Posted on 04/12/2011 9:38:13 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Archbishop Charles J. Chaput gave a frank response when asked why there is so much disunity among Catholics on the question of Catholics in political life standing clearly with the church on major moral issues such as abortion.
“The reason … is that there is no unity among the bishops about it,” said the Denver archbishop, who was asked the question after his April 8 keynote address for the University of Notre Dame Right to Life Club’s spring lecture series.
“There is unity among the bishops about abortion always being wrong, and that you can’t be a Catholic and be in favor of abortion - the bishops all agree to that – but there’s just an inability among the bishops together to speak clearly on this matter and even to say that if you’re Catholic and you’re pro-choice, you can’t receive holy Communion,” Archbishop Chaput said.
Individual bishops probably do take such a stand privately more often than anyone knows, the archbishop noted, and he said he is not in favor of refusing Communion without giving private notice ahead of time to the person. He emphasized, however, that Catholics who support keeping abortion legal should be told that they will not be given Communion, and not to present themselves to receive.
Archbishop Chaput said he and others have been trying to move the U.S. bishops’ conference to speak clearly on this issue for a number of years. However, there is a fear, he said, that if they do so, the bishops might somehow disenfranchise the Catholic community from political life, making it difficult to get elected if a Catholic politician has to hold the church’s position on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
The strategy clearly has failed, he continued, “So let’s try something different and see if it works. Let’s be very, very clear on these matters,” and he asked the audience to “help me to convince the bishops on that subject.”
The archbishop’s talk on “Politics and the Devil: Living in a World of Unbelief” touched on many of the topics in his 2008 book, “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life” (Doubleday Religion).
“There is no such thing as morally neutral legislation or morally neutral public policy,” he said. “Every law is the public expression of what somebody thinks we ought to do. The question that matters is this: Which moral convictions of which somebodies are going to shape our country’s political and cultural future?”
The answer is obvious, Archbishop Chaput continued: “If you and I as citizens don’t do the shaping, then somebody else will. That is the nature of a democracy. A healthy democracy depends upon people of conviction working hard to advance their ideas in the public square respectfully and peacefully, but vigorously and without apologies.”
Most people root their moral convictions in their religious beliefs, he explained, for what people believe about God shapes what they think about the nature of the human person and our idea of a just society. And if a citizen fails to bring his moral beliefs into our country’s political conversation and work for them publicly and energetically, he said, the defeat of his own beliefs will be ensured.
“We act on what we really believe,” Archbishop Chaput said. “If we don’t act on our beliefs, then we don’t really believe them.”
The idea that the separation of church and state should force us to exclude our religious beliefs from guiding our political behavior makes no sense at all, he continued:
“If we don’t remain true in our public actions to what we claim to believe in our personal lives, then we only deceive ourselves, because God certainly isn’t fooled: He sees who and what we are. God sees that our duplicity is really a kind of cowardice, and our lack of courage does a lot more damage than simply wounding our own integrity; it also saps the courage of other good people who really do try to publicly witness what they believe. And that compounds the sin of dishonesty and the sin of injustice.”
Archbishop Chaput said that the moral and political struggle today in defending human dignity is becoming more complex. “Abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime,” he said, adding that “you can’t build a just society and at the same time legally sanctify the destruction of generations of unborn human life.”
Working to end abortion doesn’t absolve Catholics from the obligation to serve the poor, disabled, elderly or immigrants, he added. “But none of these other duties can obscure the fact that no human rights are secure if the right to life is not.”
The archbishop’s lecture was sponsored by the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life and the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.
Archbishop Chaput said he and others have been trying to move the U.S. bishops’ conference to speak clearly on this issue for a number of years. However, there is a fear, he said, that if they do so, the bishops might somehow disenfranchise the Catholic community from political life, making it difficult to get elected if a Catholic politician has to hold the church’s position on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
And, what does the good Bishop have to say about non-Catholic aggressively pro-abortion politicians who present themselves for Communion? I don’t recall ANY reaction to ZERO demanding Communion at a Catholic Mass.
Or, what about Homosexual/Pedophile-protecting Bishops, like that ‘paragon of morality’ Bishop Johnny McCormack in New Hampshire - who moved predatory priests from one unsuspecting parish after another.
US Bishops are by-and-large pretty unimpressive about the 10 ‘Suggestions’ while being strongly supportive of Socialist, income-redistribution programs.
The bishop is saying a lot. He as much as says that his fellow bishops lack guts.
