAN" The entire work I once posted here on Joeuser long ago.

Not TRUE DOC, Kalil Gibran the writer of the Prophet and many other works was a Catholic, Lebanese and was Excommunicated for the writing of "SATAN" The entire work I once posted here on Joeuser long ago.

But he excommunicated himself through his writings and beliefs.  The church can pronounce it, but only a person can do it.

not getting ya here MM. I didn't answer. I only wished also to have YOUR questions answered and seconded you.....

Not sure what bomb you're talking about. I didn't think I had any bombs  

Shadesofgrey:

Shadesofgrey, it's always nice to meet another Catholic.


During the campaign leading up to the 2004 election, Sen. Kerry had his mug shot taken of him receiving the Holy Eucharist every time he went to Holy Mass. Right afterwards, in press conferences and debates, he told us that he's "pro-choice" and if elected would keep the abortion mills up and running.

You should know that we lay people have the authority, the responsiblity and yes, the duty to bring such problems before the Church. So, I wrote to Kerry and to Kerry's priest asking him to catechize Kerry as to the wrongness of his consistent pro-abort voting record and tell him if he obstinately persists in manifest grave sin as per Canon 915 then, he should not present himself for Holy COmmunion.

Perhaps you're asking well, how do we know a politician's heart? And that's an honest question, but one that Pope John Paul II already anticipated in his 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia. You can get read it online.
"The judgment of one's state of grace obviously belongs only to the person involved, since it is a question of examining one's conscience. However, in cases of outward conduct which is seriously, clearly and steadfastly contrary to the moral norm, the CHruch, in her pastoral concern for the good order of the community and out of respect for the Sacrament, cannot fail to feel directly involved. The Code of Canon Law 915 refers to this situation of a manifest lack of proper moral disposition when it states that those who "obstinately persist in manifest grave sin' are not to be admitted to Eucharistic Communion."

DrGUy Posts:

I'm quoting in part from the Coadjutor Bishop of Orlando, Thomas Wenski, "Any Catholic on this side of Judgment day can call himself a 'practicing Catholic". After all, our earthly pilgrimage in this 'valley of tears' is our one time opportunity to 'practice' Catholicism till we get it right.

But 'getting it right' for practicing Catholics means conforming oneself to the will of GOd as revealed to us through Scripture and Tradition and as definitely set forth by the teaching authority of the Church. A practicing Catholic cannot invoke "conscience" to defy or disregard what the Chruch definitely holds as true---for a practicing Catholic doesn't create his own truth, but forms his conscience according to the Truth.

Invincible ignorance, culpubale willfulness, or ingrained habits of sin might explain why a self-described "practicing Catholic' might dissent from one or more of the definitive teachings of the Church in word, thought or deed and still think that he or she is a Catholic in good standing able to be admitted to the Eucharist. One of these factors may explain it, but none can excuse it."

Bishops as teachers of the faith have no special competencies in the world of business or politics--and in those worlds we have no regulatory or legal powers--nor should we. But precisely as teachers of the Catholic faith we do have competence to tell businessmen and politicians or anyone else for that matter what is required to be a Catholic.

It is totally within our competence to say that one cannot be complicit in the injustice of denying the right to life of an unborn child or an invalid elder and still consider oneself a good Catholic. It is totally within our competence to urge our Catholic people to participate in the political life of our nation with coherence and honesty. ...

To be Catholic is to strive for holiness. This is a daunting task for us all---impossible without the saving grace that embraces us through our turning to the Lord and walking in His company. The Lord is patient with us--after all, we are still "practicing".

He warns His disciples not to be too ready to pull out the tares lest we damage the wheat. For this reason, when rebukes are necessary, pastors generally strive to do them in private. But to fail to rebuke when necessary is to fail in the character we owe our brethren.

Should pro-abortion politicians receiving Holy COmmunion: "NO".

Those pro-abort pols who insist on calling themselves Catholic without seeing the contradiction between what they say they believe and their anti-life stance have to do a lot more of "practicing'. They need to get it right before the approach the Eucharistic altar.

Communion means "union". Specifically, it is union with Jesus Christ, His teachings, and His Church. Being pro-abortion is a direct contradiction to Jesus, His teachings, and His Church. So how can one be in union and in contradicition with someone at the same time?

Holy Communion is the Bread of Life. Abortion is the infliction of death. How can one stand for both at the same time?

I do not understand Catholicism.

I wasn't raised Catholic, and pretty much all I know if it is things I've gleaned from my Catholic in-laws and what I've seen when I've visited services with them.

I don't think I need to understand the ins and outs of Catholicism to find it hateful and a shade obsessive to go to so much effort to put a barrier between someone else and their expression/experience of their own individual faith.

yer kinda hand pickin thoughts here doc, I do not know anything about the Catholic church, but I Imagine if the POPE kicks yer to da curb, yer not allowed to go to church, receive any sacraments, stuff like that, am I wrong?

