Shouldn't they be excommunicated?

[estesbob]

I have no issue with a person supporting a woman’s choice to choose if that is their belief, I

I’ll have arknow problem with person supporting a woman’s right to choose either I do have a problem with a person supporting a mother’s right to kill her child.

 

[Matthias123]

The belief that we should never judge anyone is a demonic lie:

Never Judge Anyone

As just stated above, error has no dignity except as a possible motivator to lead us to truth. But if we are not confronted in our error, how can we be motivated to move toward truth?

St. Paul instructs us to judge:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead,… preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.—2 Timothy 4:2-4

We are to judge the teaching of teachers, the opinions of people, the attitudes and behaviors of people. If we don’t, then we allow sin and Satan to exploit the weak and ignorant and vulnerable with his lies.

We are to preach the Truth and rebuke those who assert error—not in an attitude of rock throwing or some sort of controlling self-righteousness, but in a loving attitude of helping the person return to God (2 Timothy 4:2). We are our brothers’ keepers (ref., Mark 12:31; Luke 10:25-37; Matthew 7:12; 18:23-35; Luke 6:31). We have a responsibility to warn and admonish our brethren in the faith, just as we have a responsibility to our blood-brothers to warn them when they go astray because we love them.

St. Paul to the Romans exhorted good Catholics to instruct one another (Romans 15:14). To instruct someone necessarily means to evaluate (another word for judge) the one to whom instruction is given.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states (No 1868): “… we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them: by (among several actions on our part) not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so.”

We cannot “disclose” a sin without first assessing (yet another word for judging) that the sin is in fact there in the first place.

In addition, one of the traditional seven Spiritual Works of Mercy is to “Admonish the sinner.”

Again, we cannot admonish that which we refuse to recognize in the sinner. We must make an assessment (judgment) that the person is sinning and thus “needs” admonishment.

All of this sometimes requires “tough love”.

Our model in this tough love is no less that Jesus Himself (who, contrary to popular opinion was not a 60’s flower child with flowers in his hair repeating a mantra of peace and love). Jesus preached a demanding love, a love so demanding that in some cases it would rip apart families:

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me."—Matthew 10:34-38

Truth cannot be compromised—even if it makes enemies of our relatives. Some people will not accept the truth and will hate those who preach it. Truth demands judgment; that is, truth demands we see things truthfully and to call things what they are. If we see sin or error, we must call it for what it is.

The Bible is filled with passages talking about how we are to judge others. Before listing some of those, first let us look at the kind of judgment we are not to do.

The most famous of the several “do not judge” passages are found at Matthew 7:1-3

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own…"

In this passage we see three kinds of judgment we are not to do:

1. Judgment of Condemnation:

  Judgment in this passage is referring to condemning ("pronouncing" judgment on a person’s soul). We are not the "Judge" to pronounce condemnation on anyone (not even ourselves). Only God can do that. The Church, for example, never pronounces "anyone" in hell. And even in the assessment of a person declared a saint, it is done by special dispensation granted to the Church by her authority of the "keys". But even with this authority, we need to note that it is never applied to judging a person in hell. If the Church, who has the authority of the keys will not judge a person to condemnation, how can we? We are never to judge a person’s state of soul. Jesus tells us that we will receive ourselves the judgment of soul that we place on others if we attempt this usurpation of God’s sovereignty.

1. Judgment from Double–Standards:

  When we use double–standards for judgment, apply one measure to others and a different measure to ourselves we commit a sin. Jesus says that we will not get by with that (a form of hypocrisy). The standards we apply to others will be applied to us as well.

1. Judgment from Self-Righteousness:

  The last sentence of the passage quoted refers to seeing sins in others but not in oneself. This is self-righteousness (another form of hypocrisy).

In this passage, Jesus does not say that we cannot judge. He says that we are not to judge in the manner of presuming condemnation on another or to make judgements borne from hypocrisy (double-standard & self-righteousness).

In verse 5 Jesus continues: You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

Taking the speck out of our brother’s eye is not condemned in itself. Hypocritical judgment is what Jesus condemns.

We can immediately see this is the meaning of these passages by going on to the very next verse:

Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you.

Dogs? Swine? How are we to know who is a dog or a swine? We cannot take Jesus’ advice, which is advice for self-protection (e.g. when Jesus said the swine will “turn to attack you”), if we do not judge a person, that is, to identify a person as a metaphorical “dog” or “swine.”

