How does a Catholic support a "war President?"

[Steven_Merten]

How do Catholics support abortion presidents? More Americans have died through legal abortion than all the wars we’ve fought combined

Hello Veritas,

President Bush has opposed abortion consistantly. It is the Supreme Court, not the president who has allowed abortion in America.

Do Popes allow abortion through lack of Church laws against abortion? Popes could use Church law, Church Anathema, to punish those who seek or preform abortion to protect the unborn. Yet Popes do not use Church law anathema to oppose abortion. Should they? Are Popes for abortion in not using the Church law of anathema to protect the unborn?

Please visit Throwing Stones
Anathema

…“To understand the word anathema”, says Vigouroux, “we should first go back to **the real meaning of herem of which it is the equivalent. Herem comes from the word haram, to cut off, to separate, to curse, and indicates that which is cursed and condemned to be cut off or exterminated, **whether a person or a thing, and in consequence, that which man is forbidden to make use of.”…

…but anathematized, and that he may be stricken by the sword of Heaven"…

…“Know that Engeltrude is not only under the ban of excommunication, which separates her from the society of the brethren, but under the anathema, which separates from the body of Christ, which is the Church.”…

…“If, after having been deposed from office, he is incorrigible, he should first be excommunicted; but if he perseveres in his contumacy he should be stricken with the sword of anathema; but if plunging to the depths of the abyss, he reaches the point where he despises these penalties, he should be given over to the secular arm.”…

…**In passing this sentence, the pontiff **is vested in amice, stole, and a violet cope, wearing his mitre, and assisted by twelve priests clad in their surplices and holding lighted candles. He takes his seat in front of the altar or in some other suitable place, amid pronounces **the formula of anathema **which ends with these words: **Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N-- himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate **, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."

He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions.

Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Anathema

 

[Hastrman]

I think, first, that you seem to have a selective interpretation of Taoism.

Weapons are instruments of ill omen
And are not those of the Gentleman.
Therefore, he uses them only when it cannot be helped–Excerpt from Tao Te Ching

Consider the third line carefully.

Also consider this commentary, by Yagyuu Munenori, from his book The Life-Giving Sword:
Using weapons and killing people when this cannot be avoided is also the Way of Heaven. If you would ask what this means, it is that flowers bloom and greenery accompanies them in the spring breezes, but the leaves fall and trees wither when the autumn frost arrives. That is the judgment of the Way of Heaven.
…
There are times when ten thousand people suffer because of the evil of one man. Therefore, in killing one man’s evil you give ten thousand people life. In such ways, truly, the sword that kills one man will be the blade that gives others life.

War is as necessary as peace, under the Tao. Consider that Taoism created Baguazhang, the least passive of the Chinese internal martial arts–Xing Yi and Taijiquan, created by the Neo-Confucians, can be done as meditation, but Circle Walking is for fighting.

I think the real question is, “How can a Taoist not know that war, too, is as much a part of the Way as peace?”

As regards Catholicism, you are flatly in error when saying that Christ denounced all killing, or especially all war. He taught any number of Roman soldiers, but, you may note, never told them to give up being soldiers. His admonition to Peter should be interpreted keeping in mind that Peter was the first Pope, and therefore a priest.

You also seem to challenge the authority of the Catechism, and transpose it with the Church. Didn’t you know that the Catechism is the definitive statement of the Church’s doctrine, and she does not teach anything that is not found in that book?

Not to be rude, but I dislike it when people claim that we believe things we don’t, and then criticize us for contradicting those beliefs we don’t actually hold. It’s as if I criticized you for not studying the Classics, when that’s a Confucian ideal.

 

[Veritas41]

Hello Veritas,

President Bush has opposed abortion consistantly. It is the Supreme Court, not the president who has allowed abortion in America.

Do Popes allow abortion through lack of Church laws against abortion? Popes could use Church law, Church Anathema, to punish those who seek or preform abortion to protect the unborn. Yet Popes do not use Church law anathema to oppose abortion. Should they? Are Popes for abortion in not using the Church law of anathema to protect the unborn?

