I know that legislatures have been most effective at limiting abortion by programs of social assistance. Should we explore banning from communion politicans who vote against these programs?

Legislatures can and do limit abortion, as you well know. Your pathetic attemp to get them off the moral hook is an embarrassment. When legislators announce themselves in support of abortion, and vote to allow abortion, they bloody their hands. You can choose to say they are right - don’t attempt to say they are not culpable. There is a moral argument to be made for legal abortion - there is no Catholic argument.

I’m not a Louisiana African American. I was an officer of the National Catholic Council for Interracial Justice around that time and was a supporter of Archbishop Rummel. Archbishop Rummel would not have denied Nancy Pelosi communion.

I can very much understand the diffuculties here and how it works. However I might add that many of these pro abortion politicians are doing more than just casting a vote. THey are often in the forefront in making people that oppose them , often Catholics, as some threat to the Republic that wishes to put their religion on other
people

LEt us recall that these “Catholics” did not have to take communion in such a public manner. They knew darn well the controversy that would be coming down the pike after they did it.

Smehow I am wondering why the people that asking questions as to this are seen as the problem and not them

However, the whole approach taken in this post strikes me as a little bit odd, since it seems to imagine (at least for the purposes of refuting) a Church in which all things must be accomplished by rigidly evenhanded policies.

I get very little of a sense of the relationship between bishop and flock being that of shepherd and sheep, or father and children, and I also get very little sense of a communal sense of sin.

And that, really, is what I think a number of Catholics are asking for (even if in a critique-able way) when they call for “pro-choice” politicians to be banned from communion. On the one hand, we used to be told (and still are, if we listen carefully) that we should not receive communion unless we are free from grave sin. Additionally, we are told that some things are gravely wrong. Abortion, we believe, is one of those gravely wrong thing. Torture is another. Abandoning one’s family is another. And surely we could list off many more.

Many of the flock these days feel rather un-led. If these things really are gravely wrong, is our spiritual father ever going to ever hand out any discipline? Is he going to tell people that they are in grave sin and sound mend their ways before receiving? Or are these things perhaps not really gravely wrong? Or have we succumbed to a Protestant “snow on the dungheap” version on sin, and decided that it really doesn’t matter if one is in grave sin or not when one approaches to receive communion?

Now, when this hunger to see firm leadership results in people disrespecting our bishops and trying to fill in for them, then clearly we have even more of a breakdown. That’s a problem, and I don’t think it’s inappropriate for people like MM to call them out on that.

However, I think in the process we must not miss the real need which is causing people to complain about this: a need for strong moral leadership and a renewed sense of what a sacred thing the Eucharist is.

The danger of using authority is, of course, that it will be mis-used. Certainly, if our episcopal culture was currently one of firm leadership, I’m sure that some bishops would be disciplining people for publicly supporting the War in Iraq or publicly supporting capital punishment or what have you. I might think that was unjust. But I’m almost inclined to think it would be better overall for the flock if we had an overall use of authority which sometimes resulted in perceived injustice (whether it was liberals wanting pro-choice politicians to get a walk or conservatives feeling that a bishop was basing discipline on his prudential judgements about capital punishment and the war) on occasion than have a situation in which such authority was seldom ever exercised at all.

1. Indisputably inaccurate. Google the “Freedom of Choice Act.” That act would purport to guarantee abortion rights via a federal statute. Obama is a co-sponsor and has promised that it would be his first priority if elected President.

2. Politicians in America are certainly in a position to vote a law that FUNDS abortion — which is even more direct involvement than a law that merely “legalizes” abortion, Obama has voted for public financing of abortion, and opposes the Hyde Amendment, which is what prevents the federal government from funding abortion via Medicaid.