Who are the dogs and swine? Verse 15 gives us one clue when it talks about false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing. Verse 21 Jesus talks about people calling to him, “Lord, Lord” yet some of these will not enter heaven. They will not enter heaven because despite their calling upon the name of the Lord, they are people who refuse to do God’s will.

Verse 26 tells us more about these people. They are people who do not just fail to follow God’s will, but who actively disobey the teachings of Jesus and thus they build their house on sand (and that includes disobeying the Church, who has been given authority to speak infallibly and definitively in Jesus’ name to the faithful—when the Church speaks, Jesus speaks).

Throughout Scripture we are given examples of these dogs and swine and are repeatedly told to shun them, to avoid them, and even to kick them out of our community as to give them up to Satan.

In Matthew 10:13-14 Jesus tells the disciples to shake the very dust off their clothes of any city that refuses to listen to them. That requires a judgment.

St. Paul in Titus 3:9-11 tells us to warn a heretic (divisive person) twice and then have nothing more to do with him because such a person is “perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned.” We don’t condemn him, he condemns himself, but we do judge him to be divisive beyond tolerance because we tried to admonish him (judge his behavior and warn him of his sin) twice but he would not repent.

St. Paul commands us in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 to not associate with people calling themselves Christians who are “guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber—not even to eat with such a one.”

Then Paul actually says and confirms in black and white language in verse 12 without any shades of gray that we are to judge our fellow Christians (but interestingly to not to judge those outside of the church): “Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside.”

We are our brother’s keeper and if we love, we will admonish a brother in sin or error.

St. Paul also tells us in 2 Timothy 3:1-9 that we are to avoid people who are “holding to a form of religion but denying the power of it” (e.g., liberals who strip our Church of its sacramental power). Other we are to avoid include those who are “Lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…”.

And finally, St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 that some people must be excommunicated—completely removed from fellowship and handed over to Satan. Paul specifically says, “I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing… you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

This form of judgment (excommunication), by the way, is one reserved to the Church and is not a personal judgment exacted by the faithful.

Jesus, Himself, calls for this formal judgment on the part of the Church in Matthew 18:15-18.

As we have seen, the idea we are not to judge is a lie.

We cannot judge a person’s state of soul, of course. We cannot condemn him. We are also not to judge out of hypocrisy.

But we are to make proper judgments, borne out of love, to admonish a sinner in order to encourage him to repentance. That is the goal, to save the sinner’s soul, to lead him to repentance.

We are to make judgments of behavior, attitudes, and ideas in order to protect our loved-ones and ourselves from danger. People who practice such dangerous and sinful behaviors, or have such dangerous attitudes and ideas, we are to avoid. We cannot avoid them until and unless a judgment has been made that such people are of the type the Bible tells us to avoid.

The idea we are not to judge is a doctrine of demons.

Satan would love us to avoid making judgments. If he can convince us of this, sin can abound without criticism and we could continue in our sin without accountability and the philosophies of Satan can contaminate all of us with impunity unchecked and unchallenged.

Oh, how Satan loves those who think we are not to judge and those who think Jesus was a love-freak hippie from the 60’s.

Article credited to Bro. Ignatius Mary OLSM

saint-mike.org/spcdc/library/secret.asp

 

[sanctamaria17]

You can judge actions but not the person. Christ did speak about that.

I don’t think we can judge the state of Pelosi’s (or any politician’s) soul. I have a hard time thinking that any politician finds it easy. How do we know they DON’T pray about political matters or that they haven’t been to Confession agonizing over their decisions? How do we know they don’t believe abortion is right, but feel that we can’t tell others (many of them being non-Catholics) what to do? Or that they feel it’s a religious issue but not a political one? I think they need our prayers more than our judgments.

Seriously, I’m pro-life but the world of politics is not as black and white as we’d like to think. Even “pro-life” politicians would rather support measures only restricting abortion, not making it illegal (since they do believe it should be allowed at least in cases of rape/incest/maternal health).Many of them do want to reduce abortion, not through legislation, but through measures that would get rid of the causes for abortion, which would get rid of actual abortion.

This is why I’m never going into the field of politics. Of course, another Catholic friend and I joke how we never want to be “the man” but would rather stick it to “the man”. We want to help in the social sphere against abortion because it’s only then that the political sphere would follow. Small scale, then grand scale. Until then, politicians and others won’t consider anything simply because we’ll be the “crazy, judgmental religious (sanctimoniously, not sincerely) nuts” and sadly, there are pro-lifers who prove them right.

