Politicians, particularly high profile ones like Pelosi and Biden, cause confusion and lead many astray by misrepresenting the Catholic Church’s positions on abortion and/or claiming to be a good practicing Catholic in the state of grace while openly and strongly promoting abortion by voting for its permissive availability and publicly speaking about how important a “right” it is. This easily causes confusion among non-Catholics, who see disunity, confusion, and a lack of a principled stand among the faithful of the Catholic Church. It also even causes confusion among Catholics who have become increasingly secularized in the U.S., those who place a lot of emphasis on the role of government in welfare, encouraging them to justify support of abortion as a compromise for other things they desire the government to do.
Allowing these politicians to continue on their course without publicly refuting them aggravates and allows the aforementioned scandals to continue. In order to repent and redress the scandal and harm they cause, politicians must not only become Pro-Life in their voting practice, but also in their advocacy; they must publicly renounce any position that they previously held in favor of abortion.
As the Church has prescribed, pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be confronted first privately, then publicly, and if they still do not repent, be denied communion. What then if these methods do not bring about a change in public position? What if they continue to spout justifications and claim they can be “devout Catholics” while publicly advocating for abortion?
Matthew 18: 11-14, Cor 5:3 key phrases being: “If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector,” and “Should you not rather have been sorrowful? The one who did this deed [adultery, but how much worse is enabling abortion?] should be expelled from your midst.”
It is tragic, and should not be taken lightly, but the evil of abortion is so grave and systemic in our Western societies that it is becoming increasingly clear that grave measures bust be taken to stop it. I do not see any other option, after private and public counsel and public denial of communion, than to excommunicate a person who persists in unrepentant public advocacy for abortion.
How can we be clear about the systemic evil of abortion, how can we seek mercy and justice for the unborn, if we allow those complicit in their murder to speak as if they were in communion with Christ? How can we stand for Christ if we refuse to censure those who so grievously harm His innocents, allowing them to call themselves “of Christ?” To allow them to, with our consent, call themselves by His name is a slander and blasphemy against Christ that WE become complicit in by our consent.
How can we be clear about the Church’s position if we continue to allow these people in our midst to claim to be Catholic, to the continued scandal and delusion of the public?
All Catholics need to know that the seriousness of abortion is so great that persisting in blatant public support of it without repentance is grounds for formal recognition of excommunication. Merely holding to a false teaching privately is error but not heresy; publicly advocating that sin and falsehood, enabling it, IS heresy, and grounds for excommunication. How much more so is all this in reference to abortion, which is not merely a major point of doctrine that harms the unity of Catholic Truth, but also the actual murder of defenseless innocents?
Please let me know if and why you do not agree.
