The Other McCain

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Under the New Pope’s Teaching, Should Pelosi and Biden Be Ex-Communicated?

Posted on | March 21, 2013 | 30 Comments

Before he became Pope Francis, the Argentine cardinal’s doctrine would have excluded Vice President Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from Communion. Father Shenan J. Boquet president of Human Life International explains:

While we cannot know what is truly in someone’s heart, all too often political or other high-profile figures who profess to be members of the Catholic faith give rise to scandal when they publicly promote intrinsic evils such as abortion, euthanasia, the redefinition of marriage, and contraception–several of which have been championed by Vice President Biden and Rep. Pelosi throughout their political careers.
As Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, taught in the 2007 ‘Aparecida Document,’ the responsibility of legislators, heads of governments to not receive Holy Communion while engaged in “deeds or words against the commandments, particularly when abortion, euthanasia, and other grave crimes against life and family are encouraged” is a very serious one.
Both Mr. Biden and Mrs. Pelosi are in grave violation of this principle, as neither have so far publicly shown fidelity to the Church on these issues, and both have opposed the Church whenever her teachings conflicted with their anti-life and anti-family ideology.

Myself, I’m Protestant, but if I were Catholic, I’d expect the Pope to stand up to these progressive secularists calling themselves Catholic.

What’s the point in even having a Pope, if he doesn’t ex-communicate a few prominent heretics now and then?

 

Category: Catholics, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi

Comments

30 Responses to “Under the New Pope’s Teaching, Should Pelosi and Biden Be Ex-Communicated?”

  1. FRONTIERATT
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:15 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Under the New Pope’s Teaching, Should Pelosi and Biden Be Ex-Communicated? http://t.co/EOWyKrPi7i #TCOT

  2. tcw62
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:18 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Under the New Pope’s Teaching, Should Pelosi and Biden Be Ex-Communicated? http://t.co/EOWyKrPi7i #TCOT

  3. Dan Collins
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:24 pm

    They already are excommunicated. http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/abortio2.htm The question is, will the Pope make pastors make this explicit, by denying them Communion? It is fraudulent for them to claim to be Catholics, because they are perfectly aware of this fact, however they may like to deny that that is the doctrine. I hope the Pope does not permit this charade to continue.

  4. m.tullius cicero
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:32 pm

    YES1

  5. mite72
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:42 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Under the New Pope’s Teaching, Should Pelosi and Biden Be Ex-Communicated? http://t.co/EOWyKrPi7i #TCOT

  6. rmnixondeceased
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:48 pm

    We argued about this last evening over grappa … you favor excommunication while I favor execution a la St. Joan of Arc … the proper treatment of heretics … (I view all protestants as schismatics and not heretics)

  7. richard mcenroe
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:58 pm

    Early days….

  8. richard mcenroe
    March 21st, 2013 @ 2:59 pm

    Sadly, executing abortionists the way they execute foetuses would qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.

  9. ThomasD
    March 21st, 2013 @ 3:02 pm

    Dan, you are correct that, by their acts, they are excommunicated latae sententia, no further action on that part is required of the Church. However they do remain Catholic, Baptism is a one-time-only-time Sacrament and can never be undone. (Yes, we may renew our Baptismal vows at Easter and other times, but this is in no way another Baptism.)

    The Pope should direct their Bishops to contact them directly, make their status clear, and offer them a path to reconciliation. In the absence of such the Bishops should communicate to their parishes that what was once occult is now public, and they cannot partake of the Sacraments.

  10. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 21st, 2013 @ 3:18 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSUAAKFLoL0 They don’t do burnings at the stake anymore. We are too civilized for that.

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 21st, 2013 @ 3:19 pm

    http://www.examiner.com/article/abortionist-on-trial-this-baby-is-big-enough-to-walk-around-with-me We are way beyond such attrocities now…

  12. Patrick Carroll
    March 21st, 2013 @ 3:28 pm

    You can determine their beliefs by their actions.

    Whatever else they may be, they’re not Roman Catholics.