 

[Newbie2]

Most likely she IS (and the rest of 'em are) actually excommunicated already.

Most people who wilfully go seriously against Catholic teaching as she has and they have incur automatic excommunication, which needs no other person to pronounce it for it to be so.

But in practice isn’t that sort of a “paper” excommunication? Isn’t the person who receives that sort of automatic excommunication still able to go to communion, confession ,etc. and receive the graces of the sacrament?

 

[FRATER_PAVLVS]

Imagine what headlines there will be!

Not so long ago Rowan Archbishop of Canterbury Williams gave a hazy lection on integrating elements of Islamic law into the national legislation or so and there was a storm of reaction, mostly negative, amplified by the media. And the guy got trodden upon thoroughly. Because negative stuff looks better on the news. So there’s a risk.

 

[StCsDavid]

Yet the Catholic Church allows Pelosi, and others to receive communion

I would say the biggest failing falls on the Bishop of San Francisco who gives his approval to Madam Speaker’s actions by his stark silence. Rumor has it he plans to publish an article in the local Catholic newspaper in September. Why he is waiting to speak out is a mystery; however, I suspect there are some local politics in play.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Yes there should be a public and formal declaration of excommunication. That way the politicians cannot deny it (although some will continue to deny it). In fact, there is a call here for a petition drive here to excommunicate the Governor of Michigan. I wrote about it on my blog under:

Is it time to Excommunicate “Catholic” Politicians and Other “Catholics”

It will only take one Bishop to start the ball rolling. When that happens, I have a feeling that more come in short order.

 

[mlchance]

I don’t know how charitable it is to talk about one person and their morality like that. I mean, our Lord never condemned nor did he condone, he simply forgave.

That’s not true. Jesus Christ once referred to his enemies as “white-washed tombs” and called them children of the devil. Those are certainly words of condemnation.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[FightingFat]

“And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgement, to serve and not to be served.”

Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gadium et Spes, Promulgated by his Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965. Paragraph 3.

 

[mlchance]

“And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgement, to serve and not to be served.”

Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gadium et Spes, Promulgated by his Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965. Paragraph 3.

Quite true, but those wonderful words do nothing to erase Jesus’ very real words of condemnation from the Gospels.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[FightingFat]

Quite true, but those wonderful words do nothing to erase Jesus’ very real words of condemnation from the Gospels.

– Mark L. Chance.

So what are you saing Mark? Are you saying that we should condemn other people? That we should judge other people? Is it that you’re saying He did, in fact, sit in judgement on people when He was on earth and that means that we should also? It doesn’t suprise me to be honest from reading your posts before, but I do struggle to see your perspective, my brother in Christ, because it does seem to me to be rather out of kilter with what the Church teaches. For example Raniero Cantalamessa (ever heard of him?) states in his work Contemplating the Trinity:

The divine perichoresis is the path to true unity that we should follow in the church. St. Paul indicates its foundation when he says that we are “individually members of one another” (Romans 12:5). The perichoresis in God is based on the unity of nature, and in us on the fact that we are “one body and one spirit” (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-13).

The apostle helps us to understand what it means in practice to live the perichoresis, or mutual interdependence: “if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12:26); “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). The “burdens” of others are sickness, limitations, anxieties, and even defects and sins. Living out the perichoresis means “identifying ourselves” with others, to walk, as we say, in their shoes, to seek first to understand rather than to judge.

In the Trinity, every Person speaks well of the others, and this reminds us of the exhortation from St. James, “Do not speak evil against one another, bethren” (4:11). There is only one “place” in the world where the rule of “love your neighbour as yourself” is perfectly put into practice, and that is the Trinity! Every divine Person loves the others as himself.

pages 17- 18.

Now bearing in mind that the Trinity is the centre and focus of Theology, those words seem fairly commanding- do not judge and try and be a brother to all men, to walk in their shoes, to understand their pain and NOT to judge them!

 

[Claudius]

People excommunicate themselves- excommunication means you’ve put yourself outside the Churches ability to save you- you’re heading for disaster (as Lily said). A formal excommunication is just the Church letting you know!!

Our Bishops should formally and publically excommunicate them. We should all treat them as public sinners and shun them. They do not deserve the name of Christian.

