Think the fight over abortion is ended in Ireland? It has just begun, if Father Paddy McCafferty has anything to say about it:
You cannot be a Catholic and be in favour of abortion. Deliberate abortion is so grave a sin that those who procure an abortion, those who carry out the procedure, those who participate in it, or facilitate it, are excommunicated with immediate effect. People who reject such a vitally important teaching of Christ need to be spiritually and morally honest. The sacraments of Jesus Christ, for example, are not mere rites of passage. Therefore, choose a secular education for children, avail of other rites of passage and/or invent new ones.
Go here to read the rest. Father McCafferty has promised to protest outside abortion clinics when they open in Ireland. In him burns bright the spirit of the Catholic priests down through the centuries who upheld the cross of Christ for their oppressed countrymen and the dream of a free Ireland. He is as different from the spineless leaders of the Church in Ireland as it is possible to be. Go here to read more about this fascinating and fearless priest.
“It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”
God sends a prophet, because he loves his people.
“You cannot be a Catholic and be in favour of abortion.”
Agreed.
The celebration of the Eucharist, however, cannot be the starting point for communion; it presupposes that communion already exists, a communion which it seeks to consolidate and bring to perfection. The sacrament is an expression of this bond of communion both in its invisible dimension, which, in Christ and through the working of the Holy Spirit, unites us to the Father and among ourselves, and in its visible dimension, which entails communion in the teaching of the apostles, in the sacraments and in the Church’s hierarchical order [8].
It is especially the invisible dimension which the discipline of can. 915 safeguards.
Regarding the invisible dimension of communion, the Holy Father reminded us of the requirement that we be in the state of grace in order to receive Holy Communion. Making reference to 1Cor 11,28, Pope John Paul II declared that he who desires to participate in Holy Communion must be about the daily work of growing in holiness of life, that is, in the practice of the virtues of faith, hope and love [9]. He quoted from a homily on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah by Saint John Chrysostom.
An excerpt from;
Canon 915: The Discipline Regarding the Denial of Holy Communion to Those Obstinately Persevering in Manifest Grave Sin
Most Rev. Raymond L. Burke
Archbishop of St. Louis
Being in a state of Grace and promoting, procuring or executing an abortion is virtually impossible. Mortal sin removes the state of grace. God bless Fr. McCafferty.
Philip, would you agree that Catholics who endorse with their names and actions(voting) for the pro-abortion Democrat Party are, in fact, “promoting” abortion even though they may be personally opposed to it? And, in that case, are committing a mortal sin?
The West is reaping the results of the way Vatican II was implemented. Wish I knew what the solution is. We can only trust in the Holy Spirit.
Stilbelieve.
If the voter is weighing out the worse of two evils and decides that the murder of the innocent is not as harmful to society as so-called man made climate change I could see his/her fault. Is it a mortal sin? Yes, imho. Because the killing of the innocent is being allowed to happen and he/she isn’t using it’s vote to help change the culture. I haven’t checked the CCC to investigate the question better, so I can only speak my opinion at this point.
I’m on lunch break at nursing home.
Philip, we are in agreement.
Do you know that it is a mortal sin against the 5th Commandment to join an organization that support and promote racial or religious prejudice? According to “Life in Christ – A Catholic Catechism for Adults (1995).”
“To judge and condemn any person because that person happens to belong to a certain religious group, nationality or race injures that person. To manifest prejudice by our actions hurts the feelings- of our neighbor and is therefore a sin against charity. To deny any person her or his rights is a sin against justice as well as charity. This is particularly true in the case of joining an organization (such as the Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan) which promotes racial, ethnic or religious hatred.” (This is an exact quote from the catechism mentioned above.)
If it is a mortal sin to join an organization that promotes and supports religious or racial prejudice because that “hurts the feelings of our neighbor and is therefore a sin against charity” and to “deny any person her or his rights is a sin against justice as well as charity” – then how come endorsing the Democrat Party with your name and actions (voting) is NOT a mortal sin? Christians endorsing and voting Democrat gives that organization the ELECTORAL POWER to keep abortion legal. Catholics are the largest single group in the Democrat Party
Why are the U.S. bishops silent on that which has enabled the Democrat Party to murder over 61,000,000 American lives, lives that Christians, especially Catholics, say God created?
@ Stilbelieve.
The best we can do is live a life worthy of HIS love and sacrifice. So many wolves in sheep’s clothing. So much disorder and debauchery. This is the valley of tears. Best advice, I believe, is from Our Lady herself;
“Will you offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings he sends you? In atonement for all the sins that offend him? And for the conversion of sinners? [The children said, “We will.”] Then you will have a great deal to suffer, but the grace of God will be with you and will strengthen you.”
“Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.”
One war is the war on the inhabitants in the womb.
Happy Corpus Christi.
(Fatima message to the three shepherd children in 1917.)
Stillbelieve-
I can’t find the answer after some searching, so could you see what they cited as support for that? I would guess CCC 1935, but I don’t know, and it sounds like an over-reach of prudential judgement.
