Posted on 06/08/2008 4:40:52 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
WASHINGTON -- Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied communion.
His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil.
Kmiec was denied communion in April at a Mass for a group of Catholic business people he later addressed at dinner. The episode has not received wide attention outside the Catholic world, yet it is the opening shot in an argument that could have a large impact on this year's presidential campaign: Is it legitimate for bishops and priests to deny communion to those supporting candidates who favor abortion rights?
A version of this argument roiled the 2004 presidential campaign when some, though not most, Catholic bishops suggested that John Kerry and other pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied communion because of their views on abortion.
The Kmiec incident poses the question in an extreme form: He is not a public official but a voter expressing a preference. Moreover, Kmiec -- a law professor at Pepperdine University and once dean of Catholic University's law school -- is a long-standing critic of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
The former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the late 1980s, Kmiec is supporting Obama despite the candidate's position on abortion, not because of it, partly in the hope that Obama's emphasis on personal responsibility in sexual matters might change the nature of the nation's argument on life issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yes. However, during the Pope’s recent US visit, several prominent pro-choice politicians, including Ted Kennedy, received the Eucharist at the Papal Mass. This upset a great many Catholics.
The Obamacon should have been denied communion.
Anytime someone takes a public position like this that is anti-what the Bible teaches, that person should be shunned.
I heard a stat recently that really surprised me. Some large percentage of the Evangelical vote is planning to vote for Obama. Isn’t he “pro-choice?” How can these people in good conscience do that? ‘Pod.
Odds are these polls/stats are, like often, false. There are always some oddballs, but "large percentage of Evangelicals" either means it's a small percentage or they aren't Evangelicals in the first place.
Kmiec was never a conservative, if he openly supports this Marxist because he thinks his politics are something new. What does he care if he gets communion or not? He is an Obamist now, he has a new religion.
Kmiec is a prominent Catholic, and as such, his endorsement of Obama is a scandal - since Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate yet. Common sense would tell any good Catholic (or Christian) that any politician who supports the denial of medical attention to a live born infant of a late term abortion - is not acceptable behavior. It promotes confusion among others of the same denomination.
The priest was right.
The Evangelical vote is not a monolithic mass. A number of Evangelical churches are liberal as are many of their members.
E.J. Dionne is a man who can be counted upon to support what is foul and loathsome in this world. He has done so once again.
Leave it to the secular world to want to make even the legitimate authority of Catholic bishops operating within their own church a matter for public debate.
The media types prefer Michael Pfleger type Catholic leaders.
The same people who kept Smuckabee in the race and helped give us McGreen.
I agree with the priest’s decision. If Mr. Kmiec was just nobody, like me, then his voting preference would be unknown. If he publicly endorses a supporter of infanticide, then he is creating a public scandal for the faithful and should be disciplined.
(For the record, I plan to vote for McCain, with a sigh.)
The big O,, could be the Big Brown of politics this year. Wait’ll the home stretch.
pro-choice to the extreme point of killing a baby that is outside of the womb and already survived the abortion.
Barack Hussein Obama supports infanticide. He considers that baby to be a "punishment" not a human being deserving of life or protection under the law.
I was thinking yesterday with Hillary's "suspension" and Big Brown's performance, it was a bad day for sure things.
The Catholic church’s pronouncements have aided me in becoming an ex-Catholic. Allowing Kennedy a divorce after haveing (I believe) 5 children, allowing that loon to receive communion after all of his legislation...give me a break. The church appears to be like every other large institution - spring enough money on it, and it’ll grant you anything.
It’s questionable whether an individual priest should have done this in this case.
Mr. Kmiec is doing Satan’s work in endorsing Snob-ama, but he isn’t a politician who endorses abortion “rights.” He isn’t even a non-politician who endorses abortion “rights.”
He is endorsing a candidate who embraces abortion “rights,” but at the same time, Mr. Kmiec expressly states that he wants to try to persuade his candidate to ameliorate his embrace of even the most extreme abortion “right.”
Although he is gravely in error in his estimation of Snob-ama, Mr. Kmiece is NOT endorsing the candidate BECAUSE of the candidate’s support of abortion “rights.”
