God bless Bishop Aquila!

Canon Lawyer Urges Implementation of Canon 915 Against Nancy Pelosi

Ed Peters, the canon lawyer who blogs at In the Light of the Law posted an article on the Feast of the Annunciation urging implementation of Canon 915 against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. For those unfamiliar with Canon 915 it calls for withholding Communion from obstinate public sinners. Calls for, however, as Peters points out is too mild to describe the canon. In fact, he writes that Canon 915 "requires ministers to withhold holy Communion in such cases, this, upon pain of dereliction of their sacred office (1983 CIC 128, 1389)."


Among the bishops are many canon lawyers. Can we hope that some of them will listen to a fellow canonist and urge Nancy's home archbishop, George Niederauer of San Francisco, and Archbishop Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. to bar her from Communion? She commits a grave public scandal every time she opens her mouth and it is high time that the sacrilege of her consuming the Body and Blood of Christ be stopped.
 
Some will say it will just give her sympathy vote and make her a martyr. Frankly, that's the world talking. The question is whether, in receiving Communion, she crucifies Christ, scandalizes others and leads them into sin, and jeopardizes her own soul. Those are the issues that really matter.
 
Read the complete blog post here....

Thank the Bishops for the Health Care Bill: They Let the Catholic Heretics Flourish

"'All the evil in the world is due to lukewarm Catholics.'...All the evil in the Church is due to lukewarm bishops."

Spanish Bishops Say No Communion for Pro-Abort Politicians!

When will the U.S. Episcopal conference show the same backbone?

Spanish Bishops: Politicians Who Vote for Anti-Life Law are not to Receive Communion

Bishop Tobin vs Kennedy with vapid commentary from Fr. Tom Reese

Bishop Thomas Tobin has instructed Patrick Kennedy to refrain from receiving Communion. While Kennedy says the bishop has instructed priests in the diocese not to give him the Sacrament, the chancery says the bishop has never addressed the issue with his priests. Other Catholic politicians privately instructed by their bishops have essentially thumbed their noses and continued to present themselves at the altar. Whether Kennedy will obey or flaunt the bishop's admonition, time will tell. It appears he is trying to make himself a martyr to gain sympathy from the secular world, a big mistake considering they have no vote on Judgment Day.

The controversy has put another figure in the limelight as well. An article from the Providence Journal quoted Fr. Tom Reese on the controversy:

“The vast majority of bishops don’t want people denied Communion” over the abortion issue, said Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit scholar at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington. [The "vast majority" also covered up the priest sex abuse issue so what's your point?] “But the problem is, every time an individual bishop does it — especially if the public official has a high-profile name like Kennedy — it’s going to make headlines across the country and every bishop is going to suffer because of it,” Father Reese said. [Good bishops doing the right thing does tend to make the bad ones "suffer" -- like the bishops in Henry VIII's England who must have been very put out by Bishop John Fisher's martyrdom revealing their cowardly infidelity!]....
Scholar Reese said the bishops have debated in previous years the issue of whether they should step beyond such appeals to the individual Catholic’s conscience. The context for the debate was the 2004 presidential candidacy of Sen. John F. Kerry, a Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts who supports abortion rights. Father Reese said fewer than 20 bishops supported a policy of denying Communion to such officials.[Faithful disciples are almost always in the minority. Look at the apostles!]...

In 2004, a large majority of bishops “tried to persuade the minority not to do this — using Communion as a weapon,” Father Reese said, but the conference could not come to a consensus view on the issue. [It's not a "weapon" any more than the surgeon's scalpel. It's a medicinal treatment to call back a soul in serious danger of damnation.]
Father Reese stressed that withholding Communion is not as grave a penalty as excommunication, which separates a Catholic from all the sacraments. If a bishop denies Communion to a Catholic, he or she “is still a Catholic,” Father Reese said. Indeed, he said “it would take a canon lawyer” to say whether a Catholic denied Communion in his own diocese would be free to receive Communion elsewhere. [Excuse us, Fr. Reese, but the Canon Law already exists -- 915 which forbids Communion to those "who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin." A number of Vatican officials including Cardinal Francis Arinze, Archbishop Raymond Burke, and indeed, the pope himself when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have called for the penalty to be imposed.]

Reese's position is not surprising. The former editor of the liberal Jesuit magazine America (He resigned under Vatican pressure.) can always be counted on to put a heterodox spin on any story relating to the U.S. bishops' exercising their obligation under canon law to discipline "manifest public sinners." A fellow blogger described Fr. Reese as a "disingenuous, lying jerk" last May when Fr. Reese attacked the orthodox bishops who dared to criticize the reprehensible action of Notre Dame in honoring President Obama. While I prefer not to call names, I'd have to say that CMR has his adjectives absolutely right. Liars and disingenuous men in roman collars are the favorite commentators of the mainstream media. They can always be depended on when it comes to attacking the good bishops and holding up the wolves as models of christianit - just what the media is looking for.

