Catholic Politicians Put on Notice

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 2/13/03)

A throng of pro-lifers, estimated at anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000, paraded through downtown Washington during the annual March for Life Jan. 22. A Planned Parenthood rally with about 150 participants also took place. "Tens of thousands of demonstrators on both sides of the [abortion] issue filled the streets of Washington today," Dan Rather reported that evening on CBS.

And then the media complain when people called them biased.

Media misrepresentation of the abortion issue is a familiar story by now. Something else that happened last Jan. 22, the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, was decidedly new.

Preaching at a pro-life Mass in his cathedral, Bishop William K. Weigand of Sacramento said California Governor Gray Davis, a pro-abortion Catholic who is, shouldn't keep receiving Communion until he changes his position and repents.

"As your bishop, I have to say clearly that anyone — politician or otherwise — who thinks it is acceptable for a Catholic to be pro-abortion is in very great error, puts his or her soul at risk, and is not in good standing with the Church," Bishop Weigand declared.

American bishops have made their opposition to abortion clear over the years. They have issued pastoral letters, participated in the March for Life and other pro-life events, prayed at abortion clinics, supported alternatives to abortion. There can be no doubt where they stand on this primordial issue — the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death.

But Bishop Weigand may be the first to point publicly to the fact that Catholic politicians who support abortion have estranged themselves from the Church and disqualified themselves from receiving Communion. He imposed no sanctions but left it to Gray Davis and others like him to acknowledge the reality of their situation and voluntarily refrain from receiving until they have "a change of heart."

The bishop said his inspiration came partly from a local priest who'd tangled with Davis a while back and partly from a document issued in mid-January by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, available on the Vatican Web site, www.vatican.va.

People who want to know what the Church thinks about ethics and politics — not what somebody says it thinks, but what it really thinks — need to study this document. Although it isn't easy reading, the Doctrinal Note will repay the effort.

It makes it clear, for instance, that the Church is deeply concerned with every violation of the sanctity and dignity of human life. Among those that it mentions, along with abortion, are euthanasia, lethal experiments on human embryos, same-sex 'marriage', cohabitation and other assaults on the family, and threats to peace.

The bottom line for Catholics in public life is the same in each case. Quoting Pope John Paul II, the document says: "Those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a 'grave and clear obligation to oppose' any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them."

There is much else to ponder in the Doctrinal Note: about the role of moral relativism as a root cause of current confusion, about true and false ideas regarding tolerance and pluralism in democratic societies, about many other issues that arise in today's debate. Get it. Read it. And then send a copy — with a friendly note promising prayers — to your favorite pro-abortion Catholic politician.

Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C.

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