Could the Pope place a President Biden under personal interdict?

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It’s not my personal definition. It’s in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We have also had clergy here on CAF explain it. Numerous times.
 
Definition of terms is so important, and why older documents without this precision can be really misleading. There is a sense in which all the baptized are Catholic, and a sense in which they are not, as you have no doubt heard explained. Numerous times.
 
By the Church’s own teaching in the Catechism, everyone baptized using the Trinitarian formula is in communion with the Church through baptism.

If you have a problem with that, then it’s your own “personal opinion”.
 
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Vico said:
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HomeschoolDad:
I have in mind Biden’s stance in favor of abortion choice.
In all likelihood, it wouldn’t be this pope. But someone like Cardinal Sarah? Archbishop Vigano? (Dare we hope?)

And what would be the effect of it? Would individual priests and bishops buck this? And what then?
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Pro-choice is not a responsible choice, however it is different than to actively support direct attacks, according to USCCB.
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And one thing that I find gets lost in all of this, no woman is ever forced to have an abortion. (Yes, I know, hostile boyfriends or overbearing parents, but here I refer to legal compulsion, and I totally favor a woman in this situation being able to go to some kind of pro-life social services agency and say “my boyfriend said he’ll beat me (or worse) if I don’t have an abortion” or “my parents want me to get rid of it, and I don’t want to do that”, and have some kind of “safe house” where they could take refuge, and have all of their temporal and spiritual needs taken care of, indefinitely.)

The option exists, but nobody has to use it. I suppose a Catholic could say “this option must exist, because to do otherwise infringes upon freedom of choice and freedom of conscience, but I hope and pray nobody ever acts upon it”. That’s about as tendentious an argument as tendentious gets, but I’ll just put it this way, if I were a priest, I wouldn’t refuse a penitent absolution on account of it. Go read the social teachings of the Church and take them to heart, yes. Refuse absolution, no. So far as I am aware, there is no doctrinal requirement that Catholics force the laws of the country to reflect Catholic doctrine, in the types of secular states, whose existence we must tolerate, in the absence of a body politic that acknowledges the Social Reign of Christ the King. And that kind of secular state, be it right or be it wrong, is what we are “stuck with” in the here and now.
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Tis_Bearself said:
I don’t point fingers at any of them, given that I too have committed major sins. I would hope the deceased Kennedys all made it to Heaven on the prayers of Mama Rose Kennedy and the nation. Kennedys in Heaven, Pray for us! And for our nation which many of you served.
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I feel pretty good about Robert Kennedy Jr, myself. He’s an amazing public servant and works in many different avenues of social action — wildlife and the environment, bringing out the dangers of vaccination, and so on. His severe speech difficulty, which shouldn’t make a difference (it’s his speech that is impaired, not his intellect), would however probably make him unviable on the campaign trail.
 
It could be considered a tragedy, but also a great blessing. I was away from the Church for a long time. But I came back. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is there for all of us. But of course, there will be some that say that because I didn’t always lead the life of a “good Catholic”, that I’m no longer Catholic.
 
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A Catholic president who does not intend to outlaw abortion is not a new scenario at the world’s scale, and I can’t think of an example where the Pope intervened.

Heck, in France, abortion was depenalized under a Catholic president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. It did strain France’s relations with the Vatican, but if I’m correct, the most he got from St Pope John Paul II was the rebuke, “France, eldest daughter of the Church, are you being faithful to the promises of your baptism?”. To my knowledge, he never was excommunicated, and I would be very surprised if he doesn’t get a (most stately) Catholic burial when he passes (he’s still alive, at 94).
 
Yay! I found the passage referred to!

Okay. It’s Chapter 10, “On the Ninth Article” [of the Nicene Creed], Quaestio VIII, “So Who Is Not Included within the Bounds of the Church Militant?” “Quinam Ecclesiae militantis finibus non contineantur”)

So basically, the Church on duty in the world does not include these people. They are in the brig, or they never joined up.

The previous article had just talked about how there are both good and bad people in the Church on Earth. “For as chaff is mixed together with grain on the threshing floor, or as rotted [intermortua] body parts may sometimes remain joined to the body among the different members, so evil people are contained within the Church.”

Quaestio VIII continues, after listing the quaestio itself:
"For this reason, it happens that only three kinds of humans are shut outside [excludantur] the Church [militant]: first, infidels; and then, heretics and schismatics; and finally, the excommunicated. Heathens [ethnici] because they have never in fact been in the Church or ever known her…

“Finally, indeed, the excommunicated, until they have recovered their senses [donec resipiscant], would not belong [pertineant] to that communion from which they have been shut out [exclusi] by the judgment of the Church. But with regard to the rest, however immoral and heinous of humans [they are], it is not to be doubted that they persevere in the Church.”
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OddBird said:
A Catholic president who does not intend to outlaw abortion is not a new scenario at the world’s scale, and I can’t think of an example where the Pope intervened.
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It’s just new for us Yanks. And of course, as usual, we all think the world revolves around us 🙂
 
I think you should read the entirety of the Baptism section of the Catechism.
 
Baptized Christians are part of Christ’s Body, and hence part of the Church; but they are not reconciled to the Church.

This is one of the reasons bishops have such heavy burdens – technically, they have a lot of subjects for whom they are responsible, but who are also not reconciled to the Church or even knowing about it.
 
DeniseNY said:
It could be considered a tragedy, but also a great blessing. I was away from the Church for a long time. But I came back. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is there for all of us. But of course, there will be some that say that because I didn’t always lead the life of a “good Catholic”, that I’m no longer Catholic.
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To keep this in context, being Catholic will always be a blessing for Biden. If he takes action that assists in any way an abortion to happen, and he does not repent of it, being Catholic will have made his life more tragic than it would have been if he had not been Catholic.
 
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Actually, canon law on marriage treats any baptized Catholic as never able to stop being Catholic. There was all the nonsense about atheists unbaptizing themselves and reversing other Catholic sacraments, and there were several magisterial responses saying you can’t do it.

The Islamic idea that you can never leave Islam and are always bound by its laws is a Satanic parody of the Catholic doctrines about this.

And this isn’t new. You couldn’t stop being Jewish once you were Jewish, and even undergoing the ancient version of plastic surgery didn’t make circumcised Jewish men uncircumcised.

The covenant with God is not a contract; it’s adoption papers or marriage. Once you’re family, you can be bad family or separated family, but you can’t stop being a child of God and a member of Christ’s Body. You can be a gangrenous body part, and you can die and be a chopped-off body part, but you’re still what you became.
 
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Canon law seems to be more of the opinion that excommunicated people lose the rights and privileges, spiritual and temporal, of being Catholic, but you’re still Catholic. You may be left outside beating on the door, until you “recover your senses;” but it’s still your family’s house.
 
I don’t disagree with “once a Catholic always a Catholic”, but we should be careful not to sow confusion that it tells us much about people, especially those in positions of authority.
 
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