Posted on 05/07/2013 2:33:24 PM PDT by NYer
Do you have a link to this letter, dated?
I believe the letter cited dates to 2007 or 2008.
The Pope apparently wrote to the bishops of Argentina and commended them to follow the Apariceda Document. I would like to see a copy of what, exactly, he wrote.
This document is 165 pages long. It covers many, many things, most of which have to do with social justice issues. The quote about not receiving the eucharist is in item #436 on page 101. The document is not written by the Pope, but by a Latin-American episcopal conference. It was not written in 2013, but in 2007.
I think it is a substantial misrepresentation to say, “A letter Pope Francis sent to the bishops of Argentina in late March...says pro-abortion politicians should not be eligible for communion in the Catholic Church”, unless his letter references item 436 on page 101 specifically.
Similar things were written, repeatedly, about Benedict XVI when what he said or wrote actually amounted to offhand references to passages in CCC or GRIM which support the pro-life view about our whoremaster politicians and the eucharist.
The fact is, the Pope has absolute authority to govern the Church. He could issue a Bull or a Rescript tomorrow forbidding pro-death politicians from receiving communion. He could excommunicate Nancy Pelosi and Joseph Biden by name with a stroke of the pen. He could even put the United States under an interdict until such time as Catholic voters cause abortion to be outlawed.
But he has not done, and in all likelihood will not do, any of those things.
I hope we publicly do that — they have excommunicated themselves by their own actions but we need to publicly call them excommunicated.
I hope you are wrong. I’m afraid you’re right.
A politician who votes to legalize, expand, promote, or especially fund abortion, has gone beyond the actions analogous to "representing a client." Such acts are cooperation in the act of abortion itself: the active promotion of an evil. The politician's acts make his an accessory or accomplice.
A more accurate analogy would be, if Gosnell's lawyer said "Yes he did kill all those babies after 24 weeks, and yes he did kill newborns by, effectively, decapitating them: and I say that's all right, I say that's justified, I'm going to try to make this more widespread, and I paid him to do it."
Yes, ansd it’s truly sickening. Catholics (or “voters identified as Catholic”) voted for Obama in almost exactly the same percentage as did American voters as a whole.
“On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything-even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience.”
-Screwtape
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