Posted on 06/13/2004 2:03:13 PM PDT by narses
SPOKANE, Wash. -- If Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry were to attend Mass at a Spokane-area Catholic Church, he should be given Communion, Bishop William Skylstad said Thursday.
The sacrament should not be used as a weapon, Skylstad said in a message to parishioners.
Several Catholic leaders around the country have said either that they would not give Communion to Kerry, who is Catholic and supports abortion rights, or that Kerry should not attempt to take Communion. The Catholic Church is opposed to abortion.
"Eucharist is God's gift to us, God's presence among us," Skylstad, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in Thursday's Inland Register newspaper, distributed to Catholics in his diocese. "I strongly oppose using Eucharist as a weapon."
The other two Catholic leaders in Washington state, Seattle Archbishop Alex Brunett and Yakima Bishop Carlos Sevilla, have not made public statements on the issue. Brunett was not immediately available for comment Thursday, his office said. Sevilla was in Rome meeting with the pope, according to his office.
Earlier this year, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would not give the sacrament to Kerry because of the abortion issue. Other bishops have said Kerry should not attempt to take Communion, but would not be denied the sacrament if he did. Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Colo., extended a similar warning to those who vote for Catholic politicians who make policy contrary to church teaching.
Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is leading a bishops' task force on the issue. The task force is expected to give a progress report on its work at the U.S. bishops' closed-door, national retreat in Denver starting next Monday.
Skylstad noted that his view is shared by Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the conference of bishops; McCarrick, and Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh.
In his message to parishioners, Skylstad made clear he remains opposed to abortion.
"The church teaches consistently that human life is to be cherished and protected against threats, particularly the lives of those most vulnerable: the pre-born; the ill; the aged; the poor," Skylstad wrote.
Catholics should use the political system to express their values, he said.
"I believe we are called to persuade, not to bludgeon," he said. "We should be political, without being partisan.
"Our concern is the common good, not the advancement of the agenda of a particular political party," he said. "We can persuade without drawing lines in the sand and daring others to cross."
Here is the legacy of Abp. Hunthausen. Here is the Modern AmChurch embracing abortion loving politicians. These same people invited Al Gore here four years ago and held showings of the Vagina Monologues on Church property (Gonzaga U.). The scandals rolling out of Spokane rival Boston and Los Angeles. Oh yeah, here is the next President of the USCCB. Tears form at the thought.
Truly. The only consolation the damned must have is knowing they get to trod for infinity on the skulls of those who led them astray.
Well, it's definitely not helping John Kerry, so why waste it?
That could be applied here as well.
No doubt the Church is flourishing in the area, as it is in so much of California.
Those who condone sinning (the killing of the unborn) cannot be in a State of Grace. It's like condoning murder.
Skylstad is using Holy Communion as a political tool!
Read GRAMSCI!
< excerpted >
...E. Both Capitalism and Judaeo-Christian culture must be destroyed before a Communist revolution can succeed
......1. Religious sentiment cannot be destroyed through legislation, as Lenin believed, but must be redirected from the divine to the state
.........a. Terror will only drive Religion underground
.........b. Religion will then reemerge when Leninism fails
.........c. So Religion must be destroyed in the minds of men
......2. Infiltrate religious academies and become priests and clergymen
.........a. Subtly promote heresy within religious organizations
.........b. Infiltrators must act so as to discredit the church
............(1) Cause financial and sexual scandals
............(2) See that this is given a high profile in the news
............(3) Like-minded infiltrators in the media will cooperate
......3. Once religion is discredited from within, continuously promote the idea that only the state can solve the problems that have been traditionally brought before the church
...F. When propagating revolutionary ideas, cloak them in polite terms
......1. National Consensus
......2. Popular Mandate
......3. National Pacification
......4. Pluralism
......5. Global Community
......6. Economic Justice
......7. Economic Democracy
......8. Liberation Theology
......9. Direct Action
This is so stupid.
Go ahead and give Kerry the communion. If a church is going to withhold it for him, then it would be hypocritical to give it to other 'willing sinners' too.
classic liberal catholic cr*p... equalize the killing of the unborn with taxing the middle class to support the poor. arrrggggg.
I could look it up in Dante's Inferno. He peopled that place with lots of clerics.
The only thing the American Bishops seem to agree on was allowing the Continued abuse of children over four or five decades and keeping the crimes hidden in secret files from the proper authorities.
"The road to hell is paved with the Skulls of Bishops", someone once said and it is true today.
Yes, it could apply here. Unfortunately, my remark on the topic of ambiguity and confusion was meant to point out that it is Bishops like Skylstad (a known menace to Catholicism) who deliberately speak with forked and ambiguous tongue.
I visited Seattle a few years ago; wasn't able to 'hunt up' the local approved Tridentine Rite and just went to the nearest RC Mass. The best I can say about it is that I did not feel compelled to get up and walk out....
Truly a perversion of the facts, uttered by a slimeball.
Just for fun, go back and read the English translation of today's Sequence, Lauda Sion. Get about 75% of the way through and see if you can't hear the faint but clear echo of Canon 915 coming through St. Thomas' poetry.
Sorry, Bzzzzzt.
Kerry, a Senator, has a WHOLE lot more influence on abortion than (likely) you or I do. We can't vote to fund it, authorize it, or encourage it.
Thus, we have a different case than the individual who is discreetly boinging his neighbor's wife.
Of course, they will eat and drink damnation to themselves equally. But the case of a public official who is also persistently and flagrantly violating Church teaching on this most basic issue demands a response.
Persons who are in a state of serious sin are not supposed to be receiving communion anyway.
I don't really see any "hypocrisy" involved. Publicaly supporting abortion is serious sin. Persons who support abortion shouldn't be taking communion, period. If they happen to have been supporting abortion vehemently from the floor of the U.S. Senate for years, and are now running for the Presidency on the Democratic ticket ... all the more reason not to be taking communion.
That's just basic Catholicism; any Catholic kid past the age of 8 years ought to know it. The fact that Kerry thinks "Pope Pius XXIII" teaches he can do otherwise demonstrates that his religion is so important to John Kerry that he doesn't know the first thing about what it teaches, and is mostly just a giant phony.
Oh, and while I'm on the subject of "giant phonies," there's also Bishop Skylstad ...
I have to respectfully disagree with you here. You'd surely agree that such an individual shouldn't be receiving communion. But not only that, if the minister of the sacrament is aware that someone is living in a state of manifest public sin (e.g., he knows this individual is shacking up with his neighbor's wife on an ongoing basis), he, the minister, is permitted to deny the sacrament and encouraged to do so by canon law.
The situations really aren't very different.
Even the Mysteries of Eleusis were denied murderers.
Abortion, it's just murder.
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