Speaking of unpleasant people who want to wine-dine-69 Jesus but haven’t heard a damn word He said:
The Rockford Pro-Life Initiative has called on Francis Cardinal George to excommunicate Governor Pat Quinn for his outspoken support of same-sex “marriage.”
[snip]
Governor Quinn’s support for same-sex “marriage” puts him at odds with the leadership of the Catholic faith he claims to belong to.ThreeIllinoisbishops released letters to be read from the pulpit in parishes statewide over the weekend opposing the legislation.
Members of the Rockford Pro-Life Initiative, however, do not think the letters go far enough.
“If Cardinal George and all the Illinois Bishops declare that any politician who claims to be Catholic, including Gov. Quinn, [who] votes for a homosexual marriage bill would be automatically and publicly excommunicated, this would stand a very good chance of protecting marriage,” the group said in a statement.
Quinn went right ahead and signed the bill, excommunication rumblings be (literally) damned, so obviously these scolds wield a lot of power.
Ugh, they’re so tiresome. Look, there is no “public” excommunication. This isn’t the Salem witch trials. You don’t have to stand in a public square while the Pope rips your crucifix off. You don’t have to wear a sign or serve time in the stocks. The Pope writes you a mean letter, at most, if you’re a head of state or something.And making voting in favor of marriage equality an “automatic” excommunication would require an actual change to the church’s internal laws:
A few more points about excommunication. This penalty is biblical, and both St Paul and St John make reference to the practice of cutting people off from the community, in order to hasten their repentance. It is useful to remember that the penalty is designed to bring the sinner back to repentance. It can be abused, used as a political tool and even employed for the purposes of revenge – but those would be abuses of Canon Law.
In other words, squirrel nuts, read the damn doctrine you claim to revere. If it’s a public shaming you’re hankering after, you’re only going to bring one on yourselves.
A.
As we all know, there was a time not too long ago in which it was believed RC politicians would put the dictates of the Pope before the laws and Constitution of the United States of America and therefore were unfit for public office.
These mooks are trying to prove those fears well-founded.
(Also, I’m enjoying all those rightwing Catholics who spent the last three decades screaming the Church isn’t a democracy you have to do what the Pope says or else! suddenly discovering the value of dissent.)
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A few decades ago, being divorced and remarried meant one could not partake of the Eucharist but could still attend the Mass.
For all practical purposes, this is no longer enforced in the USA even though (jumping into fundamentalist mode here) the Gospels cite Jesus as specifically saying that even divorcing someone without sufficient cause forces them to commit adultery. But I can’t find where Jesus said similar about same-sex couples.
I wonder if it is some psychological mechanism that doesn’t want to admit that we’ve looked at marriage differently (in modern political parlance, weakened marriage) but don’t want to admit it. So we can forget that we’ve changed if we channel all our energy into protesting LBGT.
I think that the excommunication queue is seriously backlogged with right-wing judges that issue death sentences.
So Quinn might make it to the front of the line sometime around, oh, 2835 or so.
now the GOP wants more ‘religion’.