  13. Adjoran
    March 21st, 2013 @ 4:42 pm

    The problem with withholding communion is that the priest or Eucharistic minister has no way of knowing at the moment the person comes to receive the Host whether or not they have reconciled already. They may have confessed to another priest in the booth or even in the parking lot, you cannot know, so it is a matter of honor not to present yourself to receive the Host if you do not qualify.

    And we all know how much honor Pelosi and Biden have, don’t we?

    It would be appropriate for their parish priest or even Bishop to counsel them, but the same quandary will always be there in the communion line. In any case, such matters are to be kept private and confidential, they are not for public debate.

  14. Peter Ingemi
    March 21st, 2013 @ 4:57 pm

    The problem here is not so much excommunicated which they have already done to themselves.

    The problem is the 2nd mortal sin of receiving holy communion while not in a state of grace.

    Catholics are forbidden to receive the body or blood of Christ if they are in a state of Mortal sin. While the act of receiving the body or blood of Christ in itself remits venial sin, the act of receiving without first sacramental confession is itself an act of moral sin leading to the same fate.

    Thus withholding communion is not a punishment, it is a kindness designed to prevent further mortal sin and damage to the soul.

    Personally I don’t think they believe but naturally all people are subject to sin and temptation and people tend to be vunerable to different sins. if Pelosi and Biden for example would actually like to change but are afraid or struggling with temptation it is the job of the church to help them beat this sin.

    They have the rest of their lives to figure it out…after that they’re on their own.

  15. t-dahlgren
    March 21st, 2013 @ 5:16 pm

    No, the acts which excommunicated them were public acts, absolution must likewise be public.

    “…excommunication latæ sententiæ may be either public or occult. It is public through the publicity of the law when it is imposed and published by ecclesiastical authority; it is public through notoriety of fact when the offence that has incurred it is known to the majority in the locality, as in the case of those who have publicly done violence to clerics, or of the purchasers of church property. On the contrary, excommunication is occult when the offence entailing it is known to no one or almost no one. The first is valid in the forum externum and consequently in the forum internum; the second is valid in the forum internum only. The practical difference is very
    important. He who has incurred occult excommunication should treat himself as excommunicated and be absolved as soon as possible, submitting to whatever conditions will be imposed upon him, but this only in the tribunal of conscience; he is not obliged to denounce himself to a judge nor to abstain from external acts connected with the exercise of jurisdiction, and he may ask absolution without making himself known either in confession or to the Sacred Penitentiaria. According to the teaching of Benedict XIV (De synodo, X, i, 5), “a sentence declaratory of the offence is always necessary in the forum externum, since in this tribunal no one is presumed to be excommunicated unless convicted of a crime that entails such a penalty”. Public excommunication, on the other hand, is removed only by a public absolution; when it is question of simple publicity of fact (see above), the absolution, while not judicial, is nevertheless public, inasmuch as it is given to a known person and appears as an act of the forum externum.”

    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm

  16. jakee308
    March 21st, 2013 @ 5:50 pm

    They should at least be denied Holy Communion. (if they ask for it).

  17. rmnixondeceased
    March 21st, 2013 @ 6:01 pm

    I’ve ordered a HUGE pair of cranial forceps …

  18. Mike
    March 21st, 2013 @ 6:56 pm

    Since you are a Protestant, you may not understand that refusing Communion is a call by the Local Bishop, not the Pope.

  19. Rich P
    March 21st, 2013 @ 7:37 pm

    Stacy, great post! I became an inactive Catholic the day they gave Ted Kennedy a catholic funeral and mass (please spare me the notion that we don’t know if he had reconciled for his sins, he didn’t). The church speaks volumes about the sanctity of the family, but its leaders refuse to hold public officials to the same standards that they would hold on me. I’m ashamed to have had Biden and Pelosi considered my Catholic brethren. By refusing to hold them to their Catholic tenants, they release all of us from ours. I’ll consider returning to the Church when people are held accountable.

