Posted on 01/21/2002 6:28:01 AM PST by VinnyTex
There is no comparison between an Elizabethan excommunication and what should/shouldn't have happened in the case of Hitler.
The position of the Catholic Church in England was very much an open issue at the time. Queen Mary was an avid Catholic, and there were Catholic kings and queens following Elizabeth. The excommunication of Elizabeth was thus a political act, but it was also something more than political.
A primary feature of the Church of England is that it is established: IOW, the King/Queen have the right and responsibility of appointing bishops. Thus the Catholic church also had a canonical interest in the matter which wasn't finally resolved for decades after Elizabeth's death.
None of that applies to Hitler.
I have a reason for wanting to know about nuns involved in abortion providing as a nun who does a lot of social justice work in these parts indicated, by a verbal slip, what I took as support for abortion.
I was chiding her on the extreme amount of pandering to the young unmarried women with babies. We constantly have giving trees at our church and they get enough stuff to have five kids. This sounds uncharitable, I know, but how about some hand me downs? I object only that it seems an undignified celebration of illegitimate birth and no stigma attaches. Stigma has an important place, or had. She said: "for those we work with who choose to have their babies," or some such statement which was ambiguous at the least. V's wife.
The fact that Hitler, baptized a Roman Catholic, (and marrying Eva von Braun in a Roman Catholic ceremony right before death? I'm not certain that is true...) wasn't ever formally excommunicated really does bother me... The latae sententiae argument notwithstanding, it seems a cop-out. I mean by definition every heretic of any kind has a self-made latae sententiae excommunication BEFORE formal public excommunication, by default...excommunication is as much for the sake of the Body as it is for the person who is thrown out. The biblical pattern of I Corinthians shows excommunication's purpose is to purge the Church and hopefully to bring the excommunicant into repentance... Latae sententiae excommunication does neither of those two things. For example, I'm sure there are many uninformed (or ill-informed) Roman Catholics, otherwise faithful, who are influenced by the pro-choice Catholic arguments... however if they knew these were no longer Catholic, they would not be so influenced. Similarly there probably are even believing otherwise faithful Catholics who, due to liberal brain washing, are "pro-choice," who, given a choice between formal, public, excommunication and promoting abortion would choose to abandon their pro abort ways... So why is the Church silent?
The Hitler issue was recently brought up by an intelligent friend recently (not a Catholic basher), and it does strike me as bizarre...
That's PRECISELY what it was. These are some savvy chicks, make no mistake about it. There are certain linese they can't APPEAR to cross.
Have you ever read "Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism"? I can't recommend it highly enough. All of these groups are related, like some sticky spider's web. The book is an excellent catalogue of major players as well as an insight to their tactics and belief systems.
They are definitely pro-aborts but far more clever and insidious than the NOW types. They're working the "inside" as it were.
That's nonsense, only those who consider themselves to be "in communion" with the Church at large and the Holy See in particular can be excommunicated.
No. Dead people are beyond the authority of the Visible Church. It would make no sense to excommunicate them.
Also as to only excommunicating "practicing Catholics," haven't a LOT of people been excommunicated in the past who didn't claim to be under the authority of Rome?
Martin Luther and Calvin were definitely one-time Catholics. The case with Elizabeth I is murky, but arguable, since she received Trinitarian baptism, probably by immersion, by the Bishop of London who was certainly validly ordained. (Not that ordination is necessary to confer Christian baptism, but it tends to stengthen the agument that Elizabeth was a Catholic at some point in her life, and almost certainly received the Sacrament.
The fact that Hitler, baptized a Roman Catholic, (and marrying Eva von Braun in a Roman Catholic ceremony right before death? I'm not certain that is true...)
I have never heard that Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun was religious, and inthe absence of good evidence, would not be inclined to believe it.
... wasn't ever formally excommunicated really does bother me... The latae sententiae argument notwithstanding, it seems a cop-out.
You are entitled to this opinion. If the Church somehow erred in not proceeding with the fruitless and extraordinarily provocative act of a public excommunication (and I doubt that not to do so was an error), it was merely a political error, at a time of terrible danger, when the fruits of such a vain gesture would have been vastly outweighed by mortal risks needlessly imposed upon millions of Catholics.
LOL; it's a good joke, but the name Sixtus actually has little to do with the Roman habit of naming successive children after ordinal numbers (Quintus, Sextus, Septimus, for example). "Sixtus" (spelled with an "i", not "e", N.B.) is the Latinized spelling of a name that was originally rendered "Xystus", itself a slightly corrupted spelling of the Greek nickname Xystos, meaning "shaved." The fact that Xystus/Sixtus was the sixth successor of St. Peter probably contributed to the popular adoption of the Romanised spelling.
The fact is there has ALWAYS been a tension in the Church between those who wanted more temporal power and those who wanted a more purely spiritual role. Unfortunately, those attracted to the bureaucracy of the Church have often been of the latter.
yes, the Lateran Treaty is no big secret. What is wrong with having one's own state? Hell, I would let the Mormons have Utah if they truly wanted it.
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