I’ve rambled around this house for a while looking for two
things: my coral-colored 8x8 baking dish
and my green paperback copy of The Code of Canon Law. Wherever they are, they are not here so I
will have to move along without them…. (side note: no brownies tonight,
apparently).
I have a bumper sticker that says: “I’m Catholic and I Vote.” I mentioned that to a church worker a few
years back and she, a convert to Catholicism, donned a tone of moral outrage
and said: “What’s THAT supposed to mean?” You see, sometimes in the ebb and flow of
life people become members of organizations without really researching what
it means to endorse a religious philosophy of life. For so many people who “became Catholic” so
they could marry in the Catholic Church to a partner who already is Catholic,
they may not have realized that. When
you, as an adult, ask for reception into This Church, you are buying in
to a certain set of faith-based norms. I
will lay them out for the sake of the cause:
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Not just one Golden Rule of “do unto others as
you would have them do unto you,” but there are actually Ten Commandments
we endorse. The Holy God gave these to
Moses and they were then handed down to the people of Israel and all people of
good will. These 10 Commandments are not
suggestions or nice ideas. For a world
that is sin-sick and dying and morally corrupt, these are “the 2
tablets you can take and call the doctor the next morning feeling better.” They are the prescription for an orderly and
godly society.
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The Beatitudes given by Christ, also on a
mountain, and also to help form a loving, godly society. These beatitudes are not just platitudes –
they address your attitudes – and develop virtue in the human heart. With injunctions to desire to “hunger and
thirst for righteousness” and to be “pure of heart,” these are no light-weight
slogans. In order to achieve them, you
have to pursue them with diligence and discipline.
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The Seven Sacraments – signs along the
way of how we encounter God in the workings of daily life. These are rituals by which we invite the Lord
to be present with us in the key moments of life – our worship, our marriages
and ordinations, our childrearing and coming-of-age, and our dying. They help us deal with the joys, mistakes,
sorrows and victories of life. They
remind us that life itself is holy.
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The Nicene Creed – which is the statement
of belief handed down for hundreds of years as a distilled collection of what
particularly we believe about God and our faith.
So, okay, to my point I want to talk about why I was looking
for The Code of Canon Law. I want to
talk about “excommunication” from the Catholic Church. This is the means by which someone is cut-off
from the faithful. I think I can do this
without the Code in my hand because I’ve read it enough times to know the sense
of what it is.
First, a definition from the Catechism (SS.1463):
“Certain particularly grave sins
incur excommunication , the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes
the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical
acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to
canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by
them. In danger of death any priest even
if deprived of faculties for hearing confessions, can absolve from every sin
and excommunication.”
Second, to state that excommunication from the Catholic Church is not the same as an Amish shunning.
The Amish “shun” someone, or place them under the ban for varying
reasons which vary from one community in Indiana that will ban you for having a
front porch swing (it’s pride & vanity to have a nice thing out front) to
another community that will ban you from holding the back of your dress
together with a straight pin up near the top of the neck (vanity). The Amish hold that shunning over you so you
will repent and see the “evil” of your ways and come back to conformity with
the community. Not so with the Catholics. Our excommunication is not a warning. It is the official seal on what a person has
done that goes against the official doctrine of the church defined in faith or
morals. It is a reaction to deeds of a
person that causes scandal on the name of Christ and the Church because the
deed(s) was so egregious. Amish can be
shunned as a result of doing something on accident and getting caught. Catholics are excommunicated for doing
something with full knowledge and ability to freely choose otherwise. It would be safe to say that for an item to
be topic for excommunication, it will also be matter of mortal sin as well –
and in order for a sin to be death-dealing (mortal) to your soul it has 3
criteria: it involves serious matter;
you can choose otherwise; you choose it with knowledge that it is serious
matter. End of story. No one accidentally makes a mortal sin, or
accidentally gets excommunicated.
But sometimes I wonder what the HELL takes our bishops and
cardinals so long in making a formal excommunication … particularly with
politicians…. A person of more genteel character would not suggest here that
perhaps MONEY could be involved, but I am not that virtuous. I wrote a letter to a Cardinal a couple of
years ago and spurred him to make a formal excommunication of a high-profile
person that was notoriously supporting …. Abortion. No response.
No forthcoming excommunication.
So the more I agonized over the wrongness of his spineless
inertia as a faith leader…. Look, Saint Catherine of Siena told the Pope who
was hiding in Avignon France, “The Lord says to you: Go back to Rome, or you go to Hell.” I
remembered one important thing about excommunication. It is not so much something someone DOES TO
YOU. It is something you do to yourself. Your decision, your immoral activity, your
scandalous behavior put you outside of the realm of the people who are striving
to live virtuous lives and obey the precepts of the Holy One.
When I worked as a pro-life crisis pregnancy center director
many years ago, I did one thing to make sure I knew what I was talking about: I watched videos about the various types of
abortion, and the testimonies of the women in pain after they made those
choices. And I want to say two things
with absolute certainty: Abortion is
intrinsically evil. And, We can do
Better by our women. We can provide
women with better choices and options and support.
I also want to be clear on this: Abortion is intrinsically RACIST. I thank God for the work of Dr. Martin Luther
King’s niece Alveda King and her work with Priests for Life. The minority communities need to stand up and
say “NO MORE!” Anyone who reads the
booklet about abortion foundress Margaret Sanger will get a very sobering
picture about her intention: eugenics
via birth control and abortion. It is
called “Father of Modern Society.” It explains
her targeting the inner city communities, of which she clearly was not a
member.
The current push in the abortion community has been to
legalize it up to nine months AND immediately upon birth. People, that is called: Infanticide.
It is just as grave matter as prenatal abortion. If you do it, if you assist in it via money
or car ride or are the physician, if you sign it into law or promote it on your
placards …. And if you fancy yourself a Catholic, you… are… not. Here’s the cup of coffee as you wake up.
And. If the alleged
President Elect made such a big show of going to Church the morning of the
voting … please note that you only saw him coming OUT the door …. Because the
moment he officially signs any abortion declaration in Office, he is declaring
upon himself an automatic (latae sententia) excommunication, no
spineless clergy required.
And. If you actually
for some reason voted for his party that has a death warrant out on babies in
America and spreading it overseas as well, then you best cart your sorry self
off to confession.
Is the sitting president perfect? No. Is
he respectful and always classy and gentlemanly? No.
But he has done more for the sake of the pre-born children and the
maintaining the sanctity of human life (think:
Thou Shall Not Kill, cf. 10 Commandments) than any other president. That is a single issue. Really, respect for human life is the primary
and only issue because all other issues flow from that. Respect.
For. Life.
And Mr. Biden can wipe that smirk off his face now, because
there is a God who someday WILL. And
that is no joke.
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*Side note: I want to commend 40 Days for Life as well as
crisis pregnancy workers, and Project Rachel workers for their tireless work
over 40+ years to provide better options for women and their babies. And to the “Silent No More” women who are
coming out of their sorrow to say they made a mistake: May the peace of God be upon you and heal you.
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