Poll taken that most people disagree with Catholic bishops denying Communion to politicians who support abortion.

[Mannyfit75]

Catholic Church teachings on moral and faith is not dictated by polls. It is** dictated by the Holy Spirit**. It is immutable; unchanging.

 

[rpp]

So if Bishops are going to deny politicians communion for not voting pro-life, should they do the same thing when a politician is pro-capital punishment? Pro Iraq war? The church has very clear teachings on those topics as well. Why aren’t they brought up?

I have been frantically looking through the Catechism and cannot find where it says that support the war in Iraq is a grave sin. Nor can I find where it says that State cannot execute people.

I have found, however, many references where the church has taught that capital punishment is acceptable.

YOU may be opposed to those things, but to claim that the Church teaches against them is inaccurate.

Few things can compare to the mass murder of innocent babies. Please do not compare anything else, like the execution of a convicted murderer.

More than that, it diverts the this thread. Let’s stay on the topic.

 

[vern_humphrey]

So if Bishops are going to deny politicians communion for not voting pro-life, should they do the same thing when a politician is pro-capital punishment? Pro Iraq war? The church has very clear teachings on those topics as well. Why aren’t they brought up?

As Cardinal Ratzinger said, it is permissible to differ with the Holy Father on matters of war or the death penalty, but not on abortion.

 

[Michaeljc4]

I’m sorry. I was under the impression that Pope John Paul II said that the war in Iraq did not fit the Church’s criteria for a just war. Similarly, I was quite certain that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had a clear position on both the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Am I misinformed?

 

[Michaeljc4]

As Cardinal Ratzinger said, it is permissible to differ with the Holy Father on matters of war or the death penalty, but not on abortion.

How does that work, Vern? I’m not being polemic, I am asking in seriousness. If the Pope says a war is unjust, we can ignore him? That’s not binding?

 

[vern_humphrey]

I’m sorry. I was under the impression that Pope John Paul II said that the war in Iraq did not fit the Church’s criteria for a just war.

Read the Catechism – the responsibility for determining if the conditions for Just War are met falls on the national authority, not on the Church.

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

• there must be serious prospects of success;

• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

(My emphasis)

Similarly, I was quite certain that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had a clear position on both the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Am I misinformed?

As Cardinal Ratzinger said, it is permissible to differ with the Holy Father on matters of war or the death penalty, but not on abortion.

 

[vern_humphrey]

How does that work, Vern? I’m not being polemic, I am asking in seriousness. If the Pope says a war is unjust, we can ignore him? That’s not binding?

The Pope doesn’t (and didn’t) say that – the Catechism (and Catholic doctrine) place the responsibility for evaluating the conditions on the national authority.

The Pope may (and should) council patience, charity, and trying other means – but he cannot make the decision for the nation.

 

[Michaeljc4]

As Cardinal Ratzinger said, it is permissible to differ with the Holy Father on matters of war or the death penalty, but not on abortion.

But why? I’m not sure I understand the moral algebra at play here. I thought the Church believed in a “seamless garment of life,” and that as Catholics, we need to try and follow the church’s teachings even if we disagree with them. Why is abortion different from war, or the death penalty? Why can a politician be called to task on one issue (abortion) but not another (say, for example, the death penalty, or euthanasia, or stem cell research, or cloning)? I don’t understand how the Church’s teachings on abortion are more binding than other teachings about life.

How does the teaching authority of the church differ on these issues?

 

[Michaeljc4]

timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article871791.ece

 

[vern_humphrey]

But why? I’m not sure I understand the moral algebra at play here. I thought the Church believed in a “seamless garment of life,” and that as Catholics, we need to try and follow the church’s teachings even if we disagree with them. Why is abortion different from war, or the death penalty? Why can a politician be called to task on one issue (abortion) but not another (say, for example, the death penalty, or euthanasia, or stem cell research, or cloning)? I don’t understand how the Church’s teachings on abortion are more binding than other teachings about life.

How does the teaching authority of the church differ on these issues?

I posted what Cardinal Ratzinger said, and I also posted the relevant paragraph from the Catechism.

Much moral teaching is in the form of an if-then statement, if these conditions exist,** then** this is the moral position. The Chuch has no ability to answer the first part of the proposition – it cannot tell if the conditions pertain or not.

For example, the Church says** if **society can be protected without the death penalty, then the death penalty is wrong. But the Church has no way of knowing if society can be protected or not – the Church runs no prisons, has no police responsibility, and so on. Therefore the determination ** if **society can be protected without the death penalty is not in the Church’s competence. It falls on those who do run the prisons, the police and courts – the people responsible for keeping others safe.