Matthew 10:33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven
From the article, it sounds like Archbishop Chaput supports getting the USCCB to outline a clear policy. This is one time that the action of Militant and Good Catholics should be used to help persuade our bishops...
Since Vatican II, that has changed, the bishops conferences now run the show, a centralizing of government (just like after the Civil War in the USA). It was all planned that way, as it is easy for the progressivists to control the bishops that way. A few bishops can basically run the USA. This is all part of the plan to control the Church, it is the same template that is being used all over the world to create the “New World Order’, where few control everything. Saint Athanasius lived in the fourth century during the time of what used to be considered the greatest crisis of faith ever to befall the Catholic Church, the Arian Heresy. (The Arians denied the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ). The vast majority of Churchmen fell into this heresy, so much so that Saint Jerome wrote of the period, "The whole world groaned and was amazed to find itself Arian". Athanasius was the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt for 46 years. He was banned from his diocese at least five times and spent a total of 17 years in exile. He even suffered an unjust excommunication from Pope Liberius (325-366) who was under Arian influence. It is a cold fact of history that Athanasius stood virtually alone against the onslaught of heretical teaching ravaging the Church of his day – begetting the familiar phrase, "Athanasius contra mundum", that is, "Athanasius against the world".
The famous convert to the Church, Ven. John Henry Newman, described him as a "principal instrument, after the Apostles, by which the sacred truths of Christianity have been conveyed and secured to the world." Often referred to as the Champion of Orthodoxy, Saint Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most courageous defenders of the Faith in the entire history of the Church. If anyone can be singled out as a Saint for our times, surely it is Saint Athanasius. The following letter of his could, almost word for word, have been written yesterday.
"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ...
"You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.
"Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."
Other Patristic Testimony To The Abysmal State of the Church at the Time Of The Arian Heresy
A.D. 360: Saint Gregory Nazianzen says about this date: "Surely the pastors have done foolishly; for excepting a very few, who either on account of their insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival of Israel (the Church. ed.) by the influence of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interests, or by flattery, or, what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance.
Cappodocia: Saint Basil says about the year 372: "Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in the Faith avoid the places of worship as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitude, with groans and tears to the Lord in Heaven." Four years after he writes: "Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and assembled in the deserts, – a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid most profuse rains and snowstorms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit, because they will have no part of the wicked Arian leaven." Again: "Only one offense is now vigorously punished an accurate observance of our fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven from their countries and transported into deserts."
In our time when impious novelties, liberalism and modernism are ravishing the Church under the pretext of "aggiornamento" (update!), and infidelity to Catholic Tradition is the order of the day, the above statements cannot help but strike the reader as a parallel of our time. As it was then so it is today.
Today we see the loss of faith among many Catholics occasioned by compromises in the Faith, both great and small, which have touched on the very essence of our Faith. Recent surveys and polls show that only 15% of Catholics believe that they have to accept all of the Church's teachings.
The majority of Church leaders have succumbed to the "spirit of the age", and faithful Catholics now suffer at the hands of those who should be their protectors.
The Catholic Church survived the Arian crisis, and so it will survive the present one. For our part, it is our duty to remain faithful to the unchangeable teaching and Sacred Tradition of our Holy Catholic Church, and to not compromise our Faith in any way with the present trend of liberalism and modernism sweeping the Catholic Church worldwide.
If the Arian crisis proves anything, if this historical lesson of the fourth century teaches us anything in the twentieth century it is this: Falsehood cannot become truth no matter how many accept it but rather the truth of doctrinal teaching is to be judged by its conformity to Tradition and not by the number or even the authority of those teaching it. It shows to us that a pope can err as a private teacher and so much more the bishops. Another point the Arian crisis brings out is that Catholics true to the traditional faith may have to worship outside the official Churches, their parish churches and even to avoid them as schools of impiety. It proves that Catholics may even have to suffer false denunciation and excommunication for their beliefs as St. Athanasius suffered: today as always we must pray for the Church, the clergy and especially the bishops and our Holy Father the Pope. Only the good Lord knows how long this crisis will last but Our Blessed Mother has given us hope in Her prophecy at Fatima. "In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph and there will be peace in the world".
ST. VINCENT OF LERINS (400-450 AD) CONFESSOR OF THE CHURCH
"What then should a Catholic do if some part of the Church were to separate itself from communion with the universal Faith? What other choice can he make but to prefer to the gangrenous and corrupted member the whole of the body that is sound. And if some new contagion were to try to poison no longer a small part of the Church, but all of the Church at the same time, then he will take the greatest care to attach himself to antiquity which, obviously, can no longer be seduced by any lying novelty." (Commonitorium)
Since Vatican II, that has changed, the bishops conferences now run the show, a centralizing of government (just like after the Civil War in the USA). It was all planned that way, as it is easy for the progressivists to control the bishops that way. A few bishops can basically run the USA. This is all part of the plan to control the Church, it is the same template that is being used all over the world to create the “New World Order’, where few control everything.