1. Your definition of "good catholic" is an opinion, not an
absolute. The church is full of people who think that Kerry is a good catholic.

2. Point one is irrelevant.

3. The church is supposed to be an aide to help guide people to know God better. Instead it has become the self-claimed defacto arbiter of God's will. Many catholics are waking up to this fact (actually have been for hundreds of years).




Because it's hateful and exactly the type of thing Jesus would not do. My disgust turned to sadness because I know there are many people out there like lulapilgrim and that most of them will never change. They will spend their lives sowing hate and making us all the worse of for it.

As hard as it may be for all of you to believe, this is not a personal attack against anyone. It is nothing more than expression of the existential angst that this post brought out in me.

that may seem easy enough on paper. real life is a very different story and this discussion is as good example as any. there's a huge difference between believing in god or a god and believing any or all nations were established by authority of one's god and/or those who govern nations do so at god's behest.

those who advocate disciplining politicians who happen to be catholic and who do not speak for the church nor permit the church to speak for them as candidates or officeholders (as jfk described himself) validate an argument made by none other than samuel adams.

"In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind . . . The only sects which he (Locke) thinks ought to be and which by all wise laws are excluded from such toleration are those who teach doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live. The Roman Catholics or Papists are excluded by reason of such doctrines as these: that princes excommunicated may be deposed, and those they call heretics may be destroyed without mercy; besides their recognizing the pope in so absolute a manner, in subversion of government, by introducing as far as possible into the states under whose protection they enjoy life, liberty, and property that solecism in politics, imperium in imperio, leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and bloodshed."

MM post:

Abe, Pope Benedict spoke the truth and there is only one truth. He said, "The killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving Communion, which is receiving the Body of Christ." Think what you will of me but I'm telling you my missive to Kerry and his priest was sent with the utmost charity in my heart and not in a punitive sense whatsoever.

As for what Jesus would do. Jesus is God and by the giving of the Fifth COmmandment, He condemned the killing of helpless innocents inside the womb by the barbaric act of abortion through saline scalding,surgical dismemberment, and vacuum suctioning that has been sonsistently condemned by society since the dawn of civilization. Hammurabi, the Father of Laws, and Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine came out against it. I asked Sen.Kerry, a true believer in abortion, to justify in detail these woeful murders and he didn't for he couldn't. Would you like to try?


Now, I don't know what religion, if any, that you profess, but I will tell you that in the Catholic religion, a person who receives Holy COmmunion unworthily (is in a state of sin) brings spiritual condemnation on himself..he has committed a sacrilege, a very serious matter. If the politician does not renounce his anti-life position, he must not approach the altar. Concerning his priest, he must take most seriously his duty to protect the most sacred element of the Catholic Faith, the Holy Eucharist, from sacrilege. Quite literally, he is guarding that which was handed on to him from his successors right back to the APostles and Jesus Himself, and revered by saints and martyrs. By alerting Catholics who are in a state of mortal sin of their obligation not to receive Communion, the priest is acting in total charity. The priest's actions reveal love--not punishment--for the sheep who have strayed, as well as a great desire to protect the Chruch from scandal. Woe to the priests and bishops who haven't been doing this.


Abe Cabbage posts:





This is true and sadly every one of them is engaging in moral and spiritual relativism something that Pope Benedict is staunchly opposed and preached against in a pre-conclave Mass.

He said,"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and one’s own desires.... How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking? .....Relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable by today’s standards, ” ..

Of those Catholics who think Kerry is a good Catholic (for favoring abortion) , I would ask them to square this with the Catholic faith. They can’t---for a person cannot be pro-abort and Catholic at the same time.

I have the most difficult time seeing Lula as "a hate filled person" "sowing Hate" I believe she is expressing what she as a Catholic believes and she is not alone in her thoughts about hanoijohn Kerry.

Abe Cabbage posts:

You are quite right again. The Church's main mission given by Christ Himself is to be an aide to help guide people to know, love and serve God so they can be with Him in the next.

Abe Cabbage posts:

God's will was that a Church be founded to carry on Christ's mission until Christ comes again at the end of the world. Christ founded the Chruch when He said to Simon Peter, "upon this rock, I will build MY CHruch". Peter was the first Pope, and Pope Benedict is his 264th successor. Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to ST.Peter, His power "to bind and loose" and told him to "feed His sheep". He also gave him the mission, along with the other Apostles and disciples, to go and teach all nations until the end of the world.

Actually Christ set up the church for two reasons. #1 It's to worship God corporately with like minded Christians. #2 It's to edify and encouage the body of believers.

Pure and simple. If the body is doing something hurtful to Christ we are to help them get back on track. Somebody in the church professing to be Christian and yet has no problem with killing babes in the womb is very hurtful to Christ. Look at Saul. He was killing the Christians and what did Christ say to him?

"Saul Saul, why do you persecute ME?"



There is definitely a truth war going on today. To speak the truth today is now equal to speaking hate. Sad but true.



ditto! ....or BINGO as Lula would say.