Archbishop Raymond Burke
Posted on 08/19/2008 9:45:53 AM PDT by NYer
.- The prefect of the Apostolic Signature, Archbishop Raymond Burke, said this week that Catholics, especially politicians who publically defend abortion, should not receive Communion, and that ministers of Communion should be responsibly charitable in denying it to them if they ask for it, “until they have reformed their lives.”
In an interview with the magazine, Radici Christiane, Archbishop Burke pointed out that there is often a lack of reverence at Mass when receiving Communion. “Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ unworthily is a sacrilege,” he warned. “If it is done deliberately in mortal sin it is a sacrilege.”
To illustrate his point, he referred to “public officials who, with knowledge and consent, uphold actions that are against the Divine and Eternal moral law. For example, if they support abortion, which entails the taking of innocent and defenseless human lives. A person who commits sin in this way should be publicly admonished in such a way as to not receive Communion until he or she has reformed his life,” the archbishop said.
“If a person who has been admonished persists in public mortal sin and attempts to receive Communion, the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny it to him. Why? Above all, for the salvation of that person, preventing him from committing a sacrilege,” he added.
“We must avoid giving people the impression that one can be in a state of mortal sin and receive the Eucharist,” the archbishop continued. “Secondly, there could be another form of scandal, consisting of leading people to think that the public act that this person is doing, which until now everyone believed was a serious sin, is really not that serious - if the Church allows him or her to receive Communion.”
“If we have a public figure who is openly and deliberately upholding abortion rights and receiving the Eucharist, what will the average person think? He or she could come to believe that it up to a certain point it is okay to do away with an innocent life in the mother’s womb,” he warned.
Archbishop Burke also noted that when a bishop or a Church leader prevents an abortion supporter from receiving Communion, “it is not with the intention of interfering in public life but rather in the spiritual state of the politician or public official who, if Catholic, should follow the divine law in the public sphere as well.”
“Therefore, it is simply ridiculous and wrong to try to silence a pastor, accusing him of interfering in politics so that he cannot do good to the soul of a member of his flock,” he stated.
It is “simply wrong” to think that the faith must be reduced to the private sphere and eliminated from public life, Archbishop Burke said, encouraging Catholics “to bear witness to our faith not only in private in our homes but also in our public lives with others in order to bear strong witness to Christ.”
My pastor delivered his homily on this last Sunday.
Confront and deny the big time politicians first. You cannot have one set of rules for the flock and another set for the others. Have this decree issued directly from the Pope, do not rely on the Cardinals or Archbishops here, because they are afraid to confront them./Just Asking - seoul62.......
Abortion is murder.
These abortion loving Catholics need to be confessing their pro abortion sin in the Confessional. I remember confessing my lustful desires in the Confessional. The priest would warm my ears real good and sometimes ask if I was in last week with the same sins (he recognized my voice because I was one of his altar boys). I would rack up the Rosary beads for each incident. The nuns in the church would definitely take notice as I spent penance time before the Virgin Mary.
I wonder how much Confession time these abortion loving Catholics do spend as a practice of their faith? Are they serious about the practice of their faith or is it a just a social event to make themselves look good?
Maybe when Archbishop Burke grows up he too will be more generous and more of the mind of Christ.
Those who disregard these words are also forgetting the power to bind and loose has been given to the Bishops and their pronouncements and judgments are eternal in the spiritual realm.
BTW, it is the current Pope who before becoming Pope wrote a letter to Cardinal McCarrick that said essentially the same thing that Archbishop Burke is saying in this article.
“... “more severe” in terms of administering baptism and confirmation to ill-prepared or lukewarm candidates, but today he’s inclined to be generous wherever there is even “a flicker of desire for communion in the faith.”
Maybe when Archbishop Burke grows up he too will be more generous and more of the mind of Christ.”
Being ill-informed, ill-catechized, or just lazy spiritually is a far, far cry from the sin of abortion. Abortion is one of the great offenses against the Holy Spirit.
The juxtaposition of a lukewarm Catholic who is lazy about his faith and those who support the murder of the infant-in-utero is not comparable.
The difference between now and the first time he said it, is he is now the Chief Magistrate for the entire global communion of the Catholic Church, the head of the apostolic signature.
That's been done. Politicians simply ignore their bishops. Take for example the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to NYC. Cardinal Eagan had an understanding with Rudy Giuliani that he was NOT to receive communion at the papal mass. Did it stop him?
NY Cardinal slams Giulani over communion with pope
Ultimately, it is necessary to appeal to a person's conscience and help them understand the shame in their own actions.
Abortion is the taking of a human life. Catholic politicians have the faith based obligation to protect life; not support its destruction. As Archbishop Burke points out:
“If a person who has been admonished persists in public mortal sin and attempts to receive Communion, the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny it to him. Why? Above all, for the salvation of that person, preventing him from committing a sacrilege,” he added.
This is based on Scripture - 1 Cor. 11:27-30.
Talk is cheap.
;-)
You're dating yourself. Many of those teaching orders got silly after VCII and certain bishops altered their seminary recruitment practices to be more 'inclusive'. Worse yet, western society has shifted into secularism. In his pre-conclave homily, then Cardinal Ratzinger warned the Cardinals: “A dictatorship of relativism is being formed, one that recognizes nothing as definitive and that has as its measure only the self and its desires.”. He continues to assail moral relativism today.
Just a side light: Gay marriage is an effort towards the egalitarian treatment of human relationships. When the gay relationship is equal to the heterosexual relationship, the egalitarian objective is accomplished.
The opposition by the gay community and their anti abortionist cohorts to the Catholic Church is an effort to transform society by retooling the Church. When you put everything they are doing into one description, they are reducing the importance of life that is produced by the relationship between a man and a woman. Life does not have any more protection or significance than that which is determined by the state. Life produced by a man and a woman no longer have that level of significance that our culture has given it through the ages.
As the love relationship of heterosexual marriage and the beginning of human life are being attacked by the Marxist effort to transform our society, one can only wonder what's next?
If the liberal politicians and other liberal Catholics in the Church don't like it they can go worship with the Anglicans.
Interesting article...if I recall, the Catholic Church is opposed to the death penalty as well...should pro-death penalty Catholics also be denied??...magritte
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