 

[rwoehmke]

Our Bishops should formally and publically excommunicate them.

And the effect? In this country, it would cement their ties with the general public. Excommunication might be called for, but will it be effective? My guess is no. It might reign in a politician or two, but most will effectively use it to beat up the Church and actually gain more votes. This is a very perverse society. .

 

[Pinkyyy]

We all sin - it’s up to her priest/bishop to excommunicate her - not us. Personally, I don’t really care that much (sorry to say) because she is pro-life and willing to vote that way - that’s pretty much what I care about. She can say what she wants, as long as she votes against roe v wade - that’s all I care about.

 

[Claudius]

And the effect? In this country, it would cement their ties with the general public. Excommunication might be called for, but will it be effective? My guess is no. It might reign in a politician or two, but most will effectively use it to beat up the Church and actually gain more votes. This is a very perverse society. .

The effects will be many but there are two that I would like to point out. The immediat effect is that all faithful Catholics will know that our Bishops are not going to cave into political presure. Government running the Church is a heresy. We will know that we can oppose Polosi and those like here openly and to her face. We can tell her she is not a Catholic and the Church will agree with us the same as we can now call the husband of Terry Shivo “not a Catholic” with a clear conscience.

You have a point. She will attack the Church and the world will love her for it. But we are not in a popularity contest here. We are called to be holy, not popular.

What if they start throwing Catholic to the lions again? Will you then leave the Church to not be eaten? We suffer nothing compared to our Christian forefathers.

In this matter Excommunication would be a very effective tool for the Church to use.

Also, if we love Polosi, if we really love her, we want her to be excommunicated so that she can repent and see that what she did is wrong. We should be wanting her to go to heaven, not just to get along with Church officials but not believe. If she does not believe that the things that Church teaches are true and does not live her life as Christ has commanded, we MUST excommunicate her for her own good.

These excommunications of Polosi and the like will be ignored by some, and will increase the fame and depravity of some but it will bring some back. Everyone that it brings back will be a soul that we will save from hell because we had the courage to tell them that they are not Catholic so that they could amend their lives.

If we really love these people, our fallen brother and sister and want to help them, we must excommunicate them and set an example before the world that the Catholic Church must be Holy.

 

[Claudius]

We all sin - it’s up to her priest/bishop to excommunicate her - not us. Personally, I don’t really care that much (sorry to say) because she is pro-life and willing to vote that way - that’s pretty much what I care about. She can say what she wants, as long as she votes against roe v wade - that’s all I care about.

You are right, we do all sin and it is up to the Bishops to excommunicate her but there is a difference here.

If a Catholic sins, they should understand that what they did is wrong and do as the Church teaches to make amends for the sin through confession and paenence.

That is not the situation that Polosi is in. She is sinning but thinks that what she is doing is correct and that the Church is somehow wrong. She is telling other that the Church is wrong and that she is right. She is peaching sin. As such, since she does not believe the things that the Church teaches to be true and does not live her life as Christ commands and indeed has made herself the enemy of the Church, she and all the anti-Catholic “catholic” politicians need to be excommunicated so that faithful Catholics do not mistakenly begin to believe that this is ok and allowed within the Church.

 

[mary_bobo]

All the publicity regarding Catholics who challenge the Church about abortion has now lead to an article in our paper today with headlines that one candidate is appealing to the Catholic vote by proudly proclaiming to be one. No matter that he is pro-abortion.

 

[maggiemay2u]

Ever read the parable of the Good Father (sometimes called the two brothers or the prodigal son) Luke 15:11-32 ?

That’s why.

Yes, I think we’ve all read it more than once or twice.

The glaring difference? The son damaged himself. He did it in a way that harmed no one but himself.

In the case of abortion, a politician has the grave responsibility to ensure the Constitution is followed. Life. All the other rights follow those four simple letters.

While three persons on the two major tickets acknowledge life begins at conception, only one is comfortable in snuffing that life out, as demonstrated by legislative action. The same is true of Madame Speaker, although she claims ambiguity as to when life begins.

What other “right” is so casually and publicly dismissed?

Madame Speaker has put this on the table. She has publicly flaunted her disregard for the laws of God and the Church, the harm she does is huge and widespread.

That, in a nutshell, is how I see the difference between the private acts of the prodigal son and the public proclamations on the evening news.