Please visit Throwing Stones
Anathema

…“To understand the word anathema”, says Vigouroux, “we should first go back to the real meaning of herem of which it is the equivalent. Herem comes from the word haram, to cut off, to separate, to curse, and indicates that which is cursed and condemned to be cut off or exterminated, whether a person or a thing, and in consequence, that which man is forbidden to make use of.”…

…but anathematized, and that he may be stricken by the sword of Heaven"…

…“Know that Engeltrude is not only under the ban of excommunication, which separates her from the society of the brethren, but under the anathema, which separates from the body of Christ, which is the Church.”…

…“If, after having been deposed from office, he is incorrigible, he should first be excommunicted; but if he perseveres in his contumacy he should be stricken with the sword of anathema; but if plunging to the depths of the abyss, he reaches the point where he despises these penalties, he should be given over to the secular arm.”…

…In passing this sentence, the pontiff is vested in amice, stole, and a violet cope, wearing his mitre, and assisted by twelve priests clad in their surplices and holding lighted candles. He takes his seat in front of the altar or in some other suitable place, amid pronounces the formula of anathema which ends with these words: Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N-- himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate , so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."

He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions.

Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Anathema

I wasn’t referring to President Bush in my post – but to other presidents, Clinton, Carter, etc. who have supported legalized abortion and current presidential candidates, some of whom are very proud to claim they’re Catholic, who support legalized abortion. Sadly, many Catholics support these candidates. That’s all I was trying to point out in my post – maybe I wasn’t that clear. As for Church discipline, it’s my understanding that those who obtain, perform or help someone get an abortion all incur an automatic excommunication that can only be removed through the pope, a bishop or priest authorized by a bishop.

 

[Steven_Merten]

As for Church discipline, it’s my understanding that those who obtain, perform or help someone get an abortion all incur an automatic excommunication that can only be removed through the pope, a bishop or priest authorized by a bishop.

Hello Veritas,

Thank you for the clarification that you were not reffering to president Bush.

It is my understanding that Pope John Paul II disengaged all auto-anathemas in 1983 when he rewrote the CCC. Most modern Catholic homolies that I have heard instruct us that now Church excommunications only disallow Catholics from recieving the Eucharist. They claim that modern Church excommunications have no way of harming one’s soul with eternal damnation.

Do you have any links which explain just what the modern Church punishment of modern excommunication, on abortionists and others, entails? Does it damn souls like pre1983 Church anathema did. Does unremoved modern excommunication put anyone more at risk of eternal damnation than those who have it removed by a Pope?

Should Pope Benedict XVI restore auto Church anathema and place it on anyone who procures an abortion and any one who preforms an abortion? Should we evaluate whether or not a Pope is pro-abortion by the Church laws and diciplines (anathema) he could put on abortionists but chooses not to?

Anathema

He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions. Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Anathema​

 

[Veritas41]

Hello Veritas,

Thank you for the clarification that you were not reffering to president Bush.

It is my understanding that Pope John Paul II disengaged all auto-anathemas in 1983 when he rewrote the CCC. Most modern Catholic homolies that I have heard instruct us that now Church excommunications only disallow Catholics from recieving the Eucharist. They claim that modern Church excommunications have no way of harming one’s soul with eternal damnation.

Do you have any links which explain just what the modern Church punishment of modern excommunication, on abortionists and others, entails? Does it damn souls like pre1983 Church anathema did. Does unremoved modern excommunication put anyone more at risk of eternal damnation than those who have it removed by a Pope?

Should Pope Benedict XVI restore auto Church anathema and place it on anyone who procures an abortion and any one who preforms an abortion? Should we evaluate whether or not a Pope is pro-abortion by the Church laws and diciplines (anathema) he could put on abortionists but chooses not to?

