Seems like if God agreed with The Church then the sacrament would simply remain a slug of wine and a nasty biscuit–no transformation, no sacrament, no harm, no foul…and He & The Big Guy can duke it out later…Or do I underestimate the power of The Church to determine who gets a one-on-one with The Creator?
From my brief indoctrination, choosing not to receive the sacrament is a problem, not choosing to do it in a state of sin. In that light, the Fathers of the church are remiss by forbidding his taking it.
Agreed; agreed; and agreed. I seem to have written the single most poorly-constructed post of my career if I’ve made you think I disagree with you on this one.
I was responding specifically to **Mockingbird’s ** blanket assertion that “Dogma is bad.” Trying to point out that dogma by its definition is content-nuetral; the church proclaims, and people either adhere, or they do not. Some times, if they do not agree, they move on to some other, more amenable, faith body (I’m an example of that one). Sometimes (lots of times, in America), they simply ignore those bits of doctrine with which they disagree.
I think Kerry has taken a most principled stand in his view on abortion. He has not avoided the issue, he’s addressed it directly. As a Catholic he is grieved by it; as a Christian he refuses to judge others for not foreswearing it; and as a public servant he refuses to impose his faith-based beliefs on his fellow citizens. He is living out the secular credo of separation of church and state as no other politician for major public office seems willing to do.
I found this story, but it seems that I conflated two meetings in my memory. Bush was actually badgering the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano, shortly after his meeting with the Pope (who did rebuke him about the war in Iraq).
What makes a religion “good” (or “bad”) is not doing what is best for its followers. The Church (by which I mean the RC Church), and churches in general, are not social service organizations (although obviously churches do quite a bit of this kind of stuff, it’s not their primary reason for existence).
What makes a religion “good” is how well it receives truth and communicates that truth to its followers. Naturally, this will be good for its followers (or at least the church, and the followers, in question believe so), but it’s secondary to the purpose of receiving and communicating truth.
When the Archbishop of Ottawa threatened Jean Chrétien with excommunication for advocating same-sex marriage, His Grace was essentially laughed off the stage.
Seeing as how Mr. Marc Balestrieri, the Catholic lawyer behind the suit, is based in Los Angeles, I wonder why he filed suit against John Kerry and not a more local, pro-choice Catholic – like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Well, *Roe v. Wade * made abortion a federal, and not a state issue, so one could argue that a Governor is powerless to affect the abortion issue while a US Senator or a US President is not. Nonetheless, it would be hard to imagine that Mr. Balestrieri’s actions are **NOT ** partisan in nature.
A question for everyone: How common is it for a pro-choice politician to say “I believe life begins at conception…”? I guess it depends on what the meaning of “life” is. Certainly no one would argue that a feuts in not alive, so unless you also attach some aspect of “personhood” to that definition, then it seem to me it is a completely a meaningless phrase.
Cue the voices from the fire below: “Ooh, that suit is just *so * not your color! And let me show you some products that will restore some life to that haircut. Can you *believe * who gets to run for President these days?”
For the record, I am not a practicing Catholic, I have not been a practicing Catholic for 25 years.
For a Catholic to choose to separate voluntarily from receiving the scraments is a problem. It is also a problem to present oneself for the sacraments while in a state of grave sin. It is also a problem for a priest to permit a Catholic in a state of grave sin to compound the sin by allowing one to receive the sacraments.
The remedy is repentence and absolution (and the priest can deny absolution if he believes the repentence is not genuine.)
Abortion is the deal-breaker for the Roman Catholic church. The church may feel that in some cases war can be justified, in some cases capital punishment may be justified, but the only justification for abortion is when a pregnancy directly threatens the life (not health, not cases of rape or incest, not severe deformity of the fetus) of the mother.
In fairness to the Roman Catholic church, let’s also note that other denominations do weird things, as well. Does anyone remember the Lutheran minister who was officially hauled up on charges for participating in a post-9/11 interfaith service in New York City with (gasp!) Muslims and Jews?
I personally know ministers of several Protestant denominations who refuse to perform marriages for divorced people.
At the church my wife grew up in, any non-member had to ask the minister for permission to receive communion (which wasn’t even a capital “S” sacrament in that denomination).
And let’s not forget that the Episcopal church in the United States is currently ripping itself apart over the issue of gay ministers.
Let the Catholics argue this out among themselves and let the rest of us choose between Kerry and Bush based on their qualifications.
The moment of transubstantiation occurs at the altar, not at the hands of the minister of the sacrament when conferring it upon the faithful. The sin of sacrilege occurs if the consecrated host is deliberately defiled; God doesn’t reach down and change the host back to mere bread to avoid such an event.
Your second paragraph is also incorrect. Receiving the sacrament of the eucharist while knowingly in a state of mortal sin is itself the sin of sacrilege.
So, might he be made to wear a scarlet ‘A’ or something? If this actually gets anywhere, which I doubt, the Church would seriously marginalize itself. And I think that’s part of why it won’t go through. The big reason is that I don’t think the Church wants to piss off the potential President.
Bricker, kunilou thank you. Glad I didn’t get all morally outraged in the process of asking the question
And I suppose walking away from The Church is not an option as the others are not quite as, erm, right? (keeping the Catholic perspective on all this, of course–it’s what Kerry is culturally so I imagine there’s not really some sort of spiritual safe house for Catholics who disagree with the dogma?
So how does someone who believes in his heart of hearts that his view is correct and OK in the eyes of God (Gallileo) reconcile this difference with The Church, which he believes just as strongly is wrong? Clearly, if you don’t consider yourself to be in a state of mortal sin, it would be a mortal sin to not commune, no? Even if you know The Church, in a state of error, disagrees with you.
I believe that the church thinks it is theoretically permissible, but the circumstances under which it is permissible are vanishingly rare in modern society. (That is, if there is a realistic ability to maintain a prisoner in prison for life, capital punishment is impermissible).
If this actually gets anywhere, which I doubt, the Church would seriously marginalize itself. And I think that’s part of why it won’t go through. The big reason is that I don’t think the Church wants to piss off the potential President.