Posted on 10/05/2005 6:31:15 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
LASALLE, October 5, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The effervescent Fr. John Walsh continues to bubble up into the pages of a Canadian media ever eager to highlight the divisions in the Catholic Church. According to a Canadian Press story, Fr.Walsh, still preaching his dogmas of tolerance and love for violators of God’s laws on his weekly phone-in show on CJAD radio, said that no matter what the authorities in Rome may decide, Prime Minister Paul Martin is welcome to receive communion in his Christian Community.
One of the many issues being discussed at the international bishops’ synod in Rome that is making headlines is a possible decision to refuse Communion to what the 1983 Code of Canon Law calls “manifest grave” sinners, including politicians who support abortion, gay “marriage” and other Catholic non-negotiables.
As Paul Martin’s occasional parish priest at St. Jean de Brebeuf “Christian Community” (known to Catholics as a “parish,”) Fr. Walsh garners much attention for his periodic and very public declarations of dissent from Roman Catholic teaching, particularly in his displays of affection for the homosexual political agenda.
“We can't use the Eucharist as a time . . . to judge a person's conscience by refusing them communion,” Rev. John Walsh told CJAD radio.
According to the Catholic Church, however, it is precisely the duty of a parish priest to make such judgments to avoid sacrilege and scandal. Fr. James Buckley, a consultant to American Life League said, “Prior to Vatican II priests were more conscious that the obligation of preventing public sinners from receiving communion rested on them. Today they hesitate.”
Fr. Buckley said, “Further, Canon Law 915 clearly prohibits public sinners from taking the Eucharist. Priests are not disciplining pro-abortion legislators when they enforce this Canon law; they are protecting the Eucharist from sacrilege.”
Archbishop William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the recently appointed head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, has asked the synod bishops to consider what steps ought to be taken to deal with the problem of politicians who vote contrary to the moral law. Levada quoted the synod’s working document, “Some Catholics do not understand why it might be a sin to support a political candidate who is openly in favor of abortion or other serious acts against life, justice and peace.”
However, Fr. Walsh has a more liberal view of things. “I think that we must look at the situation and say, ‘Are we respecting a person's conscience?’” asked Walsh, precisely following the logic of the Canadian bishops’ flawed 1968 Winnipeg Statement theology. That revolutionary statement, which elevated the status of personal conscience above a Christian’s obligation to act according to absolute truths as taught by the Church, has led many Canadian Catholics to justifty being involved, and often as leaders at all levels, in the spread of abortion, sexual liberation and just about everything else in the past few decades’ moral decline of the nation.
When Fr. Walsh announced in February that he was considering “marrying” homosexual partners, LifeSiteNews.com received a terse, “no comment” and dismissal from officials of the Montreal diocese. The diocese moreover has made no public statement of correction on the Church’s teaching regarding Fr. Walsh’s position on same-sex unions.
Sign of the times. Very sad.
That should be a new circle (via Dante).
“Prior to Vatican II priests were more conscious that the obligation of preventing public sinners from receiving communion rested on them. Today they hesitate.”
**
Well, of course. It would not be politically correct to judge, now would it? Sounds like Fr. Walsh needs to be defrocked.
Unfortunately, it needs to go even further. Catholic churches which continue to operate in a manner which mocks the Vatican and the Pope must be disallowed completely.
"“Prior to Vatican II priests were more conscious that the obligation of preventing public sinners from receiving communion rested on them. Today they hesitate.”"
Part of the hesitation is that the politicians aren't committing the sins but only deciding if the sin should be illegal.
For example, lying to wife to cover sleeping with another woman is a sin. Hopefully we all agree on that. now suppose I agree its a sin but don't vote to make it illegal. Should I be kicked out of my church?
The primary responsibility for straightening this heretic out falls on his bishop, who is apparently out to lunch.
The Catholic Church in Canada appears to be in worse shape than in the U.S. The province of Quebec, in particular, which used to be very Catholic, seems to have gone off the rails much like Europe.
This is a test for Benedict. I'm confident he will pass it with flying colours.
it's pronounced ABORTION...
The very soon to be former Fr. John Walsh.
I'm sure we ALL hope so!
The Vatican has a very, very small bureaucracy. It's as if the United States were run by a few hundred people. The Pope simply can't clamp down on every dissident, so he has to pick his cases. In this case, frankly, I'm more concerned by the behavior of the bishop than by this idiot priest. I wish Pope Benedict would remove a few of these derelict bishops.
If you want on/off the ping list let me and little jeremiah know.
Yep, ex-communicate his ass... Unfortunately, with a dearth of young men becoming priests today... There's no easy answer, but I see a time when the Catholic church falls. Young people don't go to church like years ago, and then when there kids growup without going. The cycle can only go like that for so many years
Perhaps young people don't go to church because they see large sections of the Church abandoning its fundamental beliefs?
An excellent point.
I've had the opportunity with the Knights of Columbus to talk to a number of current seminarians and young, newly ordained priests. The philosophically, they are more nearly like those priests that were ordained in the 1940s and 1950s than those in the 1960s and 1970s (Vatican II era). They are much more conservative and traditionalist - not like the do gooder social activist Marxists that had their heyday in the Church during the last 2 decades.
The current and immediate past Popes have done wonders regarding the pruning of those offshoots of Catholicism that is not nor could possibly be considered any part of Christ's Church.
And Fr. Walsh, well, maybe needs a long retreat.
If you have the power to prevent it but instead support it, then yes you should be removed. By your actions you are encouraging people to go to hell and that most definately puts you out of communion with Christ and the Church.
"If you have the power to prevent it but instead support it, then yes you should be removed. By your actions you are encouraging people to go to hell and that most definitely puts you out of communion with Christ and the Church."
Ok. But carry that to the logical end. Doesn't that mean that all sins should be illegal and that any lawmaker who disagrees with any sin being illegal gets denied communion?
What you'd be talking about is a total theocracy with the Catholic church as arbiter of what can be legal.
That would be bad.
I love the smell of excommunication in the morning.
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