Cooperation with evil? Yes. Full knowledge of Mortal Sin happening and the power to help change unlawful ( in God’s sight) practice. Yes.
I agree with you Stilbelieve.
CCC
1855 Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.
Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.
1856 Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us – that is, charity – necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation:
When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object . . . whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbor, such as homicide or adultery. . . . But when the sinner’s will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbor, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.130
1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”131
1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother.”132 The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.
1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart133 do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.
Foxfier –
Are you referring to the mortal sin for joining an organization such as the Nazi Party or the KKK? That teaching was in my high school “Life In Christ – Instructions in the Catholic Faith” published in 1958 in Chicago. Years later, when I came across it, I emailed Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, and asked if that was still the teaching of the Church. He replied – “Yes.”
I then engaged him in a discussion that it should be a mortal sin for Catholics to join the Democrat Party, if joining an organization that merely discriminates against people denying their human rights which makes them “feel bad.” The Democrat Party is doing worse than that, it is denying the right to life to people (the unborn). We had an exchange of emails discussing this. His come-back to my position, that Catholics should not be in the Democrat Party because of that party’s support for abortion, was then should we Americans get out of America because of America’s support for abortion? I responded that being born American does not make me responsible for abortion, but choosing to make a free will endorsement with my name to the only political organization responsible for keeping abortion legal, does make me responsible for it remaining legal, and that should be a mortal sin just like it is for “joining the Nazi Party or the KKK.”
He said he’d present that to an apologist. He came back saying they don’t agree with me. But he/they never explained why they didn’t agree.
My thinking is Chicago is a city with a Mayor and 50 City Council Members called Alderman. The Mayor and all 50 Alderman are Democrats back then, as well as today. That is also the motivation behind Cardinal George’s replacement, Cardinal Bernardin, for his creation of a new “pro-life” theme – “The consistent ethic of life.”
In a favorable biography of Cardinal Bernardin, written by a long-time friend of his of more than 30 years, it is mentioned at least twice why the need for this “consistent ethic of life” – it would “keep the pro-life movement from falling completely under the control of the right wing conservatives who were becoming its dominant sponsors.” (Cardinal Bernardin – Easing conflicts – and battling for the soul of American Catholicism by Eugene Kennedy, published 1989). Cardinal Bernardin passed away in 1996. He never refuted a word in that biography.
In other words, Catholic leaders in a population of extreme Democrats such as Chicago, are heavily influenced by the political powers. As fate would have it, the C/M of the U.S Bishops Conference Pro-Life Committee, the most import committee in the Conference, passed away suddenly at a critical time, and the President of the Conference called on Bernardin, who was respected by the bishops, and asked him if he would take over the committee. He said he would on the condition that he would like to make some changes in the movement. It was agreed to and the bishops voted for it. That is how we got the “Seamless Garment.” That is also the reason Catholics have been able to remain in the Democrat Party because of “they’re not being single issue voters.”
I can’t help but believe the U.S. Bishops and Catholic Democrats are responsible for abortion remaining the law of the land some 34 years post the creation of the “Seamless Garment.” Bernardin’s concern that the pro-life movement would be taken over by right wing conservatives was a probable reality since Reagan was elected with the help of Catholic Democrats called “Reagan Democrats.” If Catholics continued voting their pro-life convictions, that would be the end of the Democrat Party.
Catholics are the single largest group in the Democrat Party. And they have “offend God” far more then God was offended when He sent Our Lady to warn the people at Fatima. Sister Lucia said, back then, that Our Lady said, “People must amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins. They must not offend our Lord any more, for He is already too much offended!”
That was before legal abortion, same-sex “marriage” and now transgenderism.
Later in her life, Sister Lucia told Cardinal Carlo Caffarra that “THE DECISIVE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND SATAN WILL TAKE PLACE OVER MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY.”
We are smack-dab in the middle of that, aren’t we?
That certainly can indicate we are living in the time of Our Lord’s second coming which is a good reason for the Church to find a way to “coach” people to remove themselves from the apostate party – the Democrat Party, before it is too late. They should start with ending each Mass with a prayer “for the conversion of all pro-abortion organizations” just like we used to pray for the “conversion of Russia.”. They then can follow up with teaching people the importance of the 2 Greatest Commandments to be obeyed in order to get to heaven, which also requires “doing the will of God in Heaven.” Both of those teachings drive home the reality that being in and supporting the apostate party is not a place to be if they want to get to heaven.
Stilbelieve–
yes.
That’s why I wanted to see the justification involved, because while yes the Bishop has authority, and from what I can find there was no problem with the “nothing contrary to the faith” certification for the book, that does not mean it’s binding. Just that it’s an acceptable option for Catholics.
Checked the Catechism, can’t find anything on it; it looks like it might be an attempt to point at the motivation for joining the group, but needlessly conflates with it doing a thing AT ALL, which as you correctly point out would spill on to the Dem party.