 

[Ender]

I thought the Church believed in a “seamless garment of life,” and that as Catholics, we need to try and follow the church’s teachings even if we disagree with them. Why is abortion different from war, or the death penalty?

How does the teaching authority of the church differ on these issues?

The Church teaches that abortion is evil in every circumstance; there is no situation where an abortion is justified. The act, irrespective of the intent and the circumstances, is always sinful.

The death penalty and war are not defined that way; the Church teaches that there are circumstances (however unusual) where both the death penalty and war are justified. Abortion, euthanasia, and fetal stem cell research are in a different moral category than war and the death penalty.

The “seamless garment of life” is a political construct that is disingenuous in that it blurs this distinction and implies that, for example, someone who supports abortion is no worse than someone who supports the death penalty. It implies moral justification for voting for a pro-abortion politician.

Ender

 

[rpp]

The Church teaches that abortion is evil in every circumstance; there is no situation where an abortion is justified. The act, irrespective of the intent and the circumstances, is always sinful.

The death penalty and war are not defined that way; the Church teaches that there are circumstances (however unusual) where both the death penalty and war are justified. Abortion, euthanasia, and fetal stem cell research are in a different moral category than war and the death penalty.

The “seamless garment of life” is a political construct that is disingenuous in that it blurs this distinction and implies that, for example, someone who supports abortion is no worse than someone who supports the death penalty. It implies moral justification for voting for a pro-abortion politician.

Ender

Ender, that is well said! :clapping:

 

[vern_humphrey]

Ender, that is well said! :clapping:

Amen!

 

[Michaeljc4]

Very well explained. Thank you, Ender. That’s something that perplexed me for quite some time.

 

[chicago]

Very well explained. Thank you, Ender. That’s something that perplexed me for quite some time.

Though it is unchallengable that many have used (or should I say abused) the Seamless Garment theory in the way that Ender implies to justify their polical leanings, there are those who would disagree with that interpretation of what the seamless garment is really about in it’s original intention.

 

[Riley259]

I think a poll on CAF would yield very different results.

 

[johnlal]

lifenews.com/nat3150.html

No one asked me. I wonder who was asked on this poll. I don’t think they asked very many people.

I think the Bishops should follow the catechism and teachings of the Church as it relates to abortion. However, I think that Bishops should not use the Eucharist as a stunt to sway a presidential election, as did a Bishop in Colorado just months before the Presidential election, when he threatened to withhold the Eucharist from Democrats.

If Catholics continue to see politics as a one issue litmus test, we will continue to elect criminals who will say anything to get elected. The majority of GW Bush’s presidency was a golden age for republicans. If the republicans were truly for ending abortion, and if they had the power to do so, it would have been done by now. It hasn’t. How many times are we going to let them fool us?

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

I think the Bishops should follow the catechism and teachings of the Church as it relates to abortion. However, I think that Bishops should not use the Eucharist as a stunt to sway a presidential election, as did a Bishop in Colorado just months before the Presidential election, when he threatened to withhold the Eucharist from Democrats.

If Catholics continue to see politics as a one issue litmus test, we will continue to elect criminals who will say anything to get elected. The majority of GW Bush’s presidency was a golden age for republicans. If the republicans were truly for ending abortion, and if they had the power to do so, it would have been done by now. It hasn’t. How many times are we going to let them fool us?

We have made progress voting for politicians who advocate a pro-life position. Abortion was not brought in by fiat of a monarch, but by judicial fiat. We do not vote in Supreme Court justices. At the same time President Bush has nominated Justices who seem more likely to overturn the horror of federally approved abortion.

There will not be a clean sweep. Preventing this genocide that is morally accepted by so many people is an incredibly difficult project. We need to fight on multiple fronts. Politics is one of the clearest fronts. If we vote in a NARAL approved candidate, we will lose our opportunity to overturn this law. History shows that laws carry a sociological imprimatur: the legal approval for abortion brought with it a moral acceptance of this hideous act. Soon an industry of muder arrived. Now it is taking root. We must fight it on every front. We must not yield any front.

Other fronts:

We must teach the truth by showing the awfulness of it and describing the murder of children ripped from their mother’s womb limb from limb.

We must witness the outrage against God by the despoiling of His law and His miracle of life in this awful crime by witnessing with the Rosary outside the abortuaries.