Saint Athanasius lived in the fourth century during the time of what used to be considered the greatest crisis of faith ever to befall the Catholic Church, the Arian Heresy. (The Arians denied the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ). The vast majority of Churchmen fell into this heresy, so much so that Saint Jerome wrote of the period,
"The whole world groaned and was amazed to find itself Arian".
Athanasius was the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt for 46 years. He was banned from his diocese at least five times and spent a total of 17 years in exile. He even suffered an unjust excommunication from Pope Liberius (325-366) who was under Arian influence. It is a cold fact of history that Athanasius stood virtually alone against the onslaught of heretical teaching ravaging the Church of his day – begetting the familiar phrase, "Athanasius contra mundum", that is, "Athanasius against the world".
The famous convert to the Church, Ven. John Henry Newman, described him as a "principal instrument, after the Apostles, by which the sacred truths of Christianity have been conveyed and secured to the world." Often referred to as the Champion of Orthodoxy, Saint Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most courageous defenders of the Faith in the entire history of the Church. If anyone can be singled out as a Saint for our times, surely it is Saint Athanasius. The following letter of his could, almost word for word, have been written yesterday.
"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ...
"You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.
"Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."
Other Patristic Testimony To The Abysmal State of the Church at the Time Of The Arian Heresy
A.D. 360: Saint Gregory Nazianzen says about this date: "Surely the pastors have done foolishly; for excepting a very few, who either on account of their insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival of Israel (the Church. ed.) by the influence of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interests, or by flattery, or, what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance.
Cappodocia: Saint Basil says about the year 372: "Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in the Faith avoid the places of worship as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitude, with groans and tears to the Lord in Heaven." Four years after he writes: "Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and assembled in the deserts, – a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid most profuse rains and snowstorms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit, because they will have no part of the wicked Arian leaven." Again: "Only one offense is now vigorously punished an accurate observance of our fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven from their countries and transported into deserts."
In our time when impious novelties, liberalism and modernism are ravishing the Church under the pretext of "aggiornamento" (update!), and infidelity to Catholic Tradition is the order of the day, the above statements cannot help but strike the reader as a parallel of our time. As it was then so it is today.
Today we see the loss of faith among many Catholics occasioned by compromises in the Faith, both great and small, which have touched on the very essence of our Faith. Recent surveys and polls show that only 15% of Catholics believe that they have to accept all of the Church's teachings.
The majority of Church leaders have succumbed to the "spirit of the age", and faithful Catholics now suffer at the hands of those who should be their protectors.
The Catholic Church survived the Arian crisis, and so it will survive the present one. For our part, it is our duty to remain faithful to the unchangeable teaching and Sacred Tradition of our Holy Catholic Church, and to not compromise our Faith in any way with the present trend of liberalism and modernism sweeping the Catholic Church worldwide.
If the Arian crisis proves anything, if this historical lesson of the fourth century teaches us anything in the twentieth century it is this: Falsehood cannot become truth no matter how many accept it but rather the truth of doctrinal teaching is to be judged by its conformity to Tradition and not by the number or even the authority of those teaching it. It shows to us that a pope can err as a private teacher and so much more the bishops. Another point the Arian crisis brings out is that Catholics true to the traditional faith may have to worship outside the official Churches, their parish churches and even to avoid them as schools of impiety. It proves that Catholics may even have to suffer false denunciation and excommunication for their beliefs as St. Athanasius suffered: today as always we must pray for the Church, the clergy and especially the bishops and our Holy Father the Pope. Only the good Lord knows how long this crisis will last but Our Blessed Mother has given us hope in Her prophecy at Fatima. "In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph and there will be peace in the world".
ST. VINCENT OF LERINS (400-450 AD) CONFESSOR OF THE CHURCH
"What then should a Catholic do if some part of the Church were to separate itself from communion with the universal Faith? What other choice can he make but to prefer to the gangrenous and corrupted member the whole of the body that is sound. And if some new contagion were to try to poison no longer a small part of the Church, but all of the Church at the same time, then he will take the greatest care to attach himself to antiquity which, obviously, can no longer be seduced by any lying novelty." (Commonitorium)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.