Thus, I think that Mr. Kmiec is guilty of such extremely poor judgment that good and decent Catholics should shun him socially and professionally, telling him to repent of his anti-American crimes, refusing to even share a cup of water with the jackass. But I’m not sure that there is sufficient grounds for a priest to deny him the Blessed Sacrament.
If I recall correctly he even got the bill tabled by stalling.
Heck even the US Senate voted for the Born Alive Act in overwhelming numbers.
Obama is more pro abortion that even NARAL.
Stupidity and complete lack of ability to analyse--in fact, complete lack of the knowledge needed to analyse.
vaudine
Then he should know better. What you elites just don't get, WAPO, is that "scholarship" devoid of Orthodoxy is death.
***
I wonder, will the POSt give a rip when communion is denied a democrat, or is this a "story" because it's been denied a republican?
E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Is it legitimate for bishops and priests to deny communion to those supporting candidates who favor abortion rights?
Yes.
Now shut up E.J., go sit in the corner, and eat your cookie.
Assuming Democrats have common sense is your first mistake.
I don't know why so many Catholics vote for the abortion party.
Better to vote McCain and sigh than see Obama win and scream.
Actually, I think there’s probably more to this story. I don’t know how Kmeic rates as “staunchly anti-abortion,” because the statement that I read by him said that he didn’t think abortion should be illegal, because there were other ways of dealing with it (such as? - sounds like Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal and rare” waffle to me). It is Dionne’s assertion that Kmeic was denied Communion for his support for Obama, but I think it’s much more likely that other statements he had made publicly in his capacity as a “Catholic leader” were responsible. He was about to address a businessman’s group, after all.
Furthermore, I don’t think a priest ever does this without first talking to the would-be communicant, so I’m sure there’s a back-story here that we’re not getting.
Remember, this article is written by EJ Dionne, who hates the Church and all its positions. You’re getting his version of it. Note the lack of direct quotes and firm facts.
...and who would appoint supreme court justices who would most propbably act accordingly?
I think that this "firm foe of abportion" is no such thing.
On top of all of that, it is also clear that due to his positions and associations that Barack Hussein Obama is the apex of the hate-America, domestic enemy in this country. His election as president would be the greatest coup any enemy has ever scored against this country and could easily lead to the worst, horrific disaster in our nation's history.
Depends on whether black churches are considered evangelical.
1 + 1 = 2
The man has thrown away his principles and is a RINO first degree.
Abortion is a issue that is relatively one sided. If you are "firm foe of abortion" you cannot vote for Obama unless you have changed your principles
He is now trying to make himself believe 1 + 1 = 3
This is a long-standing Church position-that certain sins, like abortion, are such grave crimes aganst humanity, that no Catholic can willingly promote, fund, endorse, or participate in them without incurring the penalty of excommunication.
It is normally self-inflicted.
The proaborts who insist on pretending they are still Catholic, and who insist on receiving the Eucharist, commit sacrilege.
The priests who give them Holy Communion, while knowing who they are, are bringig sin upon themselves.
However, many priests distribute Holy Communion without knowing who they are, as in the case of foreign priests, or without paying attention, as many of them are not meditating upon the communicant in front of them but, rather, are meditating on Christ as they distribute Communion.
Since you have trouble discerning between the teaching of the Church and the sinful actions of some members of the episcopacy and laity then it’s good you left. The ignorance defense might work for you during your particular judgment.
Very well said.
>>>>>>>>>Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied communion.
Yet Bishops and Cardinals endorse Communion to Democrat pro-abortion officials like John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, all the Kennedys, Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut; Carolyn McCarthy and Nydia Velázquez of New York; John D. Dingell of Michigan; Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts; George Miller of California; James L. Oberstar of Minnesota; Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio.
R911 - Kmiec has turned his back on what the Bible clearly teaches in a very public act.
“Gently corrected?” Like Our Lord in the moneychanger’s temple?
You have to start somewhere, and the Catholic Church has been in the pocket of the Dem party for so long that it's going to be hard for some of these bishops to find their way out. Read Phil Lawler's great recent book about Boston, The Faithful Departed, for an excellent analysis of this.
EJ Dionne along with both of M(isery)NBC’s O’Donnel’s slandered both Christians and Churches when John Kerry lost the election.