We must support charities, coworkers, friends and family members who become pregnant without the financial, emotional, or spiritual support structure to handle the change.

We must treasure all children and welcome them as blessings, not burdens.

We must oppose all defninitions of human life that base its inherent value on extrinsic factors such as capacity or age.

The struggle to recognize the dignity of life is not just a struggle for the unborn, but a struggle to bring the light of Jesus to our culture, Who valued humans so highly He became One and journeyed for our sake to agony and death on a cross.

It is not an* either or*, but a *both and *situation. There’s no room for soft opposition or political support for those who support even tacitly or reservedly the murder of babies inside their mothers’ womb. Sadly, their moral compass is so askew, I could not trust them with any decision or position, not even dog catcher.

If we vote for them, what horror have we put on our country? What will we reap? I pray I never ever come to a situation that I will vote for someone who fails to vigorously oppose the murder of innocent humans in their mothers’ womb.

Jesus, have mercy on us and on America.

 

[johnlal]

It is not an* either or*, but a *both and *situation. There’s no room for soft opposition or political support for those who support even tacitly or reservedly the murder of babies inside their mothers’ womb. Sadly, their moral compass is so askew, I could not trust them with any decision or position, not even dog catcher.

If we vote for them, what horror have we put on our country? What will we reap? I pray I never ever come to a situation that I will vote for someone who fails to vigorously oppose the murder of innocent humans in their mothers’ womb.

Jesus, have mercy on us and on America.

So in the meantime, some would have us vote for the bunch that’s in office now. These are the people who have launched an illegal and immoral preemptive war that is costing the lives of men, women and children.

They would have us vote for President Bush, who, as Governor, sent criminals to their death on the electric chair, and mocked them when they claimed to have found redemption in Christ.

They would have us vote for the criminals who declared the Geneva Conventions to be “quaint” and oversaw torture, rape and humiliation of men, women and children at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere.

They would have us vote for the guys who are gutting our social safety net and expanding the gap between the rich and the poor.–Thus increasing the burden of having children.

Guys who fiddled while New Orleans flooded, and who are still not keeping their promises to one of our former great cities.

They would have us vote for guys who have been bought and paid for by the gun industry so that we can legally sell assault rifles to terrorists, sociopaths and cop killers.

While you hope to get a Supreme Court majority who will make a decree on the academic question of when human life begins, a question that has been argued for ages, and a question for which there still is no consensus, other actual lives are being affected. That’s why these one-issue voters are so dangerous.

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

So in the meantime, some would have us vote for the bunch that’s in office now. These are the people who have launched an illegal and immoral preemptive war that is costing the lives of men, women and children.

They would have us vote for President Bush, who, as Governor, sent criminals to their death on the electric chair, and mocked them when they claimed to have found redemption in Christ.

They would have us vote for the criminals who declared the Geneva Conventions to be “quaint” and oversaw torture, rape and humiliation of men, women and children at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere.

They would have us vote for the guys who are gutting our social safety net and expanding the gap between the rich and the poor.–Thus increasing the burden of having children.

Guys who fiddled while New Orleans flooded, and who are still not keeping their promises to one of our former great cities.

They would have us vote for guys who have been bought and paid for by the gun industry so that we can legally sell assault rifles to terrorists, sociopaths and cop killers.

While you hope to get a Supreme Court majority who will make a decree on the academic question of when human life begins, a question that has been argued for ages, and a question for which there still is no consensus, other actual lives are being affected. That’s why these one-issue voters are so dangerous.

Do you realize that all of your points are prudential in nature? That arguments can be made in most of these cases? That many of your issues could have been done by either party?

Abortion, however, is always evil regardless of circumstance and its death toll in innocent human blood far outstrips all your points many times over. Its toll in wounded and shattered lives far outstrips all your points. What is the toll in human minds raised in a perversion of the basic ideas of the dignity of human life, the rights of the state on the human life?

And what is the toll in friendships sundered from God for those who put the age of today ahead of God’s will on something declared by Christ’s vicar on earth and by Peter’s successors as an intrinsic evil, a grave offense that America embraces?

The damage of not recognizing that human life is in the image of God is incalculable in this country. Abortion, pornography, euthanasia, murder, spousal abuse, child abuse, all have their root in the failure to recognize that each victim–even when the victim is the person victimizing such as the willing mother who allows the abortionist to cut out her child–each victim is in the image of God.

No issue is more important than recognizing in every sense possible and affirming in every way possible the image of God hidden in the heart of every human being, born and not yet born.