The Roman Catholic Church is NOT a democracy, especially not a democracy of non-Catholics.
What an absolutely absurd poll question!
Exactly why is Bill Clinton receiving communion in a Cathollic church? He should know freakin’ well that as a non-Catholic (non-Orthodox Christian) he is not to receive Catholic communion.
In the same way that I would refuse to answer this poll question (because it is a ridiculously irrelevant question), I abstain from taking communion in the Catholic church—simply because church doctrine states that I shouldn’t.
How utterly bizzare!
Non-Catholics polled about what the Catholic Church should do regarding a purely internal matter.
I am not a Catholic and even I find the arrogance of this question amazing.
That's like polling Atheists and being shocked to find that they don't believe in God.
Maybe they should have polled practicing catholics. The results would have been way different.
Yep. The thinking behind it is that truth can be determined by a majority vote, which of course is absurd.
The next poll question asked to 1000 adult Americans will be, “Do you agree with Jewish dietary regulations?”
The bishops however, are more likely to cave to political pressure (from the gay priest agenda, their democrat parishioners, their unions, and their friends in the liberal press. The bishops already, for example, have IGNORED their responsibility to have already done this excommunication and PUBLICIZED the excommunication for the democrats.
Having said that, the Catholic bishops are pushing/promoting/publishing/publicizing immigration “reform” to promote THEIR interests in the Spanish church (collection plate) over the real world interests of the United States as a democracy, a free nation, and its long-term public debt (schools, medicare, social security, welfare, hospitals, wages, jobs, etc.)
Absurd in terms of how the church deals with its members, yes. But there are implications here that people may be missing. JFK made a big deal that he was not "ruled from Rome," which was a concern at the time. For many years after, it was not a big issue with voters; recall that George Romney's Mormonism was not an issue in his campaign.
However, if the argument is that the Catholic Church will deny communion to any politician that does not legislate or execute laws according to Catholic doctrine, many voters will be concerned about voting for Catholics. Much of the non-Catholic public won't understand or believe that it will only apply to a few key issues, they'll see it as the Pope dictating American political postions. They could be influenced to believe that a Catholic politican will support the "Catholic position" on everything. At one time this was what many believed in the US, and it might not take much to return to those days.
Short term, this may affect issues that you care about. Long term, it may mean Catholics will have more difficulty getting elected. And what happens when a different Pope emphasizes a different part of Catholic theology - how to deal with immigrants or the poor, for instance?
Ok, flame away, but I think people haven't really looked ahead to the potential political issues.
>>The Roman Catholic Church is NOT a democracy, especially not a democracy of non-Catholics.
What an absolutely absurd poll question!<<
Yep, that’s internal religion matter protected by freedom of religion.
At the same time, people have a right to have polls about it.
The only place I have a problem is if the churches act as political organizations. If they want to do that they need to set up a separate incorporated body and live by the political rules.
Hopefully we all agree that abortion is wrong and is not protected by the right to privacy since it effects more than just the mother.
But there is a limit to how far I want churches to go in enforcing their doctrine on government officials.
For example 5 of the 9 supreme court justices are Catholic and the Catholic church has many liberal positions. What if the communion rules are expanded to put pressure on the supreme court?