Anathema

He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions. Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Anathema​

I got this quote from the Catechism at the Priests for Life website (www.priestsforlife.org):

2272Formal co-operation in an abortion constitutes a grave offence. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. ‘A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae’ (76) ‘by the very commission of the offence’, (77) and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law . (78)The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

I’m not aware that excommunication damned someone to hell – it’s a Church discipline. Only God can damn someone to hell. Those anathemas all say "*may " *someone be damned --because only God can judge the soul

 

[JimG]

Re: How does a Catholic support a "war President?"

You mean, like:

George Washington (Revolutionary War)
James Madison (War of 1812)
James Polk (Mexican-American War)
Abraham Lincoln (Civil War)
Teddy Roosevelt (Spanish American War)
Woodrow Wilson (WW-I)
Franklin Roosevelt (WW-II)
Harry Truman (WW-II, Korean War)
John Kennedy (Vietnam War)
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam War)
Richard Nixon (Vietnam War)
Bill Clinton (Serbia-Kosovo War)
George H.W. Bush (Gulf War I)
George Bush (Gulf War II)

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan–The Cold War
(1945-1991)

Or John Paul II, Reagan, and Thatcher, who all helped to end the cold war by helping to topple communism in Russia.

Could be some or all of them.

I’ve left out the minor conflicts.

 

[LCMS_No_More]

How? How does a Catholic support war funding that could go to much better uses building our own country? Since when did the Catholic church support war?

He says that he’s pro-life, so that’s all that’s needed.

 

[LCMS_No_More]

First of all, we follow the Catechism:

(My emphasis)

Note that Cardinal Ratzinger said that it is permissible to differ with the Holy Father on matters of war and capital punishment, but not on abortion.

Extra credit question: Who wrote the catechism, or headed up the team which wrote it?

Ah, yes. The famous, “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good” line. I udnerstand that is meant to prevent private little wars among houses, not carte blanche for government leaders to declare war after plugging in flimsy responses to the Church’s formula for what constitutes a just war. Wars of choice are never just. After all, the Emperor of Japan determined in his prudential judgement that it would be just to attack Pearl Harbor. Saddan Hussein determined in his prudential judgement that it would be just to invade Kuwait. Were those just acts of war or weren’t they?

One MUST be able to decide whether or not the President is acting in the national interest and to demand that Congress act if not. We are, after all, a DEMOCRATIC Republic, not a dictatorship.

 

[Steven_Merten]

**I’m not aware that excommunication damned someone to hell – it’s a Church discipline. Only God can damn someone to hell. Those anathemas all say "*may " ***someone be damned --because only God can judge the soul

Hello Veritas,

It is true that only Jesus can bind someone to sin in heaven. When Jesus binds someone to sin in heaven, I see no alternative to that person that Jesus binds to sin but eternal damnation. Jesus binding souls to sin in heaven is the “keys to the Kingdom” and the “sword” of Christ’s mouth.

Jesus gives His sworn oath to Apostolic Successors that He will bind anyones soul to sin in heaven that they call upon Him too do so. So unless the Church beleives that Jesus can go back on His word, I do not see how a person can avoid hell when anathematized by the Church. In Church anathema, the Church calls up the Christ given power of the “keys to the Kingdom” to have Jesus bind souls to sin in heaven. The Church believes that anathema cuts someone off from the body of the Church and casts them out of the bosom of the Church. Does the Church not still believe that those outside the bosom of the Church have no salvation?

Please visit Throwing Stones

How would a modern Catholic support a Pope who used Church anathema to damn someones souls to eternal death? One soul going to eternal death is infinitely more death than the combine loss of years of physical life cut short from all the wars in human history.

Have modern Popes quietly disposed of, or altered the meaning of, Church anathema to give the Church a more pacifist, forgiving, non-deadly image when confronting world leaders in Church leader’s political opposition to war and capital punishment?

Is propagation of the Pope’s political opinion on secualar wars more important than Christ’s vision of Apostolic Successors calling on Jesus to bind souls to sin in heaven to protect the body of the Church from sin and damnation?