Dionne was particularly venal in his attacks, that devalues his opinion on the subject all the way down to “Pay no mind to this person”.
IMO the RCC SHOULD enforce it’s primary doctrines, the Communion Table is the life of the relationship between Church and Member, if one supports the people who slaughter nascent life, then one should not be at the table to receive.
Does it really make sense to leave Jesus, because of Judas?
Because that is what you are doing, If you believe that at the moment of Consecration the Bread and Wine become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus (and I mean really truly believe in your heart) then you would never leave, because no other Church can offer you that.
Say what? This supposed Republican is supporting a Democrat for his "emphasis on personal responsibility in sexual matters". Oh yeah. Something more to this idiot.
What is so ironic - there have been rulings for several years for churches to deny communion to politicians who endorse, vote for, or support abortion. Yet more often than not, the order has been ignored.
Kind of makes you wonder what changed in this case...
“Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied communion.”
Jason Blair style of creative leftwing spewing instead of reporting is in full evidence here.
“I heard a stat recently that really surprised me. Some large percentage of the Evangelical vote is planning to vote for Obama. Isn’t he “pro-choice?” How can these people in good conscience do that? ‘Pod.”
It’ll be our job to educate people about what Obama really stands for, since even 56% of Democrats now recognize the networks are hopelessly in his corner. We’re talking about a man who made it illegal (yes, subject to punishment) for any nurse or doctor trying to save a baby that survived an abortion. They have to leave it in a room, ignoring it no matter how much it screams, until it dies. That’s not just ‘pro-choice.’ It’s evil far beyond what most pro-choicers have been desensitized to.
I grew up Catholic and the closed table for communion is an abomination to God I am telling you. Jesus does not approve and a lot of the beautiful and good things about the Catholic Church are being undone by its use of the Eucharist as a weapon instead of using it as it was intended.
Kmiec was never a conservative, if he openly supports this Marxist because he thinks his politics are something new. What does he care if he gets communion or not? He is an Obamist now, he has a new religion.
more obama = more abortion
Growing up, I never knew a parish priest who was not a Kennedy Democrat.
Look at the Church’s most recent political positions. Anti-War Iraq war (yet silent on every other war, Sudan, etc), pro-Illegal Immigration, loud in sermons on abortion (yet does nothing when it comes to putting that into action by dening Communion), gives Annulments to Democrat politicians like John Kerry despite them being married for years and having children. It is a mockery - one set of rules for everyone else and another for Democrat politicians.
You said: How can these people in good conscience do that?
It is the same question we ask continually here in our state. How do Marylanders continue to elect the blithering idiots we do? There are a lot of otherwise intelligent human beings who vote for the demoncrats.
I’ll never understand what is going on in their heads.
Obamaism is like Nazism or Stalinism. A cult founded on a persons energy. Scary and very dangerous.
>>>>>>>I grew up Catholic and the closed table for communion is an abomination to God I am telling you. Jesus does not approve and a lot of the beautiful and good things about the Catholic Church are being undone by its use of the Eucharist as a weapon instead of using it as it was intended.
If you grew up Catholic you would know this one.
Can you receive Communion if you are not in a state of Grace?
Or should the Church have no standards and give out the Communion regardless?
The weapon is those who seek to damage the Church by undermining the significance of the Sacrament by giving it to those ideologically opposed to it and that don’t value it.
“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Cor. 11:27–28).
“A person who is conscious of a grave sin is not to . . . receive the body of the Lord without prior sacramental confession unless a grave reason is present and there is no opportunity of confessing; in this case the person is to be mindful of the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, including the intention of confessing as soon as possible” (CIC 916).
“Those who are excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion” (CIC 915).
Read that book! It shows you the whole evolution of this. It was connected to immigrant politics, particularly when the Irish finally gained power in Boston. While it may have been power, they owed it to the Dems, and Cushing and all the rest of the Church in Boston did everything possible to accomodate the Dem party.
Boston was an extreme example, but this happened in one way or another throughout the US, especially after VatII, which seemed to tell Catholics who wanted to hear this that it was ok for them to “adapt” to their surroundings. That probably wasn’t the intent of most of the people at the Council, but that was what the politicians and politicized Church here wanted to believe.
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