[Canticle_of_Deborah]

Ping! This is big. Can any of you ping your lists? Thanks!

[aynrandfreak]

These Bishops risk losing more members.

[DensaMensa]

To be filed under: I didn't leave the church, the church left me.

[observer5]

HE IS AN IDIOT!

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Clean up your own house of homosexual predators
before you say anything about Americans!

[jwalsh07]

Well, this Catholic has a message for this bishop who is putting even more of a load on the young men and women on their way to liberate Iraq.

Bishop Botean, you are a disgrace.

[pgkdan]

Blind fool. No moral justification for war? All national security interests aside, Saddam's tyrrany is moral justification enough.

[looney tune]

The bishop announced that he "must declare to you, my people, for the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin."

Is he saying that if you are in the military you are going to hell?

[Arthur McGowan]

He's right about the principles involved, and he has the authority, as a bishop to teach those principles. A Catholic (or anyone else) is forbidden ever do anything immoral, and being commanded to do something immoral does not authorize anyone to obey that command. I.e., there is no such thing, in Catholic moral theology, as the excuse, "I was just obeying orders." If the act is immoral, BOTH the one who commanded it and the one obeying are guilty.

So it is not an adequate answer to the bishop to tell him that the President says we are going to war, so shut up. That is a mindless response to the bishop.

The question is: Is the bishop correct in his judgment that this war violates justice? He has no special charism or authority to make that judgment. He can be as easily wrong as right.

I think he is wrong, because we have been at war for years--i.e., the U.S. is not about to initiate unjust aggression--and Saddam is a killer who is manifestly preparing to kill again.

[G Larry]

> Byzantine-rite Romanian Catholics<

READ people!!!!

Romanian NOT Roman!!!!!

Nothing to do with the rest of us!

[Moose4]

This article says "Byzantine-right Romanian Catholics"...sounds separate from the Roman Catholic Church? I've never heard of them before.

(And I thought we Presbyterians were confusing...)

}:-)4

[longtermmemmory]

Gee, during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman empire the Greek Orthodox priest were not unknown to take up arms and actually kill an enemy or two. Then again many of them had wives and children....

Seriously is this a joke? Is this an urban legend?

Is this a leftist/homosexual priest?

[Centurion2000]

An American Catholic bishop has forbidden his flock from participating or cooperating in military action against Iraq, under pain of mortal sin.

The continuing death of Catholicism revealed. I'm glad that Catholics are Christians, but their leaders are COMPLETE MORONS.

[sinkspur]

An American Catholic bishop has forbidden his flock from participating or cooperating in military action against Iraq, under pain of mortal sin.

He can't do this. No prelate can suddenly declare something to be a "mortal sin." He especially cannot declare a morally neutral action such as fighting for one's country to be sinful at all. German soldiers were not guilty of sin for fighting for Hitler.

This bishop (to borrow a Richard Pryor phrase) "is crazy"!

[T Ruth]

The good bishop is not seeing the forest for the trees. The disarming of Iraq is but a battle in a war which we did not start. The just war theory does not preclude aggressive tactics in a defensive war.

[tiki]

My priest is in the National Guard. He hasn't been called up but we're willing to do without him if he's needed in the war effort. I have to admit that our bishop doesn't like him being in the guard just because he needs every priest he has but he hasn't prevented him.

[Petronski]

This guy is not Roman Catholic.

[Cicero]

This guy evidently is a Bishop in an Eastern Church that is affiliated with the Catholic Church. I don't know what the rules are within his particular group, but if he were a Catholic bishop, this statement would be essentially meaningless. A bishop has a perfect right to warn the faithful that he thinks a certain course of action would be sinful, but it is a prudential judgment and he may be wrong. In this case he almost certainly is wrong.

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

Well, while this is not my diocese, and while I am not Eastern Rite, this is one mortal sin, I would bear. God Bless

Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit

[Natural Law]

As a Catholic I can attest that this is not in his power. When he pretends to speak with the authority of God he is indeed "Using God's name in vain".