Fr. Reese, you ought to notice that no one who really cares about the faith is listening to your vapid stupidity. You do, however, scandalize the many who are poorly catechized which is a millstone offense.

But Fr. Reese's behavior is worse than stupidity. Embracing the lie that allows the murder of millions of babies makes him a cooperator in a crime against humanity that has taken the lives of more innocents than all the atrocities of the 20th century combined. Like Joseph Goebbles, who cast Hitler's murders in a favorable light, Fr. Reese does the same for Barack Obama while he attacks the bishops who attempt to defend the innocent. God help you, Fr. Reese! You will answer for every innocent life murdered under the banner of Obama/Pelosi liberalism.

The USCCB Gestapo Strikes Again

We call our bishops shepherds because they have the responsibility to protect the flock from "the world, the flesh, and the devil." They are the primary teachers of the faith in their dioceses and, as a body, they reflect to the world the face of the Catholic Church in the United States. As such, one would expect them to revel in presenting themselves as Jesus did -- open and available to hear the cries of their people. Is that the experience most of us have of our bishops, particularly as a body, -- welcoming us with open arms like Jesus, never too tired to heal the sick and touch the outcasts? Unfortunately no.

In fact the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) leadership and staff go out of their way to protect the bishops from the flock. The June meeting that just took place in San Antonio gave us one more bizarre example. American Life League (ALL) ran an ad in USA Today the first day of the bishops' meeting urging the bishops (once again as in former years) to deny Communion to obstinate public sinners like pro-aborts Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. ALL chose USA Today because the hotel delivers a complimentary copy to every room. Well, the hotel ordinarily delivers it to the rooms, but the bishops' staffers had instructed that the New York Times be delivered instead. When the on-site member from ALL contacted the desk, he offered to pay for USA Today to be delivered to the bishops' rooms. The clerk was agreeable but when the ALL member called back later the clerk referred him to the hotel contact person working with the USCCB which would not allow it. They had approved only the Times for the meeting. God forbid that the bishops should see the face of that little pre-born baby and be challenged by the words of St. Matthew: "Whatever you did not do for these least ones, you did not do for me." They must be protected at all costs from seeing and reading:

It is a duty in charity to warn not only pro-abortion Catholic politicians not to receive Communion, but to instruct priests and extraordinary ministers not to give such people Communion. We must, as St. Peter said, obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29)

If you won’t enforce Canon 915 for the sake of the least of these babies in the womb, do it for your politicians and friends who are “stumbling to the slaughter.”
(Proverbs 24:11)

The past is prologue to the future. The USCCB nonsense is nothing new. Two years ago, the Catholic Media Coalition had a hospitality suite during the bishops' November meeting in Baltimore. Twelve bishops visited and a few even stayed for prolonged conversations about diocesan touching programs and spreading devotion to Our Lady of America. No bishop was forced to come. They were welcomed with open arms. But in 2008 when we attempted to repeat what we thought was a very successful and positive effort with the bishops, we found that the USCCB staff had reserved ALL THE SUITES. (At a pretty cost, I can tell you. We spent close to two thousand dollars for a suite for two nights.) It was clear that the staffers and USCCB bosses wanted to make sure the sheep had no contact with their shepherds during the meeting that they could not control. There's more to the pathetic story, including a threat of arrest, which you can read in my article The Devil's Triple Play.

While USCCB staff successfully blocked us (and others who might be tempted to do the same thing) from having a hospitality suite, they couldn't prevent another effort. We joined with ALL to hold a prayer vigil outside the hotel on the Harbor concourse. We had about 50 people join us in prayer and song. Although we sent invitations to selected bishops before the meeting and made some personal calls none braved the chill to join us for the rosary and rally.

Despite the on-going hostility of the bishops' bureaucracy toward faithful, orthodox Catholics, we remain undaunted. The Catholic faithful, under Canon Law, have a right to express their concerns to their bishops, and our shepherd-fathers have an obligation to listen. Like the widow before the unjust judge we will continue to seek justice for the unborn and proclamation of authentic Catholic doctrine - always respectfully, always undergirded by prayer. Those bishops with ears to hear will listen. The others will answer for their dereliction of duty in the end. As for the bishops' bureaucracy, the old saying applies: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"