Anathema

…but anathematized, and that he may be stricken by the sword of Heaven"…
…“anathema, which separates from the body of Christ, which is the Church.”…

…"stricken with the sword of anathema; but if plunging to the depths of the abyss,…
…**Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N-- himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate **,
Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Anathema
**NAB MAT 16:13 **

I for my part declare to you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven." **NAB REV 1:16 **

A sharp, two-edged sword came out of his mouth,
I hold the keys of death and the nether world."
**NAB ISA 11:4 **The Rule of Immanuel

**He shall strike the ruthless with the **rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.​

NAB JOH 20:20

"Recieve the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound."

 

[Veritas41]

**1463 **Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them. In danger of death any priest, even if deprived of faculties for hearing confessions, can absolve from every sin and excommunication.

That’s what I found about excommunication in the Catechism. Maybe an anathema is something different? I don’t see any mention of excommunication itself sending someone to hell, although someone who is excommunicated is in a state of mortal sin (the reason for their excommunication), so if they died unrepentant, they would certainly go to hell.

 

[quasimodo]

Re: How does a Catholic support a "war President?"

You mean, like:

George Washington (Revolutionary War)
James Madison (War of 1812)
James Polk (Mexican-American War)
Abraham Lincoln (Civil War)
Teddy Roosevelt (Spanish American War)
Woodrow Wilson (WW-I)
Franklin Roosevelt (WW-II)
Harry Truman (WW-II, Korean War)
John Kennedy (Vietnam War)
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam War)
Richard Nixon (Vietnam War)
Bill Clinton (Serbia-Kosovo War)
George H.W. Bush (Gulf War I)
George Bush (Gulf War II)

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan–The Cold War
(1945-1991)

Or John Paul II, Reagan, and Thatcher, who all helped to end the cold war by helping to topple communism in Russia.

Could be some or all of them.

I’ve left out the minor conflicts.

I believe that TR actually fought in the Spanish American war in Cuba and was president several years later. [/nitpicking]

 

[shirleytowers]

Because he is a national defense president

a prolife president

and we all know we screwed up in Iraq, but he wants to do the right thing–help them as much as we can to let this debacle come to a stable and reasonable conclusion if at all possible–not just say oops sorry bye, like those who want to just get OUT. And he hasn’t forgetten he was for it at the beginning, like certain amnesia victims in Congress.

because I remember Vietnam and how the media persuaded us to get out, and that it was a big mistake because there WAS a bloodbath and it was worse than the war. Ask the boat people. I live in an areas with about 30% recent SE Asian immigrants. Care to ask them? How about the Hmong?

Seems easier than voting for a degenerate like Kerry or Clinton.

 

[vern_humphrey]

**1463 **Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them. In danger of death any priest, even if deprived of faculties for hearing confessions, can absolve from every sin and excommunication.

That’s what I found about excommunication in the Catechism. Maybe an anathema is something different? I don’t see any mention of excommunication itself sending someone to hell, although someone who is excommunicated is in a state of mortal sin (the reason for their excommunication), so if they died unrepentant, they would certainly go to hell.

I suspect some Catholic politicians pin their hopes of going into a coma several days before death – so they can receive absolution without repenting or asking for it.

 

[JimG]

because I remember Vietnam and how the media persuaded us to get out, and that it was a big mistake because there WAS a bloodbath and it was worse than the war. Ask the boat people. I live in an areas with about 30% recent SE Asian immigrants. Care to ask them? How about the Hmong?

Sirik Matak had been the prime minister of Cambodia. He was offered an escape by the U.S. Ambassador just before the U.S. pulled out of southeast Asia. “I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion,” he replied. “As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty.”

He remained in Pnomh Penh, later being murdered by the Khmer Rouge, along with one fourth of his country’s population.

Abandonment has consequences.

This little incident is recounted in passing, in an article in the latest issue of First Things.

 

[JimG]

I believe that TR actually fought in the Spanish American war in Cuba and was president several years later. [/nitpicking]

You are right. Thanks for the correction. I guess the war president for the Spanish American War would then have been William McKinley.

TR was a Lt Colonel in the Rough Rider Regiment. When he became president, his favorite saying was “speak softly, and carry a big stick.” But he also won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese war.