  20. Dana
    March 21st, 2013 @ 7:59 pm

    The link from EWTN takes the interpretation of Canon 1398 further that most would. Canon Law 1398 reads, “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.” A politician who worked to keep abortion legal and available would still not fit the definition of having procured a completed abortion.

    The question isn’t whether Pope Francis will take these steps; the question is why the Most Reverend W Francis Malooly, the Bishop of Wilmington, or his predecessor, the Most Reverend Michael Saltarelli, his predecessor, did not take that step. The Diocese of Wilmington is fairly large geographically — it encompasses the Eastern Shore portion of Maryland as well as all of Delaware — but Joe Biden is a member of a parish in the immediate suburbs of Wilmington.

  21. Dana
    March 21st, 2013 @ 8:05 pm

    In most parishes of any size — including even in my small parish — there will be more than one line to approach to receive the Host. We have only a couple hundred parishioners on any given Sunday Mass, and half of them receive the Host from a Eucharistic minister, not the pastor. You start to get into questions of whether the priest would either stop the Eucharistic minister, or prohibit him previously, from offering the Host to a particular communicant.

    Let’s be honest: the priest doesn’t want to make a scene.

  22. t-dahlgren
    March 21st, 2013 @ 8:31 pm

    One could also look beyond their actions regarding particular laws and the question of whether those actions render them knowing and willful accomplices, and instead look to their repeated misrepresentations regarding the Church, and their own chosen political position on abortion.

    Heresy being defined as the obstinate denial of any truth of the Church.

    Simply put, one cannot publicly maintain that it is possible to be pro-choice and a Catholic in good standing.

    http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=691

  23. Dana
    March 21st, 2013 @ 8:35 pm

    Oh, I absolutely agree that they aren’t good Catholics; I don’t see them as Catholics at all. I’m simply stating that Canon 1398 isn’t written in such a maner as to include their actions.

  24. t-dahlgren
    March 21st, 2013 @ 8:53 pm

    The priest would not have to make a scene, he could simply offer a blessing, same as he would for any non-Catholic, who may be in attendance. At that point it would be the excommunicant making the scene.

  25. t-dahlgren
    March 21st, 2013 @ 9:31 pm

    I am not a Canon lawyer, neither are you. The law is, like all bodies of law, interpreted as a whole. To point to a single Canon as determinative in this matter is neither proper nor accurate. Cannon 1329 may very well apply as the common practice of ‘medically’ performed abortion would not occur except in the presence of legal sanction.

    An argument can be made that If, within the legislative domain of the above mentioned politicians, even one abortion would not have occurred in the absence of current legal sanction, then they are as a matter of Canon law accomplices to any of those abortions.

  26. Wombat_socho
    March 21st, 2013 @ 10:05 pm

    Malooly’s already publicly warned Biden to quit talking out of his ass, although as a bishop he used much more polite language.

  27. Wombat_socho
    March 21st, 2013 @ 10:08 pm

    Just because other people are idiots doesn’t mean we should follow their example. Your soul is your own responsibility, and saying “But Biden did thus and so” ain’t going to get you off the hook. Come back to the Church. Try one of the Eastern Rite churches – the music is better and the icons are to die for. 😉

  28. SDN
    March 21st, 2013 @ 11:22 pm

    Ye are neither spirit nor spark,” he said; “ye are neither book nor brute —
    Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man’s repute.
    I’m all o’er-sib to Adam’s breed that I should mock your pain,
    But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again.
    Get hence, the hearse is at your door — the grim black stallions wait —
    They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late!
    Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed — go back with an open eye,
    And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
    That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one —
    And. . .the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!”

  29. DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Under the New Pope’s Teaching, Should Pelosi and Biden Be Excommunicated?
    March 22nd, 2013 @ 2:33 am

    […] The Other McCain raises a good point. […]

  30. youbetterbelieveit
    March 24th, 2013 @ 10:36 pm

    Confidential? Really? They blatantly preach pro abortion and this is confidential?