Mark Shea pointed this article out on his blog. Unfortunately, it’s written by someone for the Detroit News. I grieve for my home state at times. It’s bad enough we have a pro-abortion Catholic as governor, but we also have enablers.
Here is my response to the article as posted to the comments section online…
She simply misses the boat entirely on this issue. She seems to think that everything that the Pope says is Church doctrine and dogma. Not so. Abortion, homosexual acts, gay “marriages”, fetal stem cell research, human cloning and euthanasia are all non-negotiable. They, by definition, take innocent human life or go against the moral norm. The Church’s positions are unchangeable.
To be for ANY of these things is to be out of step with Church teachings. You would no longer be in communion with the Church as a whole. Therefore, you should not receive the ultimate expression of unity in the Church, communion.
Whether or not a particular war is just or whether the death penalty should be imposed or how to deal with the poor and lower economic classes are all matters of prudence. That means that the Church has no definitive position or definition on these things. They are things that you can validly take differing positions on from the Pope or any other Bishop and still be in good standing with the Church.
There is a huge moral difference between killing 1.5 million people in the womb every year and whether you should give tax credits to the poor to help them. While war and the death penalty will always produce dead people, you have to ask are these defensive measures? Are they the appropriate response? Is the response appropriate to the offense is it no more than necessary? There is no universal answer on these, and the Church has not absolutely defined the death penalty or any and all war as always and everywhere sinful as the above non-negotiables have been.
Finally Keenan doesn’t seem to understand two simple things about the Eucharist and these issues. First is that the Eucharist is not a right to anyone who happens to drop by Church. You must be in a state of grace and free of mortal sin to partake of the Body and Blood of our Lord. Being at odds with clear Church teachings and being obstinate in the refusal to assent to Church teachings is dangerous ground. Second, Bishops are not telling politicians or anyone else to vote a particular way.
They ARE saying that if you vote incorrectly to uphold immoral actions, there will be consequences in CHURCH. There are always consequences. Sometimes they are good, sometimes bad. Politicians need to be reminded that you cannot separate your personal beliefs (if they really do believe in the personally opposed, but… line of crap) from your public actions. Is it OK to be personally opposed to slavery but not willing to impose that on others?
Why one and not the other?
Comments
7 responses to “Yet Another Reporter Doesn’t Get It”
I would have to say that war and the death penalty does take innocent life and therefore does fall under non-negotiable issues. The taking of life in anyway can not fall under the matter of prudence. People do have a right to defend themselves but to try and forcast a possible need to be aggressive cannot be justified. No we do not have to agree with the Holy Father on matters of choice such as personal forms of prayer such as the rosary vs praying to your favorite Saint but when it comes to the Pope’s statements on war and death there is no choice but to follow the Church’s policy of not ending life regardless if it is abortion or war.
I am sorry, but I cannot agree with you on this. The Church does not have a “policy” (which would be different from doctrine and dogma as you see it I am guessing?…) that the taking of a life is always wrong. If we did, then there would be no Just War doctrine. It would also not be permissible to surgically end an entopic pregnancy to save the life of the mother. For those that don’t know, an entopic pregnancy is when a baby is attached to the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. Letting the child grow will kill both mother and child. No matter what we do, the child will die. The mother can be saved by surgery.
The Holy Father has stated that he believes the Iraq war is not a Just War. That is his personal opinion. He didn’t state it in such a way as to make it infallible, nor did he phrase it in such a way to be meant as an official teaching of the Church. Just because a Pope says something, doesn’t mean it is the Official Position of the Catholic Church which must be held by all members. While I willingly assent to every teaching of the Church and am willing to corrected when I am wrong, that doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything the Pope believes on all things.
According the Catechism of the Catholic Church Second Edition #2309…
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have the responsibility for the common good.There you go. The Pope, by his own Catechism, doesn’t have the authority to evaluate the Just War status. Therefore when he speaks on it, he is giving his private opinion which we are not bound to follow.
The one rule I speak of is the rule that Jesus himself left us. Love others as I have loved you. To me this keeps any war from being Just.
2308 Catechism
All citizens and all governments are obliged to work fo rthe avoidance of war. However “as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competience and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.”
Not sure waging war on other then home soil falls into self defense.
Interesting thought on the ectopic pregnancy. It is still two lives regardless of the eventual outcome. So I take it that this would be a “legal” form of abortion to the church? Where would a person find reference covering this situation?
Guvnur let me take the no war except on US soil to its ultimate conclusions…
In WW II we should have waited for further attacks on Hawaii and other US islands, not to mention the West Coast. And we should never have sent troops to Africa and Europe to fight Hitler.
In WW I (the Great War) we should have let the U-Boats keep attacking our shipping and not sent boys to France.
We should not have sent troops to Korea or Vietnam to defend those countries against Communist aggressors. We should also have not had troops in West Germany after WW II because we shouldn’t have been in Europe to begin with.
This also means that we should wait for Al Quaida to send more terrorists here before we try to stop them.
Sure this is taking it all to the absurd. That’s my point. Sometimes you do have to go to war to prevent a greater horror when all else has failed. And that does mean that sometimes your troops leave home. I believe that there have been enough samples of biological matter and plans/means of productions, weapons in violation of UN agreements and resolutions, evidence that Saddam or his agents had ties to the terrorists that attacked us, etc. etc. that Iraq, for all the problems there, is still a Just War.
I could go into great detail making my case, quoting stories (few that the media bothers to report) that show we have reason to be there. In the end it is still a matter of opinion that the Pope and I will disagree on. And it won’t affect my standing as a good Catholic.
We can love one another as Christ loved us, but I don’t know that that means that we must always be as lambs let to the slaughter. When THE Lamb was crucified, he did so for a greater purpose. When we make war it must be for a greater purpose than greed, land or power. I don’t see the US making war in that vein.
I won’t disagree with your final conclusion at all and I think there is much truth to the statement that when good men do nothing, then nothing good will come of it. People cannot bury there head in the sand till someone sneaks up and kicks em in the rear.
Just stiring the pot a bit till someone else comes along with differing opinions.
Oh… I know you’re stirring the pot mostly. I can tell a little bit better than I used to. 🙂
Were you the anonymous poster that put in the original comment on this thread? Wording and tone seemed unlike you, so I wasn’t sure.
I admit I was the anonymous post on the first one but actually it was not intentional. For some reason when I posted from work it came up that way. Actually when I commented that first view I was trying to do it from a totally different view point then my normal one and it seems that I suceeded even more so then I thought. Knowledge of the opposing view is a vital part of defense.