A Corrective Warning.
We started off to comment on a couple of newsworthy items from the Catholic news sphere the other day but like a lot of things here, we only got to one, the recent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's wedding. We posted on that, we'd note, on a companion blog, which is where we intended and still more or less intend to comment on another thing, which was a recent change in Canon Law regarding punishments under the law for certain things.
The latter item created quite an odd stir on the Internet for reasons that are really unclear. That was what the second post was going to more or less deal with.
Since that time, however, something we've dealt with here before has come up as a major news story, that being the almost certain move of Catholic Bishops to deny politicians the reception of the Eucharist if they publicly support abortion. This is in the news as it will impact the President, Joe Biden.
For sincere Catholics this news is both way overdue and the reaction to it incredibly surprising. It's also had the impact of smoking out liberal cafeteria Catholics whose attachment to their faith is tempered by their politics and world view.
To start off with, the Catholic faithful have long wondered why Catholic Bishops allow politicians to take the wishy washy "I'm personally opposed to abortion but. . ." cop out.
The entire matter, as Canon Lawyer Edward Peters noted on, of course, Twitter seems pretty canonically clear. Hence the surprise on the Captain Renault like "shocked shocked" reaction some liberal Catholics have been all atwitter with.
Here's the basics of it.
Catholics believe that every human being, no matter their condition or state in life, have a right to lift and that killing a human is homicide. This is the case whether or not a person is young or old, health or ill, intelligent or unintelligent, physically fit or dramatically impaired.
And it applies whether a person is born, or not. Catholics believe that a person's right to life is absolute, tempered only by the right of self defense.
Indeed, the last time the Church made news on this was when the Church modified the Catechism to provide that penal institutions and measurements had improved so much over the years that the death penalty was no longer morally justified. This caused Catholic trads to be all atwitter in some instances.
That, however, was a mere development in a direction that Pope St. John Paul II had started decades ago.
The current controversy isn't even a new development in anything. Catholics have held that abortion is infanticide since ancient times. The sin has been regarded as so serious in more modern times that technically Canon Law precludes a confessor from forgiving it, requiring a Bishop to do that. However, in many places, including the United States, the Church also has recognized that the sin is so common that this was unworkable and Bishops have extended permission to all confessors to forgive it. A few years ago the Pope did that for the entire church worldwide, although I'm not up to speed on the current status that.
The Church has also always had a doctrine regarding "cooperation with evil". Generally, "remote cooperation with evil" is regarded as inevitable. But direct open cooperation with evil can be a mortal sin. For example, the driver of a getaway car in a robbery can't take the position that he's only a driver. He's assisting in a great sin.
Perhaps more illustratively, selling a handgun over the counter to somebody who intends to commit murder with it isn't a sin at all, if you have no knowledge of what he intends to do with it. But if a person specifically asks for somebody to provide a gun for a murder, a person can't morally do it.
This gets us to our current topic. The Church's concepts in this area, many of which tend not to be fully fleshed out, have long held that where politicians directly cooperate in an evil, just like where anyone else does, they bear moral responsibility for it and can be denied Communion.
For example, during the 1960s when desegregation was taking place, the Bishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Bishop Joseph Rummel, took the position that segregation was a great evil and, in 1962, excommunicated three Catholics in the diocese for organizing protests against desegregation in the diocese. More correctly the excommunications were for defying Church authority. Two of the three recanted and were then reinstated to communion with the Church.
All of that is instructive as actions of this type are designed to be corrective, not punitive. The thought is that a person is committing a great sin and the action is necessary to instruct them in that fact in a way that can't be ignored.
That's the thought here.
It's openly and obviously the case that Catholic politicians who have openly allowed for advanced positions that the Church has regarded as gravely evil should have correction long ago. Conservative Catholics have long argued for this, but many rank and file Catholics have been baffled by it as well. Now its going to happen.
Liberal Catholics, in many instances, are having a fit, but they ought to stop and pause for a moment. It's always been accepted by the Catholic Church that to be a Catholic wasn't going to win you any friends. On the contrary, Christ warned and the Church still holds that it would instead draw to you abuse. It's expected that to be a Catholic, and holding the tenants of the Faith seriously, means you'll lose friends, family and even up to your life in some circumstances. No "health and wealth" gospel here. Not by a long shot.
The Church, in may people's views, should have taken this step long ago. However, the thought seems to have been that there was a fear that taking it would drive people in this category further away. The risk, on the other hand, was what the title of one of the linked in items below notes, that being scandal.
Now it seems that the Church has finally reached the point where its decided to do what many faithful Catholics in the pews have urged be done for many years, that being to deny Communion, which is not the same we'd note as Excommunication, to public figures who are openly and obviously assisting an evil.
Some Catholics who take a liberal view of theology are now busy making what amount to real misstatements about the Church's theology. I saw, for example, somebody who represented themselves as a CCD teacher noting that to be a Catholic doesn't mean accepting Humane Vitae. Oh, yes, it does. What being a Catholic means is that your life will be more difficult than others, including other Christians.
The Church, in taking this step, is taking it, at a point in which in some parts of the globe, as is often noted, the Church has been in decline. It's rarely noted that its expanding at an exponential rate elsewhere. Where its in decline are in those areas where it has sought to accommodate the world the most. The parts of the Church internally that have grown the most in recent years are those parts everywhere which are the most observant. That's a lesson for every organization everywhere, but the irony of this act now, which really won't occur until at least the end of the year, is that the times actually give liberty for the Church to take the action. If it doesn't win the Church secular friends, it doesn't have any, anyway. And if it causes those who have light attachments to the Church's teachings to be upset, perhaps they should deeply consider the nature of a Pearl of Great Price, and if they expected to win Heaven easily.
And if it seems that the Church is now out of sink with the World, well, it's never been in sink with it ever. When its been most in sink with it, things have not gone well for the Church. . . or the world.
Will Biden recant? Or Pelosi? That's hard to say. Decades of supporting grave evil will have built up a great pride that will be hard for them to overcome. But that they need to overcome it is at least a warning they need to receive. We can pray that they do. We can pray that everyone does.
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